Thema: Sales

Personality (MAPS)

What does the MAPS (Mapwave’s Appreciative Personality Survey) measure?

In the MAPS, we map professional personality using the Big Five model, one of the most scientifically validated models in psychology.

The five main dimensions are:

  1. Emotional stability – how resilient or sensitive you react to stress or setbacks.
  2. Extraversion – how social, energetic, or reserved you are.
  3. Conscientiousness – how structured, orderly, or flexible you work.
  4. Altruism – how much you consider others versus your own interests.
  5. Openness – how curious and innovation-oriented you are versus conservative.

Why include the MAPS in your test package?

The MAPS provides insight into stable behavioral preferences and the way someone tends to react in various situations. It helps you assess whether someone will fit the job context, team, and organizational culture.

Personality doesn’t tell everything about performance, but is often decisive for long-term behavior such as dealing with stress, collaboration or independent functioning, handling change or feedback, etc. This adds unique predictive value on top of, for example, a reasoning test or situational judgment test.

All questions in the test are specifically formulated for the professional context, making the test feel highly relevant and recognizable to candidates.

About the report

The report displays results across the 5 personality dimensions. Each dimension is further divided into subdimensions, allowing the profile to show much nuance.

For each subdimension, you receive a score, feedback text, and a completed core quadrant by Ofman:

  • Quality – a natural strength in your personality
  • Pitfall – the risk that this quality is used too strongly, causing it to overshoot.
  • Allergy – behavior in others that can strongly irritate you, often the opposite of your quality.
  • Challenge – the behavior you can develop to keep your quality in balance and avoid your pitfall.

This way, you don’t get a “right-wrong” story, but a nuanced, practical, and development-oriented view of the personality profile. This makes the report extremely suitable for recruiters as preparation for selection interviews. Additionally, this is naturally also suitable for self-reflection, coaching, and development conversations.

The results are displayed relative to a representative norm group, so you can put your scores in perspective. Response tendencies are also provided so you get an indication of the social desirability with which a candidate responded.

Recommended combinations with other tests

No single test perfectly predicts on its own how someone will function in a job. What you can do is smartly combine tests that each measure something different — so that you gather as much relevant information as possible, without unnecessary overlap or test fatigue.

This increases incremental validity: the added value of a test on top of the others.

Recommended combination with a personality questionnaire:

  • Reasoning test
    → measures cognitive abilities, such as abstract reasoning and learning capacity.
    → indicates what someone can handle in terms of complexity and pace.
  • Situational judgment test (SJT)
    → simulates concrete work situations and measures practical decision-making.
    → indicates how someone tends to act in typical job situations.

Through these combinations, you get a multi-layered and reliable overall picture: from capabilities to behavioral preferences to contextual behavior.

Application

The MAPS personality questionnaire is broadly applicable within selection and development.

Specifically, you can use it for:

  • Selection – get an objective and nuanced view of someone’s personality and behavioral preferences. This allows you to assess whether someone aligns with the role and organizational context, and adds reliable data points alongside interviews or CVs.
  • Self-insight – the connection with Ofman’s core quadrants makes strengths, pitfalls, challenges, and allergies concretely visible. Candidates or employees recognize themselves better and understand how their behavior is experienced by others.
  • Coaching and development – the insights form a powerful foundation for coaching trajectories and development plans. It clarifies where growth opportunities lie and how someone can more effectively deal with their own pitfalls and challenges.

This way, you turn selection and development from guesswork into a substantiated process that leads to targeted growth.

Big Five Model

Core Quadrants for development-oriented insight

Dutch, French & English

Suitable for all education levels

Self-assessment questionnaire

120 questions

Time: 15 minutes

Price per administration: €55

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SJT Sales

The SJT Sales measures how someone handles commercial challenges, customer contact, and persuasion moments. Candidates view 8 situations in video format, each followed by 5 possible responses that they must individually evaluate for appropriateness.

The video clips make the test realistic and particularly suitable for roles where body language and non-verbal communication play an important role.

The test evaluates three core competencies:

  • Customer-oriented action – putting the customer at the center, responding specifically to needs and providing tailored advice
  • Persuasion – inspiring the customer, building trust and using arguments appropriately
  • Persistence – staying focused on the goal, even when facing resistance or criticism

Additionally, the report provides insight into two typical sales profiles:

  • Hunter – actively approaching new customers
  • Farmer – building relationships with existing customers

In sales, it’s about more than just achieving targets. It’s also about how someone:

  • builds relationships with customers
  • handles rejection or objections
  • responds to commercial opportunities
  • presents themselves and the product persuasively

This SJT provides insight into those behavioral components in a way that goes much deeper than a traditional interview. The video format gives candidates the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in the situation and base their judgment on real context, tone, and interaction.

The report provides standardized scores (stanine 1–9) on three competencies:

  • Persistence
  • Customer-oriented action
  • Persuasion

Additionally, the report contains scores for the personal sales profile:

  • Hunter
  • Farmer

Each score is explained with:

  • Feedback text – concrete description of current behavior
  • Development advice – tips for further growth in the competency
  • Graphical representation – visual score position relative to the norm group

The report can be used in selection contexts, development assessments, or coaching programs.

No single test perfectly predicts how someone will function in a job. What you can do is intelligently combine tests that each measure something different — so you gather as much relevant information as possible, without overlap or test fatigue. This increases the incremental validity: the added value of a test on top of the others.

Recommended combination with the SJT Sales:

  • Reasoning test (abstract, verbal or numerical)
    → measures cognitive capacity: logical, verbal and/or numerical thinking.
    → indicates what someone can handle in terms of complexity and learning ability.
  • Personality questionnaire (MAPS)
    → provides insight into stable behavioral preferences such as assertiveness, persistence and empathy.
    → helps explain why someone acts in a certain way in sales situations.

Through this combination, you get a complete picture of someone’s sales potential: from thinking ability to behavioral style and effective action in context.

  • In selection the test provides an objective view of how candidates handle typical sales situations. You gain insight into their ability to understand customer needs, communicate persuasively, build relationships and deal with resistance or pressure. This increases the chance that you hire salespeople who not only achieve targets, but also build sustainable customer relationships.
  • In learning & development the test can be used as a baseline measurement at the start of a sales training or commercial development program. You clearly map the strengths and development points of the participants, so that training and coaching align optimally. A repeated measurement also shows what progress has been made.

Measures customer orientation, persuasiveness, and persistence

Realistic video simulations of sales situations

Includes hunter and farmer profile for role matching

Dutch, French

Suitable for all education levels

Situational judgment test (SJT) – video format

8 situations, each with 5 responses to evaluate

Price per administration: €55

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Voorbeeld SJT's

360° Feedback

With our 360° feedback survey, you get a nuanced picture of someone’s performance from different perspectives: supervisor(s), colleagues, direct reports, internal customers, project members, and the person themselves.

You can start immediately with our standard 360°. This allows you to collect feedback on the following leadership competencies: strategy and vision, risk-aware analysis and decision-making, change orientation, results orientation, people orientation, leadership, networking and customer focus, collaboration, personal development capacity, and integrity.

Do you have a clear leadership vision within your organization? Then we create a survey based on our validated competency library. This way, we select precisely those competencies that are relevant to your organization and the purpose of the survey.

A 360° feedback provides insight from multiple perspectives. By combining feedback from different levels and roles in the organization, you get:

  • More complete picture – insight into strengths and development areas from multiple angles
  • Better development conversations – concrete and nuanced starting point for coaching or performance discussions
  • Greater self-awareness – reflection of self-image with external perceptions
  • Stronger development actions – thanks to concretely formulated improvement points and a ready-to-use action plan template

Because you can fully align the survey with your own competency model and context, this instrument is equally suitable for talent development, leadership development as well as for culture and behavior programs.

The report is clear, comprehensive, and action-oriented, with:

  • Global overview – spider web with average scores per competency
  • Benchmark – comparison with the average scores of other participants who simultaneously go through the same process
  • Scores per competency
  • Scores per behavioral indicator
  • Comparison self-image vs. others – insight into similarities and differences
  • Strengths & development opportunities – including concrete improvement points
  • Ready-to-use template for reflection action plan – for immediate follow-up in development conversations

Confidentiality is guaranteed: results are only displayed for respondent groups with at least 3 respondents (adjustable to a stricter limit, e.g., 5).

A 360° feedback survey is ideal in combination with:

  • Internal development actions within your organization
    → Use the results of the 360° as input for your leadership program, internal coaching, training, or development programs.
    → This way, insights are directly translated into concrete development steps and lasting behavioral change.

You use the 360° feedback survey within development and HR processes when you need a broad, multi-voiced, and reliable picture.

Specifically, you can use a 360° as:

  • Start of a development or leadership program – map strengths and focus areas clearly to work in a targeted manner immediately.
  • Competency map for training – determine priorities based on real needs.
  • Performance reviews – conduct a concrete conversation with clear observations and follow-up actions based on more than just vague memories.
  • Baseline and follow-up measurement – establish the initial situation and measure again later to objectively evaluate the growth and impact of a program.

Get a complete picture of someone’s performance

Dutch, French & English

Suitable for all education levels

Standard or custom survey

Concrete action plan template included

Price per administration: from €225

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