Can a personality assessment be used to reject candidates?

It should not be the only filter. It is a source for preparing the interview, and if the decision were based solely on automated processing, Article 22 of the GDPR would give the candidate the right not to be subject to it.

Do we need the candidate's consent?

Spain's data protection authority states that personality tests in hiring require the person's consent, after analysing proportionality and the legal basis. Elsewhere, check the guidance of your own regulator.

Can candidates see their results?

Under the same Spanish guidance, candidates have the right to access the results of their own tests and to know the selection criteria, but not the results of other candidates.

Is personality the same as competencies?

No. Personality describes preferences and style; competencies are behaviours you can observe in the role. A good process uses both, each for its own purpose.

How often should an assessment be repeated?

When something relevant changes: a new role, a move to another team or a long development plan. Repeating it without a reason adds no information and tires people out.

Personality assessment and behavioural assessment at work

By Deibson Silva · Reviewed on 23 October 2026

A personality assessment at work is a questionnaire that describes how a person works, how they make decisions and what motivates them, for use in hiring, development or team building. It works when the person knows what it is for, receives their own report and the final decision is made by someone with more information than the questionnaire.

What does a personality and behavioural assessment measure?

It measures preferences and styles: how a person organises themselves, relates to others, makes decisions, what drives them at work and what wears them down. It does not measure what someone knows or whether they are able to do a job, and it does not assess their health.

Four kinds of assessment are often mixed up at work, and they are worth separating because each answers a different question.

Assessment	What it measures	Good use	Poor use
Personality and behaviour	Preferences, working style, motivators	Interviews, development, teams	Rejecting candidates on the profile alone
Competencies	Observable behaviour in the role	Competency-based interviews, performance	Measuring them with a preferences questionnaire
Aptitudes	Ability for a specific task	Roles with a clear technical demand	Using them as a general measure of worth
Knowledge	What the person knows	Technical tests for the role	Confusing it with potential

What is it used for at work?

It is used to have a better-informed conversation. In hiring, the report helps prepare the interview: what to ask, what to test, which kind of role suits the candidate's way of working. In development, it helps the person understand their own style and helps their manager know how to support them.

It also gives a view of a team as a whole. A group where everyone decides the same way tends to miss the same risks; a team map makes that visible and helps share out work or find the profile that is missing for the next vacancy.

What an assessment does not do is replace the interview, references or observation of the work. It is one more source, and its value depends on how it is combined with the others.

What does ISO 10667 say about assessing people?

ISO 10667, in its two 2020 parts, sets requirements for assessing individuals, groups or organisations for work-related purposes. Part 1 is aimed at the client that commissions the assessment and Part 2 at the service provider that delivers it.

For the client, the standard covers the need and rationale for using an assessment, the conditions under which it will be used, the approach and methods, the competence of the people involved, and decisions about access to, use and storage of results. For the provider, it covers the choice of methods, the interpretation of results and reports, and the careful handling of participants' personal data.

It makes a good checklist even if you are not seeking certification: it forces you to write down why you are assessing before you assess.

What does the law require?

The law allows these assessments under conditions. In Spain, the data protection authority's guidance on employment, updated in December 2025, states that aptitude tests, personality tests and psychological tests in hiring require the candidate's consent, and that the proportionality and legal basis of the processing must be analysed first. Candidates have the right to access their results and to know the selection criteria used.

If an assessment result is used to reject someone without a person being involved, Article 22 of the GDPR comes into play, protecting people from decisions based solely on automated processing. Human involvement has to be real, carried out by someone with the authority to change the decision. In the United Kingdom, the UK GDPR applies, and the ICO publishes guidance on automated decision-making and profiling.

Two rules in the EU AI Act affect assessment tools. Since 2 February 2025, using AI to infer a person's emotions in the workplace has been banned, except for medical or safety reasons; that rules out, for example, analysing a candidate's face or voice in a video interview to work out how they feel. And from 2 December 2027, under the timetable set by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, AI systems used to evaluate candidates are high-risk, with obligations for the organisations that use them.

How do you choose a good assessment?

Choose it for what it lets you do with the result, not for how attractive the report looks. These questions help you compare.

Is the model explained so that someone without technical training can follow it? Does the person assessed receive their report and get to discuss it? Does the report describe tendencies and nuances, or boil the person down to a label? Is it available in the respondent's language? Where are results stored, who sees them and for how long? Does the provider explain what its artificial intelligence does, if it uses any, and what it does not do?

A warning sign: any tool that promises to tell you whether someone is lying, how they feel or whether they will be loyal. No assessment answers that, and the law sets clear limits on trying.

How do you use it in hiring?

Use it after defining the role and before the interview, as material for preparing questions. The order matters: if the role profile is written after meeting the candidate, the report ends up justifying a decision already made.

A sensible process has five moments. First, define the role profile with the person who will manage it. Then tell the candidate which assessment they will take, why and who will see the result, and record their consent. The candidate answers. With the report, prepare interview questions that test what the profile suggests against real examples. Finally, a person decides, combining interview, references, technical tests and profile, and records why.

Always offer candidates the chance to see their result. As well as being a right, it is the best way for the assessment to be seen as fair.

Which mistakes should you avoid?

The first is copying the profile of whoever does the job best today and looking for clones. The result is usually a team that thinks alike and leaves out people who would do the work differently and just as well.

Other common mistakes: treating the profile as a performance rating; sharing the report with people who do not need it; combining dimensions into closed types that are then used as labels; repeating the assessment without saying why; and treating the profile as fixed, when it describes preferences that shift with context and over the years.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

Can a personality assessment be used to reject candidates?: It should not be the only filter. It is a source for preparing the interview, and if the decision were based solely on automated processing, Article 22 of the GDPR would give the candidate the right not to be subject to it.
Do we need the candidate's consent?: Spain's data protection authority states that personality tests in hiring require the person's consent, after analysing proportionality and the legal basis. Elsewhere, check the guidance of your own regulator.
Can candidates see their results?: Under the same Spanish guidance, candidates have the right to access the results of their own tests and to know the selection criteria, but not the results of other candidates.
Is personality the same as competencies?: No. Personality describes preferences and style; competencies are behaviours you can observe in the role. A good process uses both, each for its own purpose.
How often should an assessment be repeated?: When something relevant changes: a new role, a move to another team or a long development plan. Repeating it without a reason adds no information and tires people out.