Big Five assessment: the Big Five personality factors applied to work

Big Five is the most studied personality model in psychology, and it describes people through five continuous traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Instead of fitting someone into a type, it shows how strongly each trait shows up, which gives a finer read than profile tests. In recruiting, it helps you understand how a person tends to work, handle pressure, and relate to a team, and it guides interviews and development plans. At Coodesh, Big Five is in the Personality and Culture library and can be combined with technical tests in the same assessment.

Coodesh uses Johnson's IPIP-NEO-120, a public-domain version with 120 statements, derived from Costa and McCrae's NEO-PI-R. This matters for two reasons. First, it's an open instrument, published and replicated in dozens of countries and languages, so any psychologist or People Analytics team can check where the questions come from and how the score is calculated. Second, it assesses on two levels: the five domains and 30 facets (six per domain), such as altruism, self-discipline, or anxiety, which allows a level of detail most behavioral tests don't deliver.

Partly, and it's worth being precise about it. Decades of research show that conscientiousness is the trait most consistently linked to performance in virtually any role, and that emotional stability (the opposite of neuroticism) helps in high-pressure roles. The other traits vary by role: extraversion matters in sales, openness in creative roles. But the correlation is moderate. Personality explains part of performance, not all of it. That's why Coodesh recommends Big Five as a layer of context alongside technical tests, structured interviews, and track record, never as a stand-alone criterion.

The Coodesh Big Five has 120 statements and takes about 15 minutes. The report opens by highlighting the person's most prominent trait at that moment, then shows a chart with the percentage score and rating for each of the five factors, followed by a detailed analysis with the exact score for each dimension. At the end of the page, there's an explanatory section on what each trait means in a professional context, designed for people reading the result without a background in psychology.

That's not what it's for, and the platform doesn't treat Big Five as a test with a cutoff score. The result is a profile, not a pass or fail. Rejecting someone for "high neuroticism" or "low extraversion," with no proven link to what the role requires, creates concrete legal risk: Brazil's LGPD data protection law requires that automated decisions affecting a person (article 20) be open to review, and discrimination based on a personal trait unrelated to the role is questionable regardless of data laws. The approach that works is to bring the profile into the interview and onboarding, and to use the result for development after hiring.

There's no cheating on the Big Five because there's no right answer. What does happen is trying to look better than you are, which psychology calls social desirability. The IPIP-NEO-120 reduces this effect with direct and reverse-scored items: the same facet is measured by statements worded in opposite directions, so anyone answering on autopilot or trying to inflate themselves tends to produce visible inconsistencies. Even so, no self-report is immune. The most effective defense is to cross-check the result with the interview and with technical tests in the same assessment.

It can be, but in most cases it doesn't need to be. Coodesh's integrity features are configured at the assessment level, not the test level, so everything you turn on for a technical test also applies to Big Five if it's in the same assessment: tab monitoring, full screen, second-screen detection, browsing recording, webcam with periodic snapshots, and photo ID verification. For personality tests, we recommend proportionality. Camera monitoring doesn't stop someone from answering in an idealized way, and the LGPD (Brazil's data protection law) requires data collection to be compatible with its purpose. What makes sense to turn on: photo ID if you need to make sure the person answering is the candidate, and question shuffling. The rest is more useful in technical tests.

Each assessment's Integrity tab brings together three groups of features. In the Assessment group: hide the candidate's score, shuffle the question order, and hide titles. In the Browser group: copy-and-paste logging, tab-switch monitoring, full-screen mode control, second-screen detection, and browsing recording with an event timeline. In the Camera group: mandatory webcam with periodic snapshots, AI image analysis (person not looking at the screen, more than one person, face not visible, camera off), and photo ID verification at the start. Each feature is turned on individually, and you choose which ones make sense for each assessment.

Big Five describes who a person is through five continuous traits, based on a 120-item public instrument; DISC describes how they tend to act through four behavioral patterns, in about 10 minutes. Big Five has more scientific backing and more granularity; DISC is faster and easier to discuss with managers. At Coodesh, both are in the Personality and Culture library and can be used together. A common combination: DISC in selection, to guide the interview, and Big Five in development, for individual plans and team insights.

The Big Five result is personal data, not sensitive data under article 5 of the LGPD (Brazil's data protection law), but it calls for extra care on one point: neuroticism. This trait measures a tendency to feel negative emotions more intensely, and it is neither a diagnosis nor a mental health indicator. If a company treats a high score as a sign of a clinical condition, it starts inferring health data, which is sensitive, and falls under a different legal regime. The right use is contextual: a person with higher neuroticism may benefit from more frequent feedback and clear expectations, that's all. At Coodesh, the result stays linked to the assessment, access is controlled by the company, and deleting the workspace removes the data within 30 days.