Does your candidate tend to be adaptable and innovative, or more focused and reliable, or maybe both? Often this judgment is not easy to make but has a great influence on the future success of the candidate. This is because different jobs require different work styles! Our pre-defined work style question helps you to include the opinion of others who have already worked with the candidate. This allows you to verify and underline your assumptions about the candidate's working style.
So, what do we mean by work style? Generally speaking, work styles are personal characteristics that affect how well someone performs a job. They are typically thought of as descriptions of people in terms of relatively stable patterns of behavior, thoughts, and emotion.
To find out what others think about the candidate's work style, we ask them to select certain descriptions that best describe the candidate from a list of adjectives. We base this type of question on the basic idea from personality research that every important description of a person is represented in language and can thus be found in any dictionary. The particular list of adjectives is based upon solid scientific research. The rule to interpret the results is intuitive! The more the reference givers select an adjective, the more you can be sure that the candidate is perceived to have that particular work style.
The reference giver can choose between 10 adjectives that describe scientifically relevant and easy to understand work styles.
Struggling to apply this information? Shoot us a message: [email protected]
If you want to learn more about why we specifically chose these work styles and not any others, this is what you are searching for:
DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C., & Peterson, J. B. (2007). Between facets and domains: 10 aspects of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(5), 880–896. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.880
If you want to learn more about the applied science on work styles and work-related personality we recommend you this reference as a starting point.
Ones, D. S., Dilchert, S., Viswesvaran, C., & Judge, T. A. (2007). In Support of Personality Assessment in Organizational Settings. Personnel Psychology, 60(4), 995–1027. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2007.00099.x