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Auf unserer deutschen Domain bieten wir Ihnen eine detaillierte Informationsseite sowie eine deutsche Version unseres PrepPacks™ für die Assessments von PI – The Predictive Index.
What is the PI Behavioral Assessment?
The Predictive Index Behavioral Assessment is a short personality test which takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. In the Predictive Index assessment, you must create two lists of personality traits from a list of 86, one list for expected behavior and one for your actual behavior.
The number and type of personality traits you choose, as well as the comparison between the two lists, reflect how well you interact with people, process information, and deal with structure - ultimately indicating whether you are a good fit for the job.
The Predictive Index Behavioral Assessment is often administered with the popular Predictive Index Cognitive Assessment, but may also be given as a stand-alone behavioral assessment.
Here is an example of some adjectives that can appear on the list:
The answers chosen on the Predictive Index test assess the way you interact and influence people, how you deal with rules and structure, and how you prefer to take in information. Your answer allows your employer to evaluate whether there is a high match between the necessary qualities for the job and your character.
The PI behavioral assessment is untimed, and you are not evaluated on the time it takes you to answer. However, it is pretty short relative to other personality tests, and will probably take you about 10-15 minutes to complete. The purpose is to help you answer quickly and spontaneously, as it is assumed that spontaneous reactions better reflect your true behavior.
Preparing for the predictive index behavioral assessment allows you to understand which qualities are being assessed to choose items in a smart and strategic manner. For this reason, it is highly important to practice and prepare beforehand. Without the right preparation, it might be overwhelming.
Want to learn how to generate the best matching profile? Keep reading.
What to Expect When Taking the Predictive Index Behavioral Test?
On the test, you’ll be asked to choose adjectives that describe you.
The first time, you’ll see a list with 86 personality traits or adjectives. You'll be asked to choose the qualities you think other people expect you to demonstrate. This represents your perception of the way you think you are supposed to act.
The second time, you’ll see the same list, but you will be asked to mark the qualities you believe reflect your behavior. It represents your self concept, who you feel you are in almost any situation. We’ll get into it in depth later on.
The qualities are easy to understand and straightforward, but without knowing them before or prior practice, the chances of passing the test are low. In the predictive index behavioral assessment PrepPack™ you’ll get a detailed guide that will teach you how to choose the qualities that match to your role.
Expert Tip #1
Choose enough qualities, but not too many.
You should choose enough qualities so there will be sufficient data to understand your character. On the other hand, be careful not to choose too many qualities.
If you mark 80 out of 86 adjectives that describe you, it will not provide the company with any meaningful information.
Such a wide response will not be able to indicate what are your dominant and least dominant qualities are. We recommended choosing between 20-50 adjectives in each list.
In our PI behavioral assessment PrepPack™, you’ll find more important tips and easy rules to follow that will help you meet the test criterions, and succeed in it.
Want to know how to choose enough qualities?
Employers are often interested in measuring cognitive ability to complete the profile provided by personality tests such as the Predictive Index Behavioral Assessment. Therefore, there is a good chance you will also need to prepare for the Predictive Index cognitive assessment. Check out JobTestPrep's PI cognitive assessment prep pack, which includes extensive PI cognitive assessment practice resources that will help you land that job.
Which Skills Are Tested on the PI Behavioral Assessment?
On the PI Behavioral Assessment, employers are looking to assess your personality type. Your profile is analyzed by 4 Primary Characteristics:
Measures the degree to which you seek to control your environment.
If you are the type of individual who is able to control an environment by sharing ideas and opinions, and can get things done, then you have a dominance drive quality.
Measures to what extent you seek social interaction with others, as well as the degree to which you seek to control your environment.
If you are outgoing, persuasive, and socially-poised, you have this drive. You can simply put this as a people person and a team player.
Measures the degree to which you seek consistency and stability in your environment. [accordion]
Are you methodological, steady, and calm in your work environment? Are you happy with long-term tasks and prefer consistency rather than changes? If this sounds like you, you likely have the Patience Drive.
Measures the degree to which you seek to conform to formal rules and structure.
This type of trait could also be known as a perfectionism. An employee with high formality will be very attentive to details, extremely organized and highly conformant to the rules.
The big question is how to adjust your score to each of those characteristics to fit the job requirements.
For example, what is the ideal score in the extroversion for a management role? What is the appropriate score in patience for a technological position? What is considered a good score in dominance for a junior management position? Or, whether the score in formality for an administrative position should be higher than the extroversion’s score.
The PI behavioral assessment PrepPack ™ focuses on teaching you the answers to these questions.
Expert Tip #2
You should avoid selecting all the qualities that are related to the same characteristic. Rather, select a mix of qualities to demonstrate the characteristics that you wish to highlight as more dominant or less dominant in your personality.
In the PI behavioral assessment PrepPack™ you’ll get a detailed guide that classifies each one of the traits to its characteristic. You’ll also get practice and an example test, that looks like the real one, to make sure you won’t encounter any surprises.
Want to learn how to choose the right mix of qualities for your specific role?
How to Answer the PI Behavioral Assessment Successfully and Get the Job?
Each one of the adjectives you’ll choose falls into one of the Four Characteristics. If you understand this breakdown, you will be able to classify most of the adjectives.
You need to analyze the job description and discern which characteristics are the most desirable for this role and which ones are the least. It sounds a bit complex, but in the PrepPack™ you’ll get a detailed guide that will teach you how to do that.
Then, you will classify each adjective on the list and see if it matches the profile you built. That way you’ll know which adjectives to choose that suit your job. What matters the most is the group that the adjective belongs to rather than the adjective itself.
Let’s practice an example together:
How to answer the assessment for a sales position?
When applying for sales positions, you should score the highest in extraversion and dominance while scoring lower in patience and formality. To obtain the necessary sales profile in your score report you must select adjectives such as Assertive, Demanding, and Dominant while avoiding adjectives like Gentle, Nonchalant and Worrying.
It might look simple when only 6 qualities are presented. But things may get complicated when analyzing 86 qualities without practicing or thinking about them in advance. It gets even harder when you need to fill out 2 questionnaires with different instructions.
This is exactly the purpose of the PrepPack™, shedding light on the test and make it simpler - to help you pass it successfully.
Now, let's do a mental exercise and think about how to answer the test for a clerk position:
In contrast, a clerk position demands higher levels of formality and patience and lower levels of dominance and extraversion. To build the ideal profile for this role, you should mark words such as Conscientious, Loyal, and Tolerant while leaving words as Brave, Persuasive, and Daring unmarked.
So, you might ask yourself how they calculate your matching rate based on the adjectives you choose. Let’s find out!
How Is the PI Behavioral Assessment Scored?
When the Predictive Index is scored, each adjective chosen contributes a 'point' to its related characteristic.
Three profiles are generated. The first is based on your answers on the first list. It represents the way you think you are expected to behave in the workplace. The second is based on the second list and represents your self concept, or how you believe you act most of the time.
Both lists have equal importance in your score. Combining them together, by summing the points of each characteristic, creates your full profile, that predicts your actual performance at work.
Then, a hierarchy, or ranking, is created between the characteristics that determine your profile typecast.
You can see here an example of how a different hierarchy between the characteristics, creates 2 distinct personality profiles.
The left profile describes people who naturally take charge, lead, but sometimes can move too fast for others. They are very proactive and see risk as an opportunity.
The profile on the right describes a person who easily accepts other’s decisions and focuses on getting things done in a proper way.
How to Get the Best Results?
Here's the kicker: to control your PI behavioral assessment score and prove your suitability, you must recognize which characteristic each adjective belongs to, with respect to the specific job you are applying for.
Also, there are no absolute high and low scores, and for each role and employer, the "passing profile types" change, as the requirements and values of the company are different.
Your full profile gives the employer insights into whether there is a match between the perception of how you are expected to be in the environment and who you naturally are.
Our guide will teach you how to avoid a situation that the profiles are incongruent. If they aren’t aligned, it will be interpreted as you being ambivalent, which could make things tough for you.
Expert Tip #3
The ratio between the number of adjectives you choose on each list of the personality test is significant.
This is an additional metric that reflects how responsive you are in the workplace environment, and it is measured by the difference between the number of qualities you chose on the first list and the second list.
Want to find out how many adjectives you should choose on each list to get a good morale score?
Predictive Index Test FAQs
You can’t officially fail the test, but it will determine if you will progress to the next stage of recruitment.
You are then compared to other candidates, with the goal to predict which of the candidates has a good behavioral match to the role.
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