Can A Personality Test Help You Weather A Recession?

As of November 2024, unemployment is at or near record lows. Wages have increased to match or even exceed inflation. This shifts the "power position" of the labor market to be in favor of workers.

What happens when economic factors like a recession changes that dynamic and unemployment goes up?

What can businesses and individual job seekers do to survive periods of economic uncertainty or even downturns in the labor market?

The solution might surprise you.

Business Survival

During a recession, businesses and job seekers have surprisingly similar goals.

Businesses and job seekers still need to find each other. Matches between open positions and qualified candidates must be made.

What remains regardless of economic conditions is the need for accurate hiring. This becomes even more important during a recession.

How does a business hire accurately, and why does it matter?

When the job market is tight and unemployment goes up such as during a recession, businesses still hire — people quit or retire, markets shift and new opportunities open up — they are just a bit pickier about who they bring on board. And they have a lot more candidates to sift through.

Even if there are a lots of candidates to choose from, turnover remains very expensive. That's a lot of wasted money you don't want to spend when times are tight.

Jobseeker Survival

Why would a job seeker trying to keep the lights on care about accurate hiring?

Anyone who has worked at a job where they weren't a good fit for the role knows that there are no winners. Turnover is expensive for the business and the worker loses crucial income to pay the rent.

When unemployment is high, job seekers quickly learn that competition against other candidates is even tougher. Even if they land the job, they are miserable and struggle to meet even basic expectations (see above about performance and risk of being laid off).

Accurate hiring means everyone wins

When an accurate hire occurs, the business owner wins.

The employer finds the right person for the role, someone who will outperform their peers by 200% or more while exhibiting 50% or lower turnover.

When an accurate hire occurs, the job seeker wins.

The worker finds a position that doesn't just pay the bills, they feel motivated and engaged, ready to show up and exceed expectations — not just their employer's but their own as well.

The Recession Survival Secret Weapon

How does accurate hiring take place?

This is where the Core Values Index™ — the world's most accurate and reliable psychometric assessment — comes in.

The value of the Core Values Index to help you survive a recession comes down to a single issue: employment.

Business owners need to ensure every employee on their team is as effective as possible for the needs of their role. This means every member of their staff should take the CVI and placed in a role where their profile is highly aligned to its needs.

Your company won't survive if your workers are disengaged or struggling to perform in a position that is counter to how they are hardwired.

As an individual worker, this psychometric fit benefits you as well. If you find yourself in a position where you are not psychometrically aligned to the needs of that role, every success you achieve in that position will be a persistent struggle. You will fail to compete successfully against other workers who have a high psychometric fit, and when jobs are scarce, that competition gets real serious.

How the Core Values Index Helps Businesses in a Recession

During a recession, the job market can undergo a radical shift in the hiring dynamic.

When unemployment worsens, jobs become scarce and the competition for those jobs increases. This means employers are even pickier about who they hire. They also have a flood of candidates and finding a way to wade through it all to find "the one" becomes a challenge.

Using the Core Values Index, coupled with an efficient Applicant Tracking System (ATS) like that found at eRep, makes that process manageable.

Accuracy matters more than ever and smart employers use a Top Performer Profile™ to clearly define the ideal psychometric profile of the role. Applicant CVI scores are compared against the role's TPP score and the employer can quickly zero in on candidates that have the greatest chance of success.

How the Core Values Index Helps Workers in a Recession

When unemployment is high, workers can shift their focus away from "the right job" to place more priority on "any job."

Despite this shift in priority, the value of understanding how the worker is hardwired is even more valuable.

Taking the Core Values Index is profoundly useful for job seekers. Your CVI results explain how you are emotionally hardwired in a way that is not just informative but practical.

The CVI will explain the type of activities where you are most likely to succeed and where you will struggle.

Do you want to waste time pursuing a job for which you are not hardwired to succeed?

→ Learning what career path is right for your Core Values Index psychometric profile may be the most valuable thing you do. Every individual CVI comes with a Personalized Career Guide custom tailored to your profile.

Discover if you are a natural problem-solver or someone who builds connections and community. Perhaps you like to boldly and confidently push forward through adversity and get things done, or maybe you excel at gathering data and information.

Are you a well-rounded blend of all four core value energies?

Core value energies are the descriptors used by the CVI to describe specific personality traits. Unlike other personality assessments, the CVI doesn't label you as being one type or another. Instead, the CVI describes the particular ratio of core value energies that exist within your personality's DNA — there are millions of combinations. What are your core value energy scores?

Employment Accuracy and Efficiency

The bottom line of how the CVI can help you survive a recession comes down to employment accuracy and efficiency.

If you are a business owner, you want to make sure that the people on your team are accurately and efficiently placed in the roles where they have the highest performance and engagement. You also want to save time wading through large numbers of candidates.

If you are an individual, you want to learn how are you are hardwired so that you are pursuing the vocation where you have the highest likelihood of personal and long-lasting success.

No matter what the economic future holds, the CVI can help everyone weather it successfully.

Core Values Index™ and CVI™ are trademarks of Taylor Protocols, Inc.