Never recruit by type. Recruit on the profile.
Talk to us about your recruitmentYou cannot use the Enneagram to recruit by type. No type is better suited to a job than another, and sorting candidates by type is neither professionally nor ethically defensible.
What you can use is the full psychological profile. It shows not just which type the candidate is, but which competencies and talents they have actually built up through education, work and life experience. That is a very different and far more useful piece of information.
A type describes a fundamental motivation, not an ability. Type 7, The Enthusiast, is rarely structured by nature. But a type 7 who has worked ten years as a chemist in the pharmaceutical industry has practised structure, thoroughness and documentation every single day in a heavily regulated market. That person is structured, just not for the reasons you would expect.
And it is not a randomly chosen example: a striking number of 7s end up training as chemists.
If you look only at the type, you rule that candidate out. If you look at the profile, you see a person with both the 7's wealth of ideas and a well-practised ability to follow a procedure. That combination is often exactly what an organisation lacks.
360indicator is built to show the nuances. The profile describes how each individual relates to the Enneagram's three centres, body, heart and head, and where the person draws their resources from.
Two people of the same type can therefore have very different profiles. That is what makes the tool useful in recruitment: it describes the candidate as a unique person instead of placing them in one of nine boxes.
I have worked more than five years as a headhunter in Executive Search and am certified in several of the personality tests used in recruitment. My recommendation is simpler than you might think.
Are you already using DISC, MBTI, Master, Peoplemetrics or Thomas in your organisation? Then stay with them. Not because they are better tools, but because the value of a test only truly emerges after the hire. Once the candidate is employed, the insight has to live on in the team, in the development conversation and in management. It can only do that if the organisation already speaks that language.
If you work with the Enneagram, a full 360indicator profile is the right foundation. But a foundation is not a whole building.
A personality profile describes how a candidate typically acts, what drives the behaviour, and what the pattern looks like under pressure. It says nothing, however, about how quickly that person learns something fundamentally new, or how complex a task they can handle when routine no longer suffices. That is a different dimension, and it must be measured with a different instrument.
The point is psychometric, not commercial: cognitive capacity and personality are largely uncorrelated. Two tests measuring the same thing waste the candidate's time. Two tests measuring separate, independent dimensions stack on top of each other and raise the precision of the decision.
In my years of recruiting, no tool has given me a stronger picture of the person than a full 360indicator profile. That is my professional experience from practice, not a research claim, and I think one should be clear about the difference.
Balder Vendt-Striim, co-developer of 360indicator
You make a living being right about people in a short space of time. A longlist becomes a shortlist in a matter of days, and afterwards you have to stand behind the recommendation in front of a client who has paid for precision.
The most expensive mistake in that work is rarely that the candidate lacked the professional skills. It is that they did not fit the chair that was actually vacant. It usually shows after four to eight months, and by then it is both the client's problem and your reputation.
The profile belongs in the shortlist conversation, never in the screening. If you use it to filter people out before you have met them, you have neither a professional nor a legal leg to stand on. If you use it to ask three questions you would not otherwise have asked, you get something no CV can give you: what drives the candidate, what happens to them under pressure, and which competencies have genuinely been built up rather than merely listed.
The last point matters most. A profile shows that the candidate has developed a pattern through education and work, even when that pattern lies far from the type's starting point. That is precisely the information that lets you defend a candidate the client would otherwise have ruled out on paper.
One final thing worth saying out loud in our field: we call it judgement when we choose between two good candidates. Often it is memory of the last good impression. A profile on the table makes that conversation more honest, including when it does not confirm the gut feeling.
Most test discussions in HR are about choosing a tool. Master or Peoplemetrics? Thomas or Garuda? Should we bring in Hogan alongside?
The gain rarely lies there. It lies in whether your combined battery measures several independent things, or whether it measures the same thing three times in three colours and three report layouts.
Trait-based, normative instruments are developed and validated to predict work behaviour. Hogan, SHL's OPQ, NEO-PI-3 and 16PF belong here, and they can withstand being part of a selection decision when used as described.
Type- and preference-based instruments are strongest for development, self-insight and team dialogue. MBTI, JTI, DISC-based tools and the Enneagram belong here. Most providers state themselves that these should not carry a hiring decision alone.
That applies to 360indicator too. We build on the Enneagram, which is why we would rather say it ourselves: the profile is a strong foundation and an excellent development tool, but it needs something alongside it when used in a hire.
Note also that the distinction runs between instruments, not between providers. Thomas International is a good example: PPA is DISC-based, HPTI is trait-based, and GIA measures pure cognitive capacity. Same logo, three different purposes.
At volume, where small improvements in accuracy multiply. In specialist roles, where complexity is high and the pool of experience is narrow. At middle management level, where the spread in the field is still real. And at any leap where the candidate has to do something markedly different from what they have done before.
At the very top of the organisation, the personality profile weighs heaviest. Executive candidates almost never fail on capacity. They fail on stakeholder management, on ego and on an inability to adapt.
The test must be job-related and documented, because capacity tests have well-documented group differences and therefore a risk of adverse impact. The legal basis for processing must be in place under GDPR, and if the tool is AI-supported, documentation requirements follow. And the candidate experience has to hold up. Three hours of testing for a role that could have been decided in ninety minutes costs you the candidates you most want.
Fewer tests. Better chosen. And a decision you can account for afterwards.
The profile belongs in the conversation as a basis for good questions, never as a filter before it.
The candidate should see their own profile and receive feedback on it. It is fair, and it gives you a better conversation.
It is the combination of profile and actual experience that tells you something. No test should stand alone as a basis for decision.
We help you use the profiles correctly, so the insight also holds after the hire.
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