The Hiring Intelligence Report: Q2 2025
The hidden psychology behind today’s hiring
Hiring is becoming more precise, and more psychological. Traits once seen as nice-to-have are now non-negotiable, while others are losing relevance. Emotional durability, adaptability, and performance under pressure are rising sharply, often replacing surface-level traits like charm or sociability.
Clevry’s quarterly Hiring Intelligence Report (HIRE) tracks real-world usage across our 47-scale personality assessment model. Because assessments are tailored by role, we’re able to identify which traits companies are actively prioritising across job families and industries—revealing true behavioural demand, not theoretical ideals.
This isn’t about vague cultural fit or ticking competency boxes. It’s about what actually works. As organisations recalibrate their hiring around resilience, drive, and emotional steadiness, personality data is fast becoming the sharper tool, for selection, development, and long-term retention.
In this quarter’s HIRE report, we’ve highlighted three influential functions – Management, Customer Support, and Sales, to highlight the most in-demand personality traits based on actual assessment data.
These findings are based on over 400,000 assessments run through the Clevry platform and offer a practical view into how hiring priorities are evolving across high-impact roles.
Key findings
Top 5 most assessed traits in Q2 2025:
Resilient
Previous position: 7th
The Resilient scale explores the extent to which the individual is thick-skinned rather than emotionally sensitive. The scale focuses on resilience and sensitivity in response to criticism, rudeness or perceived slights from others.
Listening
Previous position: 1st
The Listening scale identifies whether someone prefers to talk or to listen in conversations. It doesn’t measure listening skill, but highlights tendencies like interrupting, dominating discussions, or valuing others’ input.
Striving
Previous position: 11th
The Striving scale explores two related themes that tell us something about what motivates the individual at work. The first theme is around how busy the individual needs to feel; the second explores the achievement or outcome focus of the individual’s motivational style. Scores at the high end, therefore, describe an individual whose motivation stems from pursuing a succession of achievements or goals and keeping busy. Individuals at the low end are happy to focus on the process of work and can experience spells of relative inactivity without their motivation being adversely affected.
Stress Management
Previous position: 4th
The Stress Management scale measures how people typically respond to time pressure and workload. Those scoring high tend to stay focused and effective under stress, while lower scores indicate a preference for calm, unhurried conditions to perform well.
Order
Previous position: 2nd
The Order scale provides insights relating to the individual’s value for structure in the workplace. High-end scores indicate a preference for an organisational culture featuring rules, processes and standard operating procedures. Individuals with low-end scores are likely to feel frustrated by working in a very ordered, structured or rule-bound culture.
Key insights:
Resilient takes the lead, jumping from 7th to 1st overall—a sharp rise that confirms how vital emotional stability and bounce-back ability have become in hiring. Once concentrated in management roles, resilience is now being prioritised across sales and frontline functions, signalling a broader shift toward candidates who can stay effective under sustained pressure and challenge.
Listening drops to 2nd place but remains a core priority. Its long-standing dominance reflects enduring demand for candidates who show receptiveness, attentiveness, and interpersonal awareness—especially in roles requiring collaboration, service, or stakeholder engagement.
Striving rockets into 3rd, up from 11th, highlighting a renewed focus on internal motivation and performance mindset. Companies are increasingly screening for candidates who are self-driven, goal-oriented, and uncomfortable with complacency—particularly in competitive or target-based roles.
Stress Management remains high at 4th, reinforcing the importance of composure under pressure. It complements resilience but focuses more specifically on how candidates regulate and perform during intense workloads, shifting deadlines, or emotionally taxing situations.
Order rounds out the Top 5, though it has dropped from 2nd place in earlier rankings. It remains especially valued in sectors like health and safety or customer operations, where consistency, process-following, and structured thinking are critical.
Resilience is now non-negotiable.
Climbing from 7th to 1st, Resilient has become the most assessed trait across all measured traits. In a market defined by pressure and pace, employers are done hiring for charm—they want people who don’t crack.
Sales:
A refocus on drive and resilience.
Hiring priorities in the Sales function are showing a renewed focus on inner drive and mental toughness. While traits related to interpersonal style still play a role, the biggest shifts this quarter highlight a stronger emphasis on performance mindset and persistence.
Striving
Previous position: 2nd
The Striving scale explores two related themes that tell us something about what motivates the individual at work. The first theme is around how busy the individual needs to feel; the second explores the achievement or outcome focus of the individual’s motivational style. Scores at the high end, therefore, describe an individual whose motivation stems from pursuing a succession of achievements or goals and keeping busy. Individuals at the low end are happy to focus on the process of work and can experience spells of relative inactivity without their motivation being adversely affected.
Resilient
Previous position: 11th
The Resilient scale explores the extent to which the individual is thick-skinned rather than emotionally sensitive. The scale focuses on resilience and sensitivity in response to criticism, rudeness or perceived slights from others.
Competition
No change.
The Competition scale focuses on the individual’s value for working in a competitive environment. People scoring at the high end of this scale value rivalry, targets and competition at work and will feel motivated by comparing their performance to others and winning. The low end of the score indicates a great value for cooperation. Individuals with low scores are unlikely to feel motivated by competition.
Gregarious
Previous position: 3rd
The Gregarious scale measures how affiliative the individual is at work. The scale was developed to provide insights into the degree to which the individual prefers working alone or with others. The scale is not a measure of how sociable or outgoing the individual is but high scores on the scale are likely to overlap with other extroverted behaviours such as being outgoing and friendly.
Key sales insights:
Sales hiring is shifting, and fast. The data shows a clear recalibration in what companies value most: drive and durability are in, charm is on the decline.
At the top of the list is Striving, now the most assessed trait in sales roles. It reflects a core preference for individuals with an internal push to achieve, a discomfort with stagnation, and a hunger for progress. In a function built around targets and performance, that kind of motivation is non-negotiable.
Close behind, Resilient has jumped dramatically into second place. It’s not just about confidence anymore, it’s about staying grounded when things go wrong. Salespeople are being hired not for how well they perform in ideal conditions, but for how quickly they recover when they don’t.
Competition continues to hold strong, reinforcing the message that sales remains a space where outperforming peers and chasing top rankings still counts.
But there’s a noticeable drop for Gregarious, which has slipped down the rankings. This suggests sociability is no longer the leading edge, it’s a background trait, not a headline act. Companies appear to be moving away from hiring purely on personality and instead focusing on individuals who are resilient, driven, and mentally equipped for the pressure cooker that is modern sales.
Grit closes deals. Not charm.
In sales roles, Striving takes the top spot while Gregarious falls, suggesting that the best salespeople aren’t the friendliest, but they are the most relentless.
Customer Support:
Resilience takes the lead.
Psychometric assessments continue to play a key role in high-volume recruitment, especially in customer support, where personality fit is often even more important than technical ability.
To understand what matters most in these roles, we took a closer look at the most commonly assessed traits, and found some clear front-runners.
Resilient
Previous position: 2nd
The Resilient scale explores the extent to which the individual is thick-skinned rather than emotionally sensitive. The scale focuses on resilience and sensitivity in response to criticism, rudeness or perceived slights from others.
Listening
Previous position: 1st
The Listening scale identifies whether someone prefers to talk or to listen in conversations. It doesn’t measure listening skill, but highlights tendencies like interrupting, dominating discussions, or valuing others’ input.
Calm
Previous position: 5th
The Calm scale measures very similar aspects of emotional style to measures of anxiety, emotional stability and neuroticism. The low end of the scale is associated with an emotional style characterised by frequent worry and difficulty in letting go of thoughts and feelings outside of the workplace. The high end of the scale describes an emotional style that is more relaxed and settled, with infrequent worry. While Calm is an emotional style scale its effects will be seen in behavioural terms. The construct validity section of this manual will provide further insights into how the Calm scale relates to other, classic measures of emotional style.
Adaptable
Previous position: 3rd
The Adaptable scale provides insights relating to the degree of flexibility that the individual demonstrates when interacting with others. The scale does not measure the ability of the person to change or adapt their approach to suit others. Instead, it focuses on the tendency of the individual to demonstrate a fluid interpersonal style or a more consistent style. The scale does not provide information about the effectiveness of the individual’s interpersonal behaviours. The Adaptable scale specifically focuses on the degree to which the individual’s behaviours around other people change across different situations.
Approachable
Previous position: 6th
The Approachable scale is probably the closest to the surface in personality terms. The scale measures the interpersonal warmth of the individual and these behaviours are usually fairly obvious as soon as you interact with the person. It is important to stress that the behaviours associated with the low end of the scale are not negative in nature (in common with all scales).
Key customer support insights:
Customer support hiring is undergoing a subtle but important evolution, focusing less on surface-level friendliness and more on emotional endurance and composure under pressure. The latest data reveals a top five trait ranking that reflects this shift.
Resilient has taken the top spot, moving up from Rank 2. With customer-facing roles often involving emotional labour, complaints, and high-volume interactions, the ability to bounce back and remain composed is now the most sought-after trait. Employers are prioritising candidates who can stay steady even when conversations become difficult.
Listening, although nudged into second place, remains a cornerstone. Active listening continues to be vital for resolving issues, understanding context, and showing customers they’re heard, especially in complex or emotionally charged situations.
Calm has risen from Rank 5 to 3, showing a growing emphasis on maintaining emotional neutrality under pressure. It pairs closely with resilience, reinforcing the need for support staff who can handle stress without letting it spill into their communication.
Adaptable has dipped slightly but still holds strong. It reflects the value of tone-shifting, handling diverse personalities, and adjusting communication styles fluidly, key in fast-paced or unpredictable service settings.
Approachable moves up a spot, rounding out the top five. Despite the broader shift toward internal steadiness, warmth and accessibility still matter. Customers want to speak to people who are easy to engage with, especially when dealing with problems.
Together, these five traits highlight a clear direction: emotional durability now matters as much as interpersonal skill. The best support professionals today are not just empathetic and responsive, they’re composed, adaptable, and built to last in high-friction environments.
Soft skills have a hard edge now.
For Customer Support roles, Calm and Stress Management rose sharply, revealing a shift from “people-pleasers” to those who can hold their nerve when customers can’t.
Management roles:
A shift towards empathy and emotional resilience.
In this quarter’s data, we see a clear transformation in what organisations are prioritising in their leadership hires. While structured thinking remains important, emotional intelligence and steady leadership under pressure are rising fast.
Listening
Previous position: 7th
The Listening scale identifies whether someone prefers to talk or to listen in conversations. It doesn’t measure listening skill, but highlights tendencies like interrupting, dominating discussions, or valuing others’ input.
Resilient
No change.
The Resilient scale explores the extent to which the individual is thick-skinned rather than emotionally sensitive. The scale focuses on resilience and sensitivity in response to criticism, rudeness or perceived slights from others.
Stress Management
Previous position: 17th
The Stress Management scale measures how people typically respond to time pressure and workload. Those scoring high tend to stay focused and effective under stress, while lower scores indicate a preference for calm, unhurried conditions to perform well.
Listening is now the #1 management skill.
In Management, Listening takes the top spot—proving that the most valued leaders are the ones who take input, not just give orders.
Fastest growing traits:
As workplace dynamics continue to evolve, so do the personality traits that organisations value most. By analysing assessment trends over time, we’ve identified a few of the fastest-growing traits in demand.
The rising popularity of these traits reflects shifting priorities in how companies evaluate potential, performance, and cultural fit, offering a window into the future of talent selection and where it is potentially heading.
Resilient
The Resilient scale explores the extent to which the individual is thick-skinned rather than emotionally sensitive. The scale focuses on resilience and sensitivity in response to criticism, rudeness or perceived slights from others.
What this indicates:
Climbed from rank 7 to rank 1 in the last quarter – Resilient has become the top-ranked scale, reflecting a strong organisational need for individuals who can thrive amid criticism and uncertainty.
Change
The Change scale explores the individual’s values around organisational change. Individuals with scores at the high end of the scale will be very comfortable working in a culture that features frequent change; the individual is likely to feel motivated by newness and novelty and therefore may find it difficult to sustain themselves in a culture that favours stability, tradition and the familiar.
What this indicates:
A significant jump in rank signals a growing emphasis on innovation and adaptability over traditional approaches.
Rational
The Rational scale helps us to understand the type of information the individual prefers to focus their attention towards when making decisions and solving problems. The scale has a relationship with the Jungian Thinking Type; individuals at the high end of the scale will base their approach to tasks on data, logic and concrete information, while people at the low end will instead rely on gut feel and prior experience. While individuals at any point on the scale may make an identical decision, their rationale for the decision will reflect their preferred approach.
What this indicates:
The rise in Rational’s rank and volume highlights a shift toward valuing data-driven, logical thinking in talent selection.
The data in this report doesn’t just track trait popularity, it reveals a decisive shift in hiring priorities.
Resilient, now the most assessed trait across all roles, sets the tone: organisations want candidates who can stay steady under pressure, adapt quickly, and keep performing through disruption. Traits like Striving, Stress Management, and Order reinforce this direction, pointing to a preference for composure, inner drive, and structured thinking over charisma or idealised soft skills.
Meanwhile, the quiet drop of traits like Gregarious and the softening of Adaptable suggest that being likeable or flexible at this moment in time, just isn’t enough. Employers are focusing less on surface-level affability and more on mental stamina and task-focused behaviour, traits that hold up when conditions are difficult or ambiguous.
These changes are not cosmetic. They are signals of a new hiring logic, one grounded in performance durability rather than personal style.
For hiring teams, the message is straightforward: stop hiring for how someone behaves at their best. Start hiring for how they hold up when things get hard.
