It is one of the most common questions we hear about personality assessments.
“Can’t someone just answer the questions in the way they think an employer wants them to?”
The short answer: they can try.
Personality assessments are self-report tools, which means the individual is responding to questions about themselves.
The personality test used by Peritiv by Hastings People, for example, consists of 96 self-report items and is based on the scientifically validated HEXACO personality framework.
But trying to present yourself in a particular way is not quite the same as successfully manufacturing an entirely different personality profile.
And that distinction is important.
What does a personality assessment actually measure?
The personality assessment used by Peritiv by Hastings People measures six broad dimensions:
- Honesty-Humility
- Emotionality
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Conscientiousness
- Openness to Experience
These are then explored through more specific facets, such as sincerity, fairness, social boldness, sociability, diligence, prudence, flexibility and inquisitiveness.
The purpose is not to determine whether someone has a “good” or “bad” personality. Different personality profiles may simply be better suited to different roles, teams and working environments.
That matters when we talk about “faking” an assessment, because there often is not an obvious ideal answer to aim for.
Can candidates work out the “right” answers?
Someone completing an assessment may naturally try to present themselves positively. That is not unique to personality testing.
We do the same thing in interviews.
Ask someone whether they are a good leader, reliable under pressure or effective at communicating with their team and they are unlikely to deliberately present themselves in the worst possible light.
The difference with a structured personality assessment is that an individual is responding across a much broader set of items designed to build a profile across multiple dimensions and facets.
Importantly, the specific relationship between individual assessment items and the traits being measured is not something candidates are given.
There is a good reason for that.
Specific item-key mappings are protected to help maintain the psychometric integrity of the assessment and reduce the ability for future participants to deliberately “game” their results.
In other words, knowing that the assessment measures something such as conscientiousness does not necessarily mean knowing exactly which response will produce a particular overall profile.
There is another problem with trying to “fake” a good result
What exactly is a good personality profile?
There is not one.
Consider someone who scores very highly on conscientiousness. That might indicate someone who is organised, diligent, careful and highly responsible.
Those characteristics could be extremely valuable.
But taken to an extreme or considered alongside other traits, they could also mean someone prefers significant structure, sets exceptionally high standards or is less comfortable when processes are ambiguous.
Likewise, a highly extraverted person is not automatically a better leader than someone who is more introverted.
A lower Honesty-Humility score does not automatically make someone unsuitable for a role either. It may be associated with a stronger orientation towards status, rewards and personal advancement; characteristics that could manifest differently depending on the person's conscientiousness, role, environment and behaviour.
Context matters. That is why we do not recommend looking at any personality score in isolation.
A personality assessment is not a lie detector
This is perhaps the most important distinction.
A personality assessment should not be used to determine whether someone is telling the truth.
Nor should an employer look at a particular score and conclude that it provides an absolute judgement of someone's character.
The results are normative. They indicate how someone's responses compare with a reference population and provide insight into behavioural tendencies.
They are not a definitive statement about how someone will behave in every situation.
Instead, the value comes from giving employers another structured source of information to explore alongside interviews, experience, references and other relevant assessment methods.
What happens when a result does not seem to match the person?
This is where the assessment becomes particularly useful.
Rather than asking: “Is this score right or wrong?”
A better question can be: “What should we explore further?”
Each personality report includes an interview guide with questions linked to the individual's results.
For example, the sample report does not simply provide a score for each facet. It provides a description of what that result may indicate and then suggests questions that can be used to investigate the behaviour further.
That turns the assessment from a scorecard into a conversation.
Ask for examples. Look at previous behaviour. Consider the context. Compare what you are hearing in the interview with references and other evidence available to you.
So, can someone fake a personality assessment?
Someone can certainly try to manage the impression they create.
But personality assessments are most valuable precisely because the objective is not to uncover a perfect personality profile.
The purpose is to introduce another source of structured evidence into the recruitment or development process.
A personality assessment should help you ask:
“What do we understand about this person now that we did not understand before and what should we explore next?”
That might highlight how someone approaches pressure, relationships, change, responsibility, ambition, decision-making or leadership. It might reinforce what you already observed in an interview. Or it might reveal an area worth investigating further.