4 personality types when recruiting

4 Personality Types To Look For When Recruiting Your Team

The people you will surround yourself with will either make or break your company. You might have the privilege of picking your partners and employees and you might have to inherit others.

When hiring people or picking partners, most focus on the other person’s technical abilities and track record. When it comes to personality, most of us go only as far as evaluating how likeable the person is or how well we think we will get along with him/her. There is a better way to pick the right personality.

Let’s start by defining personality. The American Psychological Association defines personality as the individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. There is a branch of psychology dedicated to personality and plenty of attempts that apply theories to the workplace to help companies be more effective. In general, most of these theories will present four personality types at work using different labels:

1- Thinkers:

They are intellectuals that value exploring new concepts, breaking the status quo, and charting new directions or better ways to do things. They value knowledge, enjoy discussing and debating ideas, analyse things thoroughly before taking action, and want things to be done well. They take their time before taking action and are annoyed when rushed.

2- Doers:

They are action oriented, energetic, and playful. They hit the ground running, take
risks, are competitive, have a heavy bias towards action, and like solving problems to achieve results. They are disorganized, get bored easily, and have low tolerance for long discussions and theory.

3- Organizers:

They are the neat freaks who are very organized and strict about following the rules. They are dependable, loyal, stable, consistent, hard working, and punctual. They don’t like change and prefer to stick to the rules.

4- Feelers:

This is the “people person” type. They are emotional, expressive, sensitive, sincere, and entertaining. They care about other people’s feelings, add the “human touch” to the workplace, mediate in conflict, and are great at building a team spirit. They can walk into a room full of strangers and walk out as everyone’s friend. They take things personally and find it difficult to discipline people around them without hurting their feelings.

What you should know about and do with personality types:

1- A person will have different degrees of each personality type. Some will be dominated by a particular type while others will have a balance between two or more.

- Identify which personality type(s) you are. Rank yourself on the four types by splitting 100 points on the four types (e.g. You might be 40 Thinker, 30 Organizer, 20 Doer, and 10 Feeler).

2- There is no “good” or “bad” type of personality. Each personality has unique attributes that make them special and capable in certain circumstances.

3- Figure out your strengths and match your work to leverage them. Identify the attributes you need and pick people that have those strengths (e.g. Hire an Organizer if your processes need to be organized). Make sure you give everyone an equal chance to leverage his/her strength rather than fit them to your style.

For example, my dominant personality type is equally Thinker & Organizer while my wife is mainly a Feeler & Doer. We have a constant struggle where she wants to get things done while I want to make sure we are doing the right thing and exploring a better way to do it. She instils a sense of urgency that keeps me from taking too long while I keep us from jumping into something we will have to redo later.

4- Each type has a unique communication style. For example, a Feeler will take criticism personally, but will get excited from a simple praise. A Doer will get annoyed at extended talking and will want to get straight to the point. a great example of how you can be more persuasive based on your choice of wording is  What’s more persuasive? “I think…” or “I feel…”?.

5- Understand the person’s dominant type and cater how you communicate to match his/her personality style. If you are dealing with a Feeler, be sensitive to his/her feelings and spend some time conversing before getting into business. Get straight to the point with a Doer.

What is your experience with working with different personality types? What will you be looking for when hiring someone or picking a partner?