Learn How to Beat the PI Behavioral Assessment

The presence of pre-employment tests in the hiring process is nothing new. 

In fact, such things have been increasingly prevalent over the last five years in order to improve a company’s chances of hiring not only a capable employee but also someone that is dependable and can be regarded as a good representative of their organization.

To fulfill this, most companies choose to administer the Predictive Index (PI) Behavioral Assessment because of its reliability to provide them with a clear and accurate reference profile of its would-be employees, all the while being difficult or impossible to cheat on.

This is why many jobseekers have recently made it a point to take PI Behavioral Assessment practice tests, guides, or even coaching so that they can improve their chances of being hired.

So if you’re a job hunter and researched or discovered through word of mouth that the company you want to join has the PI Behavioral Assessment as part of the hiring process, you should put your best foot forward and do your best to present yourself as the ideal person to be selected for the available job position.

1. Understand the Test Format

One of the major reasons why applicants fail the PI personality test is because they didn’t know what to expect or they were unfamiliar with the test format and answered blindly. 

To put it simply, the exam works by presenting you with two lists containing a set of adjectives that seem random or even completely unrelated to personality testing..

In reality, each of these lists has a condition that you have to fulfill, and they are designed to help companies figure out which of the applicants is the right person for the job and the organization through special means.

On what the PI calls the ‘Self’ list, you will need to select the adjectives that you believe applies to you. On the other hand, the ‘Self-Concept’ list requires you to select the adjectives you think other people expect you to act or applicable to you.

While you can just select the adjectives that have a positive connotation to them in the PI Behavioral Assessment, this may damage your chances of being hired because some of these adjectives are not related or compatible with the job that you want.

This is because each of them is linked to one of five main personality key factors, which also have two sub factors that are the polar opposites of each other.

These key factors are: 

• Dominance
• Extraversion
• Patience
• Formality
• Objectivity

Depending on your choices, you can have ‘high’ or ‘low’ dominance. 

Having high dominance means you like to take charge and are independent but on the other hand can mean that you don’t like taking orders from others and thus can be difficult to deal with.

Having low dominance on the other hand means you work best in a collaborative environment but can be considered by the company to be unable to make decisions for themselves or that their performance tanks if needing to work alone.

This will be the same for the other key factors, and each company has a preferred level for each trait in its ideal personality profile for the job. 

Although this may seem like senseless guess work, there are actually a number of things that you can do in order to land that ideal profile in the PI Behavioral Assessment.

2. Know the Duties of the Job Well and Find Links Between Them and the Adjectives

In order to ‘ace’ the Self-Concept list of the exam, you must present yourself as someone that has the mindset, behavior, or work ethic of someone already in that position. 

So, if you’re aiming for a job as an IT consultant or specialist, then you must select the adjectives that embody the personality traits of such an employee. 

Depending on the company and the position, you either have to be good with a team or is someone that can work independently.

Due to the nature of their work, IT consultants will have to show a good amount of sociability and reservation, meaning that they have to interact well with their superiors and customers well but not be too ‘vocal’ as their job needs to focus on their task.

They also need to have a good amount of patience because they may be given inaccurate or incomplete information at times, or because the problem that they have to solve is so complex that it would take an entire day or so.

They also need to be precise and rule-bound as cutting corners anywhere can damage the system, their tools, or are against company regulations or protocol.

On the subject of the objectivity key factor, this will depend on the company. Some will want their specialists and consultants to be objective while others want them to be subjective. 

Knowing this, you will have to select the adjectives that refer to these traits so that your reference profile at the PI Behavioral Assessment will produce the result that has these levels of traits.

3. The Ideal Self Results of the Assessment are Tied to the Core Values of the Company

Now that we know which adjectives to select, we just need to do the same for the Self list of the PI Behavioral Exam.

In this case, however, instead of looking up the duties and responsibilities of the job, you will need to look at the core values, such as the mission and vision of the company.

This is because most organizations have a reputation to preserve, and they want employees to act a certain way so that the image of the company in the public eye is untarnished.

In a nutshell, you are basically trying to prove that you are someone that can adjust or integrate well to the company culture.

That’s correct, apart from wanting to make sure that the person they want to hire has the skills needed to perform their job, employers now require applicants to have the right personality, behavior, or mindset for it or can at least learn to adjust their attitudes so that they can be seen as a good extension of the company.

4. Look up Online Resources or Guides

Apart from the tips that we have provided, it may be a good idea to look around and make good use of in-depth guides on the PI Behavioral Assessment.

These guides usually contain sample ideal reference profiles as well as curated practice tests that can help you familiarize yourself with how the exam works in detail.

Some of these resources also contain sample reference profiles that are predominantly used, allowing you to figure out just what kind of profile or result you will have to provide so that your chances of being hired increases dramatically.

Remember, it is very likely that there are dozens of other applicants that are also trying to land the job that you are aiming for, and more often than not, a number of these applicants will take advantage of a PI coaching service or study guide.