Customer service personality tests are not strictly reserved for customer service representatives, however. These types of tests have been growing in popularity because many organizations place a heavy emphasis on cultivating a "culture of customer service" across an entire organization, in industries as diverse as medical care providers, banks, and non-profits. Companies may find a lot of value in administering these tests to applicants for managerial and administrative positions if their jobs will involve frequent interactions with customers or the public at large.
Figure 2: The traits model is gaining credence in personality research because of growing evidence suggesting that a strict dichotomy between two distinct types does not sufficiently describe the nuances of human personality.
Research demonstrates that certain personality traits are particularly predictive of job performance for two types of positions – sales and customer service jobs. Generally, the highest performing salespeople across a wide range of industries tend to be competitive, highly motivated, outgoing, and assertive. Alternatively, successful salespeople scored lower for traits such as cooperativeness and patience.
Tests that assess traits related to customer service are also increasingly popular because customer service representative positions tend to have above average turnover rates. This leaves HR managers scrambling for tools that can help remedy this problem. Personality tests are particularly useful for minimizing voluntary turnover because they seek to uncover not whether candidates are capable of doing a job, but whether candidates will be content and comfortable performing that job based on their fixed personality traits.
The Big Five traits are especially applicable to the hiring process because substantial evidence links these traits to job performance for a variety of positions. Conscientiousness, which measures the extent to which an individual is reliable, organized, persistent, and responsible (those who score low in Conscientiousness may be more impulsive and at times unreliable) has been shown to be moderately predictive of success across many job types, but particularly for entry-level positions where characteristics like reliability and punctuality may be more valuable than creativity.
Personality tests can measure many different traits, but the most prominent personality test framework uses what is called the "Big Five" or "Five Factor Model." These are the five dimensions of personality that consistently emerge in empirical research: Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Openness (to Experience), and Stress Tolerance. The concept of personality "traits" is now fairly widely accepted, and is superseding an older paradigm of personality "types" that originated with Carl Jung and relied on a view of personality that categorized people into one of two distinct types, such as introvert or extrovert, thinker or feeler, Type A or Type B. The traits model is gaining credence in personality research because of growing evidence suggesting that a strict dichotomy between two distinct types does not sufficiently describe the nuances of human personality.
Personality tests can measure many different traits, but the most prominent personality test framework uses what is called the "Big Five" or "Five Factor Model." These are the five dimensions of personality that consistently emerge in empirical research: Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Openness (to Experience), and Stress Tolerance. The concept of personality "traits" is now fairly widely accepted, and is superseding an older paradigm of personality "types" that originated with Carl Jung and relied on a view of personality that categorized people into one of two distinct types, such as introvert or extrovert, thinker or feeler, Type A or Type B. The traits model is gaining credence in personality research because of growing evidence suggesting that a strict dichotomy between two distinct types does not sufficiently describe the nuances of human personality.