What You Need To Know About The CPP Personality Tests

CPP is an assessment company that makes up and administers several different personality tests, notably the MBTI and the CPI personality tests. The company also produces the Strong, TKI, and FIRO tests. It is best known for the MBTI-the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

The MBTI is a personality assessment which is useful in various aspects of life, including employment. It is currently not primarily used as a pre-employment personality test.

The CPI, or the California Personality Test, is an assessment specifically geared towards predicting employment performance. Two versions are currently available; the CPI-260, which has 260 questions, and the CPI-434, which has 434 questions. It is similar to the MMPI (the CPI-434 and the MMPI share 194 items) and takes 45-60 minutes to complete.

Most questions on personality tests are really testing only a few different characteristics that are deemed important by the specific company and the job role. Once you can decipher what characteristics the test is actually testing, you can more easily determine how to approach the questions.

The following are the scales tested on the CPI test:

• Dominance
• Capacity for Status
• Sociability
• Social Presence
• Self-Acceptance
• Independence
• Empathy
• Responsibility
• Socialization
• Self-Control
• Good Impression
• Communality
• Sense of Well-Being
• Tolerance
• Achievement via Conformance
• Achievement via Independence
• Intellectual Efficiency
• Psychological-Mindedness
• Flexibility
• Femininity-Masculinity

The #1 Tip: Think like a test-taker only
When approaching a personality test, there are various ways of answering the questions, based on your mood, the connotations of the questions as they relate to you, and in what context you think about the questions (i.e. as a parent, as an employee…) When taking a pre-employment personality test, it is important to approach the questions solely from the perspective of an employee. This will allow you to put your best foot forward on the test.

The #2 Tip: Know How To Approach The Time Factor
Timed tests seem to make everyone nervous. But don’t worry; when personality tests are timed, it is not timed strictly so that you have to worry about not finishing. Rather, the goal of the test being timed is to prevent people from thinking too hard about their answers and thereby gaming the test.