Employee Personality Profile (EPP)
Updated
by
Amy Thomas
At a glance
Type of assessment | Personality |
Measures | 12 personality traits that are predictive of a person’s work style. |
Time | The EPP is untimed and takes around 10 minutes to complete. |
Format | Candidates complete 140 questions. |
Workplace outcomes | Better performance, increased job satisfaction and engagement, improved communication and teamwork, increased organisational commitment, reduced turnover. |
Recommended for | As a general measure of personality, the EPP is appropriate for all occupations, industries and seniorities. |
Description
The Employee Personality Profile (EPP) is a general personality inventory that measures twelve personality traits that provide valuable insights into a person's work styles and how they are likely to interact with co-workers, management and customers.
It measures twelve personality traits: Achievement, Assertiveness, Competitiveness, Conscientiousness, Cooperativeness, Extroversion, Managerial, Motivation, Openness, Patience, Self-Confidence and Stress Tolerance.
While aptitude tests assess whether candidates can do the job, a personality assessment addresses the question of whether a candidate will do the job. In other words, they assess job fit from a behavioural perspective. Does the candidate have behavioural traits that are statistically linked to success in this job? Are they likely to be happy or comfortable in the role?
It can be used for any position and contains job-specific benchmarks that allow employers to compare an individual's scores against composite profiles to determine likely job fit.
Format
The EPP consists of 140 questions and is an untimed assessment that takes around 10 minutes to complete. Candidates respond by indicating how accurate they believe each of 140 statements are in describing them on a typical day when they are performing well.
There are no correct or incorrect answers on the EPP. All of the candidate’s responses come together to create a unique personality profile for that individual. Similarly, there are no “good” or “bad” traits - some traits and profiles are simply more associated with success for particular roles.
Measures
The EPP measures twelve traits that provide valuable insight into a person’s behavioural style at work including how they are likely to relate to co-workers, managers, and customers.
- Achievement - Reflects an individual’s ability to follow through and complete tasks and to achieve specific goals. It is also related to the amount of interest that a person has in intellectual or conceptual work.
- Assertiveness - Provides a gauge of an individual’s directness in expressing himself or herself and in dealing with others.
- Competitiveness - Reflects the need to win, to perform better than others, or to surpass standards of achievement or performance.
- Conscientiousness - An indicator of a person’s tendencies with respect to being deliberate, self-disciplined, organised and dependable.
- Cooperativeness - Indicates a person’s level of comfort in working closely with others and in taking the lead from others.
- Extroversion - Indicates the degree to which a person sees himself or herself as socially outgoing.
- Managerial - Represents the degree to which a person’s work strengths combine with his or her achievement, motivation, interpersonal strengths, and inner resources in a pattern similar to that of individuals in managerial and supervisory roles.
- Motivation - Intended to represent a person’s inner drive, commitment to achieve, and the strength of inner emotions, needs, and values.
- Openness - Measures the extent to which an individual is imaginative and creative, as opposed to down to earth and conventional.
- Patience - Indicates a person’s ability to effectively cope with frustration encountered in completing tasks or in conflict-laden situations.
- Self-Confidence - An indicator of the level of confidence and self assurance an individual brings to his or her work.
- Stress Tolerance - Measures the ways in which people respond to stress.
What job families are available?
The EPP includes a set of job families: trait profiles that are associated with success in specific jobs and occupations. These profiles are based on large samples of prior scores from individuals applying for or occupying similar roles and are supported by multiple validation studies.
The following job families are available for the EPP:
- Accounting and Finance
- Administrative and Clerical
- Analysis, Planning and Consulting
- Tellers and Clerical Finance
- Account Collection and Receivables
- Client and Customer Service
- Front Desk and Reception
- Management and Leadership
- Healthcare Practice and Support
- Production and Manufacturing
- Software Engineering and Development
- Sales and Business Development
For more information on job families, see our Guide to Jobs and Traits.
Score Reports
The EPP score report displays an individual's percentile ranking for each of the twelve traits, as well as a description of what the score in each trait means. There are no right or wrong answers on personality tests; however, individuals with certain personality characteristics may be better suited for some jobs than others. For example, extroverted individuals typically are more comfortable in, and perform better at sales jobs than do introverts. Conversely, introverts may be a better fit for accounting positions.
The EPP score report also contains a series of job-specific benchmarks that assess how good a fit a person's personality is for a given position. The benchmarks for each job family calculate a person's job match score by comparing their EPP trait scores to composite profiles created and validated by Criteria Corp. These profiles are based on large samples of people in the respective positions and on validity studies conducted by Criteria.
Candidate Experience
The EPP is device-agnostic. This means candidates can take the test on any digital device they choose – a mobile phone, tablet, laptop or desktop – in any location and at any time.
After candidates complete testing, a Workplace Insights Report is available which provides immediate feedback to candidates (if you choose to send it to them).
The Workplace Insights Report provides insights on:
- Notable traits
- Work, communication and interaction style
- Temperament, attitudes and outlook
- Strengths and challenges
- Workplace stressors and motivators.
Validity Information
Construct Validity: The EPP trait scores have been compared with a number of external measures of similar individual characteristics, including the Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF). These comparisons provide very strong support for the construct validity of the EPP scales.
Predictive Validity: The individual traits measured by the EPP have been to shown to be predictive of success for a wide variety of positions in many different industries. The best way to ensure the predictive validity of EPP traits for specific positions is to do a local validity study that demonstrates a correlation between individual trait score(s) and job performance metrics for a given position.
Reliability: The estimated test-retest reliabilities for EPP scale scores range from .67 to .90 and are well within acceptable psychometric limits.
Standardisation Sample
Norms for the EPP were developed using a sample of 1375 individuals aged 15 and older, of which 48% were male and 52% were female. These individuals were being assessed for job selection, placement, promotion or career appraisal. About 30% were students and the balance were adults ranging in age from their early 20s to mid-60s. Their current work situations included executive positions in technical and service-oriented areas, managerial positions, and sales positions. About 10% of the sample were Black and 2% were Hispanic. In establishing standardised scores for the final version of the EPP, normalised T-scores were first developed on the large, stable standardisation sample for EPP scores. The normative information obtained from the standardisation group was extended to a separate reference sample of 745 managers, people in sales-related occupations, and middle- and upper-level professionals.
