There’s more to pre-screening tests than just ‘pre-screenng tests’!
According to the Business Development Bank of Canada, 2026 will be a year of transition for Canadian businesses. According to BDC:
“We are in the midst of a technological revolution. Companies that embrace this shift …will be able to improve their operational efficiency. The job market has also strengthened, with 180,000 jobs created in the last three months of 2025, resulting in a decrease in Canada’s unemployment rate to 6.5% in November.”
The BDC suggests that to succeed in 2026 employers will need to:
- Manage their finances carefully
- Evaluate the overall health of your business (and have developed a free tool to help you do so)
- Keep an eye on the shifting economy
- Clarify processes
- Invest to become more efficient
Although the nation will struggle with US tariffs, economic uncertainty, rising costs, and volatile global politics, some things remain unchanged.
- As job creation increases, employers still need bodies to fill those roles.
- As ‘transition’ becomes the norm organizations will still need ways to ensure that profitability is maintained and that the right people are in the right places to manage these changes.
North American businesses are also still facing the loss of many senior employees to retirement. More than 60% of small and medium-sized businesses are led by someone 50 or older, and most of them have no succession plan in place. This will leave a large skills and knowledge gap as institutional knowledge walks out the door. Many of those left standing aren’t ready to fill the roles that will be left vacant without additional coaching and support.
What all of this means is that identifying, hiring, promoting and developing the best and most competent people is as important as ever, if not more so.
Luckily, There’s A Test For That!
CPS HR Consulting identifies 7 kinds of pre-screening tests:
- Job Knowledge Tests
- Integrity Tests
- Cognitive Ability Tests
- Personality Tests
- Emotional Intelligence Tests
- Skills Assessment Tests
- Physical Ability Tests
Each has its pros and cons but all of them serve a defined purpose and are valuable resources that HR professionals should be taking advantage of. In past articles I’ve written about tests for integrity, cognition, skills, emotional intelligence, and others. Today, I want to focus on personality tests.
Personality has been of great interest to psychology since the field’s inception and holds a prominent place in the testing industry. Thousands of internationally replicated studies on personality have been conducted for decades. As a result, we know that personality is highly predictive, largely immutable, and can be accurately measured. Personality tests can be used for recruiting, leadership, team building, conflict resolution, personal development, and more. They’re reliable, effective and flexible, and they generate actionable, usable, real-world results.
Most people are familiar with long-standing personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) categorizing personality into 16 types, DiSC focusing on Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness, Big Five (OCEAN) measuring traits like Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and StrengthsFinder, often used in corporate settings for personal and professional development. However, these are only but a few of the personality measures that are available to employers.
There are many personality assessments that are built upon personality research, but which tie personality traits to work-style and on-the-job behaviours. They’re designed to identify skills and aptitudes like trainability, cognition/critical thinking, reliability, communication style, ability to withstand stress, follow rules, and culture fit, rather than just personality ‘type’. They offer employers deep insights into people’s capacity for leadership, interpersonal skills, developmental opportunities, managing conflict, and more.
COD offers almost 100 different personality tests, including several versions of the DiSC, and other tools designed for specific job roles (i.e. attorneys, child care, consultants, entrepreneurs, franchisees, leaders, accountants, customer service, pastors, production roles, remote workers, and more). Some, like the Atman, offer a complete platform that can follow employees through their work-lifespan and which helps ‘match’ individuals to the right roles, teams, leadership positions and more.
These kinds of assessments offer employers deep and accurate insights into people’s core abilities, strengths and weaknesses, go-to ‘natural’ responses, developmental needs, and suitability for a role or corporate culture. Those who focus only on skills tests miss out on collecting other critically important and revealing information that are often the hallmarks of success.
‘Personality’ has moved far beyond just identifying Type A and Type B individuals or differentiating between an ISTJ or ENFP type of personality (i.e. MBTI). If you’re not using a personality tool when recruiting or promoting then you’re leaving valuable, mission-critical information on the table.
We can help you find the right option for your specific needs, help you ensure that the right person gets hired or promoted, ‘fix’ leaders who are struggling, help you build teams that are more cohesive, efficient, and productive, resolve conflicts, and more, because no matter what employee challenges you’re facing…
There’s A Test For That!
David Towler is President of Creative Organizational Design, a firm offering nearly 50 years of expertise specializing in employee assessments and has over 5000 different tests available. Creative Organizational Design has assessments designed to help employers screen out other people’s rejects, assess skills, aptitudes, attitudes, and ‘fit’ within an organization. For more information about the many options available and to obtain expert help in selecting the best tools for your needs please contact us because no matter what personnel challenges you’re facing – there’s a test for that! Please send comments about this article to dtowler@creativeorgdesign.com.