Assessment Tips

What is a Big Five test?

The Big Five Personality Test, also known as the Five-Factor Model, is one of the most widely used and scientifically supported ways to understand personality. Rather than placing people into fixed personality types, it looks at five key personality traits that influence how we think, communicate, make decisions, and interact with others. Together, these five dimensions provide a well-rounded picture of an individual's natural preferences, strengths, and behavioral tendencies. These traits are commonly known by the acronym OCEAN.

The Bridge Personality: a Big Five test for recruitment

The Big Five personality model is one of the most popular ways to describe a person's personality. Many scientific studies have been done to confirm that the Big Five model is reliable and valid. Because it is so reliable, HR professionals use the Big Five test to better understand a person's personality. It is commonly used in hiring and employee development.

This personality model was not simply made up by one person. Rather, the Big Five personality test rests on a solid foundation that brings together the work of Jung, Meyers-Briggs, and other researchers. A traditional Big Five test is a personality test that describes people on five dimensions, namely extroversion, friendliness, emotional stability, orderliness, and openness. The Big Five test that TestGroup used is called The Bridge Personality test. The beauty of this test is that the report offers a little more depth than a traditional personality test. As a result, you will learn a lot more with just one questionnaire.

How to order a Big Five personality test

At TestGroup, you can easily order a Big Five personality test to gain valuable insights into candidates' or employees' personality traits. You have the flexibility to choose between a single test for individual candidates, perfect for occasional assessments, or a cost-effective subscription for multiple tests.

Making choices isn’t easy. To decide if an employee deserves a promotion, you can gather a lot of information from their personnel file. However, this only shows how well they performed in their current job. It doesn’t guarantee that they will succeed in a different role. If you consider hiring someone from outside the company, you have even less information to make your choice.

TestGroup provides the essential information you need. We collaborate closely with several Dutch and international universities to ensure the validity and reliability of our personality tests. This partnership not only ensures high-quality online tests but also results in published scientific articles. As a result, we have established ourselves as a recognized expert in online personality testing.

Prominent organizations like BP, Air France/KLM, and Mercedes Benz trust TestGroup and depend on our reports for their HR decisions. The fact that they, along with over 5000 recruiters, HR professionals, and coaches, evaluate more than 250,000 employees and candidates annually, demonstrates that our Big Five Test is not just a test; it is a crucial tool that every HR professional should include in their repertoire.

Although the Big 5 test provides a lot of insight into your own personality, the TestGroup personality test is only available for companies, organizations, and governments that want to use a personality test for recruitment and selection purposes, or for development interviews. The Big Five test is designed with practicality in mind. More than degrees, the report indicates how successful a candidate will be in a new role. You will not merely get abstract descriptions, but a real prediction of behavior.

You may think that a good personality test is only possible when you have a candidate examined by psychologists for an entire day (or longer). At the turn of the century, not so long ago, that was indeed the case. Nowadays, the Big Five test can be effectively administered online.

The test, developed in collaboration with reputable scientists, is available in more than 20 languages and can be performed anywhere in the world. Of course, it's also possible to opt for a 4 color personality test, a 16 personality test or a competency test.

TestGroup's online Big Five test has another major advantage. The well-thought-out questionnaire not only measures how the personality of the participant is built, but also checks for internal consistency. Sometimes, a candidate has a tendency to want to give the “correct” answer.

TestGroup's personality test uses Normative-Ipsative split technology, which refers to a smart technology to prevent cheating. The test presents candidates with statements that require an answer on a scale of 1 to 9 (normative statements) as well as questions in which terms are ranked (ipsative statements). Built-in algorithms analyze the answers and immediately recognize when your candidate tries to give socially desirable answers or tries to influence the test result to their own advantage.

The questions in the test are then adjusted so that the results are still reliable and valid. In the test report, it becomes clear which parts the candidate had doubts about or wanted to answer in socially desirable manner.

The Big Five test provides a wealth of information, but you may not necessarily need all those details. For example, when you try to select a sales employee, you mainly want to know whether the candidate is good at sales. If you are trying to set up a personal development plan (PDP) for an existing employee, you want to know completely different things.

That is why we offer various reports. The Big Five Report is a complete, but concise, source of information. An example of the concise Big Five test report can be viewed here. Do you want more details? Extend the reporting with Jung's 16 personality types.

You can also choose one of the reports that have been developed for a specific purpose, such as the online Sales Assessment or the Team Report. Do you have a very specific research question? Then a custom test can be made, with a report that perfectly matches your information needs.

Our consultants are always ready to support you by telephone in reading and interpreting the report.

To summarize, the online Big Five personality test is a reliable and valid test, which can be readily administered independently of time and place. It is an affordable personality test built to really work for you!