The Hiring Intelligence Report: Q1 2025
The hidden psychology behind today’s hiring
Hiring priorities are shifting. Some traits continue to hold universal value—demanded across roles, sectors, and time. Others are declining fast, outpaced by automation, organisational fatigue, or changing team dynamics. And then there are the risers: emerging behaviours that gain ground quickly, often in response to instability or new ways of working.
Clevry’s Quarterly Hiring Intelligence Report (HIRe) tracks usage trends across our 47-scale personality assessment model. These trends offer a window into what today’s organisations are really looking for—not just in theory, but in practice. Because our model allows full flexibility to tailor assessments by role, we’re able to observe real behavioural demand signals across industries and time.
The job market isn’t just a skills race—it’s a relevance race. As hiring becomes more precise, behaviour and motivation are overtaking credentials and experience as indicators of long-term fit.
Clevry’s personality framework gives hiring teams the tools to align with this shift. It helps organisations move beyond generic profiling and engage with individuals as they actually are—based on the traits that matter most, right now.
Key findings
Top 5 most assessed traits in Q1 2025:
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.
Adaptable
Previous position: 3rd
The Adaptable scale measures how much a person’s interpersonal style shifts across different situations. It reflects behavioural fluidity, not effectiveness or deliberate adaptability.
Stress Management
Previous position: 7th
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.
Calm
Previous position: 4th
The Calm scale reflects emotional style, indicating how prone someone is to worry or tension. Higher scores suggest a relaxed, steady temperament, while lower scores point to frequent anxiety and difficulty switching off.
Resilient
Previous position: 2nd
The Resilient scale measures how emotionally sensitive or thick-skinned a person is. High scores indicate toughness and emotional steadiness under criticism, while low scores suggest a tendency to take things personally or feel hurt by others’ remarks.
Key insights:
Listening remains the most assessed trait across all industries, holding its position at No. 1 for yet another quarter. Its consistency reflects a sustained emphasis on candidates who show receptiveness, collaboration, and conversational awareness—traits increasingly valued in stakeholder-heavy roles and team-driven environments.
Adaptable rises to 2nd place, moving up from 3rd, as employers continue to prioritise interpersonal flexibility over rigid communication styles. This suggests a preference for individuals who can shift tone, language, or presence depending on the situation, rather than simply follow set behavioural norms.
Stress Management makes a notable leap from 7th to 3rd—a clear signal that pressure tolerance is now a top-tier hiring concern. As workloads intensify and deadlines tighten across sectors, organisations are more actively screening for candidates who not only endure stress but remain productive and composed under it.
Calm holds steady in 4th, showing persistent value as a complement to Stress Management. This pairing—emotional stability and pressure resilience—continues to form the psychological bedrock of what hiring teams consider “low risk” candidates in high-friction environments.
Resilient, although dropping slightly from 2nd to 5th, remains firmly within the Top 5. Its earlier climb up the rankings, and ongoing strong position, indicates that emotional toughness—particularly in response to criticism or challenge—may still be seen as a marker of long-term performance and durability.
Together, these five traits suggest a refined focus in talent assessment: not just how someone performs under ideal conditions, but how stable, responsive, and unshakeable they are when things go off-script.
Emotional stability is the new competitive edge.
Traits like Calm, Resilient, and Stress Management now outrank traditional competencies—showing that how candidates cope matters more than how they perform on paper.
Falling out of favour:
Change
Previous position: 5th
The Change scale measures how comfortable a person is with organisational change. High scorers thrive in dynamic, evolving environments, while low scorers prefer stability, routine, and familiar ways of working.
Self-esteem
Previous position: 17th
The Self-Esteem scale reflects a person’s inner sense of confidence and self-worth. High scores indicate self-assurance and belief in one’s abilities, while lower scores suggest frequent self-doubt and a need for external encouragement.
Caring
Previous position: 18th
The Caring scale measures how motivated someone is by helping others. High scorers find purpose in altruistic or people-focused work, while lower scorers are more driven by task outcomes than by supporting others—without implying a lack of empathy.
Key insights:
Once a top 5 priority, Change has seen a notable decline in demand—falling to 14th place. It is rare to see this big change in the Top 5 traits. This shift may indicate that organisations are currently prioritising other traits like stress management —or are focusing their hiring on roles where other traits takes precedence. While a preference for Change remains valuable, it appears to be less central in the current hiring landscape.
Hiring for culture fit is over. Precision trait targeting is in.
Top-performing teams aren’t hiring for ‘good vibes’—they’re hiring for measurable behavioural advantage. The data proves it.
Fastest growing:
As workplace dynamics continue to evolve, so do the personality traits that organisations value most. By analysing assessment trends over time, we’ve identified the three fastest-growing traits in demand. These rising traits reflect shifting priorities in how companies evaluate potential, performance, and cultural fit—offering a window into the future of talent selection and development.
Poised
Poised measures social confidence—how comfortable and self-assured someone feels in social settings. High scorers tend to be composed and confident in new or demanding interactions, while lower scorers may appear quiet or reserved.
What this indicates:
The rising demand for Poised individuals signals a growing emphasis on interpersonal ease and social confidence. As collaboration and stakeholder engagement become increasingly important in hybrid and client-facing roles, being confident and relaxed in social settings is emerging as a key differentiator.
Structured
The Structured scale reflects how strongly a person prefers order, planning, and organisation. High scorers like to work methodically with clear plans, while low scorers lean toward spontaneity and flexibility, finding rigid systems restrictive.
What this indicates:
The sharp rise of Structured highlights a growing preference for individuals who bring order and clarity to their work. In an increasingly complex and fast-paced environment, employers are placing greater value on methodical, organised thinkers who plan ahead and thrive in structured settings—helping teams stay focused and efficient amidst uncertainty.
Money
The Money scale measures how motivated someone is by financial rewards and material lifestyle. High scorers are driven by earning potential and wealth, while low scorers prioritise other aspects of work over income.
What this indicates:
While still a niche trait, Money has seen a notable surge in interest—rising 67% in volume quarter-over-quarter. This suggests a renewed focus on financial motivation as a factor in career decision-making, particularly in roles where performance incentives or earning potential play a significant role in attracting and retaining talent.
Tough markets favour tough minds.
As uncertainty rises, so does the demand for self-assurance, structure, and financial drive. Caring drops from 18th to 27th, while Money surges 67% in assessment volume. Structured and Poised also climb sharply—up 8 and 11 places—signalling a pivot toward clarity, control, and confident presence.
Scales used as a percentage of all assessments:
The data here reveals a clear hierarchy in what organisations are prioritising during assessment:
Listening leads, featuring in 74% of all assessments—unsurprising given its central role in collaboration and stakeholder engagement.
Close behind are Adaptable and Stress Management (both at 71%), reflecting the continued demand for agility and emotional control in dynamic environments.
Calm (69%) and Resilient (68%) round out the top five, signalling that recruiters are placing real weight on psychological steadiness and recovery traits.
These figures highlight a shift toward evaluating how candidates respond to challenge, not just what they know.
The data in this report does more than highlight trait rankings—it shows where hiring logic is going.
Traits like Listening, Calm, and Stress Management remain at the top because they help organisations manage complexity, not just performance. Meanwhile, the rise of traits like Structured, Poised, and Money reveals a shift toward candidates who bring clarity, control, and aligned motivation in uncertain conditions.
Just as telling are the traits falling out of favour. The drop in demand for Caring, Change, and Self-Esteem reflects a recalibration in organisational priorities—from idealism and disruption to resilience and predictability.
These aren’t abstract patterns. They’re decision-making signals. They suggest that hiring teams are looking less for culture fit and more for functional readiness—the traits that actually move the needle under pressure.
For businesses and recruiters, the implication is clear: align your hiring assessments to today’s operating realities, not yesterday’s aspirational values. The traits that matter most are changing. Your hiring strategy should change with them.
