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Using the Predictive Index for hiring
Discover candidate assessments that can predict performance in a new role.
Even with an interview process that includes multiple rounds of questioning, it’s hard to predict a candidate’s on-the-job success and how they will fit with your existing team.
That’s why employers have used Predictive Index® (PI®) assessments for decades to fill open positions with candidates who are best aligned — cognitively and behaviorally — to a job’s responsibilities. Employers can also use the Predictive Index to improve team dynamics, promote within an organization, and better support employees in their work.
What is the Predictive Index?
The Predictive Index (PI) is a science-based candidate assessment tool that helps predict on-the-job performance. Created by Arnold Daniels in the 1950s, the Predictive Index Behavioral Assessment has been around for almost 70 years, and thousands of companies have used it to find the best candidates for positions.
When candidates and employees take PI assessments, employers learn much more about them than a resume can reveal. Not only does the PI help employers hire ideal candidates, it helps place them in positions aligned to their intrinsic motivations, strengths, and cognitive abilities.
For example, if you’re looking to fill a leadership role that requires someone to think and act boldly, you might choose a more extroverted candidate who thrives when given opportunities to interact and influence others. Or, if a candidate’s assessment indicates they’re more reserved and need freedom from risk of error, they would likely work best in a role with fewer spotlights and more opportunities to reflect.
Employees naturally inclined to fulfill the primary responsibilities of a given role are more likely to stay engaged in that role. And when teams are made up of motivated employees, workplace satisfaction usually increases, teams become happier and more effective, and efficiency and productivity increase over time.
What does the Predictive Index measure?
The Predictive Index measures behavioral drives and cognitive ability in the workplace. It’s designed to give employers a more comprehensive view of candidates’ needs, motivation, and ability to pick up new concepts.
The Predictive Index’s two candidate assessments — the Behavioral Assessment and the Cognitive Assessment — are used in conjunction with the Predictive Index Job Assessment to determine role requirements and help interviewers choose the right candidates.
When candidates take the Predictive Index Behavioral and Cognitive Assessments, hiring teams don’t have to guess who would best fulfill the role’s requirements. Instead, they can compare candidates’ assessment profiles with the job’s targets to find the right add based on data while also removing bias and subjectivity from the hiring process.
Predictive Index personality types
The Predictive Index sorts each assessment taker into one of 17 personality types — or Reference Profiles — grouped into four categories:
How to read Predictive Index results
Candidate assessment scores and results — both behavioral and cognitive — should be measured against the Predictive Index Job Assessment, which sets a role’s requirements and targets prior to interviews. The hiring team can then use a candidate’s match score to determine how closely they align to the job targets, ensuring an objective and standardized hiring process.
When reading a behavioral Reference Profile, pay attention to each behavioral drive’s corresponding point on the graph (marked as A, B, C, and D). The farther a point is from the center line, the more or less pronounced that behavioral drive is in a candidate.
For instance, when a person measures high in dominance, the “A” data point will show up on the right side of the graph, indicating they’re independent in the workplace. A person who measures low in dominance, however, will see the “A” data point on the left side of the graph, showing they’re collaborative at work. The data point for a person who tends to be flexible in their drive for dominance will sit somewhere close to the center line.
The above graph shows a set of data points that match the “Controller” personality type. While this candidate’s results fit the pattern of a Controller, no data point is very far from the center line, indicating this particular Controller’s behavioral drives — especially dominance (A) and extraversion (B) — can be flexible.
Along with measuring each behavioral drive, the Predictive Index assessment offers pattern insights that explain the drives and how they relate to one another. For example, if a person’s drive for dominance (A) is more pronounced than their drive for formality (D), the assessment describes them as someone who’s comfortable taking risks.
This chart explains the relationships between the drives in the Controller profile:
The Controller’s drive for formality (D) is more pronounced than their drive for patience (C), which makes them careful with rules. And because their drive for dominance (A) is more pronounced than their drive for extraversion (B), they’re generally task-oriented. At the same time, their drive for extraversion (B) is higher than their drive for patience (C), which means they’re quick to connect with others and impatient with routines.
Each PI personality type can be analyzed in a similar way. For a great majority of assessment takers, reference profiles hold steady with time — according to test-retest data, results remain “reasonably stable” for up to six to eight years. So, if a candidate takes the assessment during the hiring process, they will most likely have the same profile during their time at the organization, which helps managers make better-informed staffing and administrative decisions about that candidate-turned-employee.
What does the Predictive Index tell employers?
The Predictive Index helps employers determine which candidates are likely to succeed in a given role and stay for the long term. By offering deep, data-based insights into a candidate’s cognitive ability and behavioral drives, the Predictive Index reveals what motivates a candidate to do their best work. When managers understand this, they can better predict how that candidate will impact team dynamics and into which roles they might grow.
Beyond giving insights into individual candidates, the Predictive Index can assist in identifying gaps in teams and recommending strategic changes, harnessing employee strengths to achieve businesswide goals, and building collaborative teams that elevate workplace performance and satisfaction.
Other helpful candidate assessment tools
• Talent assessment tools
• Choosing the right hiring tools to find qualified candidates
• How to assess for collaboration
• How to assess for innovation
• 12 assessment tools that will help you hire the best candidates quickly (and fairly)
• O*NET career exploration tools
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