I’ve done my fair share of personality tests in my days, like most of us in a time where testing is a key component to most hiring processes.

(And before I attract all the “death to testing” advocates, I do believe testing has a place in hiring processes.)

In every single personality test I do, I score low on Conscientiousness. I’m unstructured to my very core — to the degree where I have a hard time creating a structure or routine to take my Vitamin D during Sweden’s dark months (winter depression, here I come).

But does that translate to my work?

If you instead look at how I work, I tend to be excessively structured. Not in every part of my job, but where it counts my peers see me as excessively structured.

Why is this?

I’m incredibly aware of my shortcomings when it comes to structure. So when I have tasks that are truly critical, I take every step necessary to ensure I have the right structure (Notion to the rescue).

Now, does this show up in the Five-Factor Personality test (or any other test)?

The simple answer; no.

This brings us back to observed personality — and why it’s a superior method for predicting someone’s job performance.

What Research Tells Us About Observed Personality

Research backs this up. A meta-analysis by Oh, Wang, and Mount (2011) reviewed 16 studies on observed personality based on the Five-Factor Model of Personality and its connection to job performance. These studies analyzed personality ratings given by current or previous managers, colleagues, and even customers.

The findings are clear:

1. Observed personality is better at predicting job performance than self-reported personality.
2. All five traits in the Five-Factor Model (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) can predict performance when observed by others.
3. The number of observers matters — the more perspectives, the better the prediction.

So, while personality tests can give us some insight into how a person sees themselves, it’s what others observe in real-world contexts that paints a clearer, more actionable picture.

The Problem with Measuring Observed Personality in Hiring

The problem here is that it’s hard to measure during the hiring process.

Digital structured references are the best method, but even then, they have their limitations. Structured references are often a one-time data input, leaving room for biases like recency bias — for example, if a candidate is on their way out of a role, they might not have been putting in 100% effort recently.

This is why when it comes to ongoing performance reviews, observed personality and behaviours is the way to go.

The Five-Factor Model and Observed Personality

This is particularly interesting when we look at the Five-Factor Model and how it relates to job performance.

When it comes to self-reported personality, research shows that only a few dimensions of the Five-Factor Model have significant connections to job performance. Conscientiousness is the most consistent predictor, with other traits like emotional stability or extraversion occasionally playing a role depending on the study or job context.

But here’s where observed personality stands out. According to the meta-analysis by Oh, Wang, and Mount (2011), all five dimensions of the Five-Factor Model have meaningful connections to job performance when observed by others.

What does this tell us? Observers don’t just focus on what someone claims about themselves — they focus on what they see in action, across all aspects of behavior. And because of that, the predictive power of observed personality extends beyond just one or two traits, creating a more complete picture of performance.

The number of observers matters — and it matters a lot.

When it comes to observed personality, one perspective isn’t enough. The accuracy of predicting job performance improves dramatically as the number of observers increases. This makes sense: we all bring our own biases and limitations when assessing others, but by combining perspectives, we get closer to an objective truth.

For example, let’s look at conscientiousness. If you rely on a self-assessment, the correlation with job performance is only 0.22. Add one observer, and it jumps to 0.32. Two observers? 0.38. With three observers, it climbs to 0.41.

The same trend holds across all dimensions of the Five-Factor Model — emotional stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness — they all become more predictive with more observers.

Why? Individual ratings can only capture so much. By combining feedback from multiple people who’ve worked closely with you, the average of those perspectives smooths out individual biases and gets closer to reality.

This also highlights the limits of self-assessments, which can be clouded by self-presentation bias (how we want to be seen) or blind spots (what we can’t see in ourselves). Observed personality, especially when aggregated across multiple perspectives, provides a richer and more reliable prediction of performance.

The Future of Performance Reviews

Now, just imagine if we focused only on relevant observers — the people who’ve worked with you on key projects in the past month.

By narrowing the focus to recent, meaningful interactions, we could make the process even more accurate and actionable:

• Feedback would reflect real, job-critical behaviors, and skills.
• Observations would be recent, reducing the influence of outdated impressions.
• The insights would be context-specific, capturing how you actually show up in the moments that matter.

If we combined this approach with multiple observers, we’d have a system that not only improves accuracy but also empowers growth with fair, data-driven feedback.

This is the future of performance reviews: fair, structured, and rooted in real-world context. It’s time to build systems that empower growth through actionable, human feedback.