5 Things Recruiters Can Use Personality For
Let’s be honest. Most experienced recruiters don’t need another pitch on profiling. You already know the tools. Many of you have used them for years.
And yet, there is still scepticism. Eye rolls. Stories of bad reports and worse debriefs.
So let’s raise the bar.
TALY’S making it easier than ever to use profiling, from selection, all the way to onboarding. We ensure a good fit turns into a great contributor. Want to find out how we do it?
Want to learn more about how TALY is helping to reshape great decision-making and outcomes during recruitment? Get in touch or book a demo today.
When a Placement Doesn’t Land
We all know strong recruitment decisions rely on data. Experience. Education. Track record. References. Capability evidence.
Personality data sits alongside that stack. Not as a novelty, and not as a crystal ball, but as behavioural risk data.
Think of it less as a test and more as a diagnostic layer. It gives you structured insight into how someone is likely to operate when complexity increases. Decision speed. Risk tolerance. Interpersonal impact. Response to ambiguity.
Research on person–job fit consistently shows strong links to job satisfaction and turnover intentions. In other words, alignment of behavioural style and role demands materially affects outcomes. And with hybrid working becoming the norm, and not the exception, soft skills are now more important than ever. Behaviour travels further in remote settings. Personality amplifies strengths and weaknesses alike.
And yet, many recruiters still underuse personality data or use it late, often as a validation tool rather than a decision input.
So the question is not whether personality matters. It does. The question is how deliberately we use it.
What is personality?
At its core, personality is the consistent pattern in how someone thinks, feels, and behaves across time and situations. It is not a mood or a label. It is not a single trait. It is a dynamic system of tendencies that shape how someone shows up in the world.
Personality describes propensities, not fixed outcomes. Personality never removes choice. It simply makes some behaviours more natural and others more effortful. Understanding personality gives people awareness. And awareness gives people leverage.
And in the workplace, personality is not just interesting. It is predictive. Recruiters can leverage this predictiveness to help build sharper teams, improve fit of their candidates, and find the right candidates to increase the capabilities of teams.
TALY is built for recruiters who already know the game and want it to run cleaner.
At TALY, we combine personality with emotional intelligence and risk attitudes so you can see not just someone’s style, but how they regulate it, and how they make calls when information is incomplete.
It turns personality data into a practical diagnostic layer you can use early, use confidently, and then carry forward into onboarding, so “good fit” becomes “fast contribution”, not “hope for the best”.
We all agree strong recruitment decisions rely on evidence: experience, education, track record, references, capability data. Personality belongs in that stack too, not as a novelty or a crystal ball, but as behavioural risk and operating style data.
Not “who they are”, but how they tend to run when stakes rise: decision tempo, tolerance for ambiguity, how they influence others, how they respond to conflict, how they behave when they’re under pressure or out of context.
Here are 5 ways to use TALY to improve your recruitment outcomes:
1. Sharpening the Definition of “Fit”
“Fit” is one of the most expensive vague words in business. We talk about “fit” constantly. It is often code for instinct or our impression: Is the vibe right? Do I like them? Will others in the team like them?
TALY forces specificity. Fit for what, exactly? Pace, autonomy, stakeholder complexity, conflict load, change velocity, decision rights, operating cadence?
At a senior level, marginal differences in behavioural style have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, especially with stakeholders. When you outline the behavioural demands of the role explicitly, you reduce vague panel debates and increase defensibility.
This is not about culture cloning. It is about contextual alignment.
2. Moving Beyond Competence to Contribution
Your shortlisted candidates can do the job. That is why they are shortlisted. The differentiator is how they will change the system once they are inside it.
Will they add speed to a team that overthinks? Add structure to a team that improvises itself into chaos? Add edge to a group that avoids hard conversations? Add calm to a group that confuses urgency with progress?
TALY helps you hire for directional impact. It shows how a candidate’s natural tendencies are likely to interact with the team’s current dynamics. Neither end of a trait is “good” or “bad”. Context decides. TALY brings personality to life in team dynamics context, helping you align to stakeholder expectations. Do they need more decision-making speed, structure, creativity, or task-orientation? TALY helps you find the candidates that align with those needs, and provides defensible justification for the selection.
3. Stress-Testing Likely Derailers Early
Senior failures rarely come from low intelligence. They come from predictable patterns. Executive coaching research consistently shows that overused strengths, not lack of intelligence, sit behind many failures.
What made junior leaders successful may not always make them successful the more senior they get. Drive can be read as domineering, structure as inflexibility. The ability to flex their style and meet stakeholders where they are at is critical for leader success.
The goal is not to disqualify candidates because of a watch-out. The goal is to probe properly: do they recognise the pattern, can they regulate it, do they have strategies that work under pressure?
That is the difference between profiling as a filter and profiling as a risk conversation. TALY helps you identify these areas quicker, and links them to coaching, feedback, and ongoing performance recommendations for leaders.
4. Elevating the Quality of Hiring Conversations
One quiet benefit of structured behavioural insight is that it upgrades the conversation.
Instead of “they seem slow”, you can say: “Their decision tempo is slower than the team’s current cadence. In this role, is it stabilising or friction-generating?” Instead of “not quite a culture fit”, you can discuss conflict appetite, stakeholder sensitivity, ambiguity tolerance, and feedback response.
This is how you reduce bias without giving everyone a lecture on bias. You change the language of the room.
That shift matters. It helps recruiters build more trust and buy-in when decisions are challenged by stakeholders, in meaningful ways.
5. Stop treating selection as the finish line
The most sophisticated use of personality data does not end at selection, it moves into a long-term value unlock.
When you carry insight forward into onboarding, you increase the probability of success. Research shows retention and performance are influenced strongly by onboarding efforts.You brief managers on likely stretch zones, coaching areas, and strengths. You design support around pressure points. You anticipate friction rather than reacting to it.
Research on person–job fit and early adjustment consistently shows that perceived alignment predicts satisfaction and retention. When behavioural insight informs the first 90 days, the data continues to work for you.
When you can say “Here’s the candidate, here’s how they’ll operate under pressure, here’s the friction points to expect, and here’s the plan to make the first 90 days work”, you stop being a supplier of resumes and start being the person who strategically de-risks talent outcomes.
Ready to level up your recruitment?
If you are tired of expensive reports that produce very little behaviour change, TALY is the alternative: a sharper signal up front, cleaner hiring conversations, and a real handover into onboarding so the placement actually sticks.
TALY helps you move from transactional to strategic impact: from assessing candidates to designing successful placements.
Get in touch to find out more… we really do love talking about this stuff. Or Book a Demo today to see how easy it is to start using TALY in your business.
