When applying for a job, you don’t prepare for a personality or behavioral assessment like what you would do with your run-of-the-mill pre-employment test.

PI behavioral assessments are curated to give employers a closer look at what kind of person you are as an employee and if your work ethic and behavior at work are compatible with the position you are applying for as well as the organization at large.

Although there are various personality tests out there in the market, with some being specifically designed for a very particular industry or even corporation, most companies and hiring managers prefer to use the PI Behavioral Assessment Test due to its unconventional but reliable way of filtering applicants.

If you found a job listing where it is specified that you will have to pass a PI behavioral assessment, it would be a good idea to do some research or even call up the HR department of the company to clarify its PI behavioral assessment or the cognitive assessment.

In the case of the latter, you shouldn’t be too worried since you only need to look up and study hard on the subjects included in the cognitive test.

However, if it is the PI Behavioral Assessment Test that you will have to take, then you may have to put in the extra so that you will be able to overcome it and present yourself as the ideal candidate to be picked by the hiring manager.

That being said, let’s take a look at how it works and what it’s meant to measure.

The Test Format

If you’ve taken a survey or personality test before, the PI behavioral assessment follows a similar format to some extent.

However, instead of providing you with a series of statements where you will have to state your agreement or disagreement, the PI behavioral exam presents you with two lists containing a set of adjectives.

In the first list, you will need to select the adjectives which you think best describe you as a person.

The second list, on the other hand, requires you to select the adjectives that you think other people expect you to act in a professional setting.

Depending on your choices, you can either present yourself as someone that can perform the duties and responsibilities of the job well, all the while being able to act accordingly in the workplace as expected of your job position.

In essence, the PI behavioral test aims to figure out two things: that you have the right personality and that you can adapt or adjust your behavior to suit the needs of the position that you are applying for.

This means that if you want to land a job in sales, you need to show that you are good at persuading or pitching things to potential customers; if the job is in customer service, you need to show that you have good interpersonal skills and can handle aggressive people without insulting them in return.

How will it do this? Well, each adjective in the PI behavioral assessment is linked to a particular personality trait which contains two opposing sub traits that are placed on the opposite ends of a scale.

Depending on your responses, you can land on either side of the scale, highlighting an aspect of your personality until your prospective employer gains a good map of it as a whole.

Knowing this, let’s examine the four main traits of the PI behavioral exam in detail.

The Four Key Factors Of The PI Behavioral Assessment

Dominance – this personality trait aims to measure your drive to influence people or events. Depending on the adjectives that you picked, you can either present yourself as someone that’s good in a leadership role or someone who excels at a support role or following orders.

Extraversion – this personality trait aims to measure your drive to interact with others including customers and your coworkers. Scoring high on this trait will show that you are better in a job where a lot of collaboration is needed while scoring low will show that you are suited best in a job where you have to act alone or independently.

Patience – this personality trait aims to measure how well you adapt to a workplace environment. Depending on your responses, you can present yourself as someone who has a dynamic approach to things and can work well in an ever-changing environment. On the other hand, you can also present yourself as someone who works more efficiently in a job position where there is consistency or little-to-no change or variety in tasks or circumstances.

Formality – this personality trait aims to figure out how good you are at conforming to the rules. This means that you are either someone who is rule-bound or someone that is willing to bend a few of them in order to get results.

Apart from these four personality traits, there is another trait measured in the PI behavioral assessment, and that is objectivity.

The objectivity key factor aims to figure out if you are someone that can treat people or events in a consistent manner no matter what the circumstances are or if you are someone that approaches them in their own unique way.

Considering all of this, we now know this Pi behavioral assessment aims to map personality traits that are relevant, if not crucial, to a particular job.

In order for you to overcome this test, you will need to research how the company expects you to act as one of their own as well as how well you can perform as someone working in that very job position even if you haven’t gotten any experience yet.