FAQ
Questions and answers.
What Keelworth measures, how it scores, what it costs, and how to use it well. If your question is not here, get in touch.
About the assessment
What is Keelworth?
A work-style assessment for hiring. A candidate completes the assessment, and you get a comprehensive report on how they tend to work, to use alongside your interviews and your own judgment.
What does it measure?
Work-style tendencies across thirteen traits in five areas. The Keelworth model, built on the Five-Factor Model, reads how a person tends to work. It does not measure skill, intelligence, character, or mental health, and it does not predict job performance.
Does the report help with the interview?
Yes. Every full report ends with a short set of interview questions written for that candidate, drawn from their strengths and the areas worth watching, with a note on what to listen for in their answers. They point your interview at what matters for this person, and the decision stays with you.
Is this a personality test?
It is a work-style assessment. It reads how a person tends to work, not their personality in a clinical sense, and it is not a medical or psychological test.
Who is Keelworth for?
Small businesses and hiring managers who want a clearer read on how a candidate tends to work. It is useful for any hire, and it earns its keep for remote and distributed roles, where you have less in-person signal.
Does it work for remote hiring?
Yes. It was built with remote and distributed teams in mind, where you see less of how someone works day to day. It is not limited to remote roles.
How is Keelworth different from the MBTI or DISC?
Type quizzes like the MBTI sort a person into a box and were not built to predict work behaviour, and DISC works mostly as a shared language for teams. Keelworth reads how a person tends to work from how they handle situations, on continuous trait dimensions rather than fixed types. It is meant to sit next to a skills check and a structured interview, with built-in honesty checks, as one input among several.
Why situations instead of personality-quiz statements?
Rate-yourself statements like "I am organised, 1 to 5" are easy to inflate, because the flattering answer is obvious. Keelworth instead shows real work situations and asks what a person would do, where the options look about equally reasonable. That makes the read harder to inflate and closer to how the person actually tends to handle work.
How it works
How long does it take?
Around fifteen minutes. The candidate completes the assessment online, at their own pace.
When do I get the report?
It is scored and emailed to you automatically as soon as the candidate finishes, and it is also waiting in your dashboard.
Do candidates need an account or any software?
No. They open their link, complete the assessment, and they are done. Nothing to create, nothing to install.
Can I assess more than one person at a time?
Yes. Add as many people as you like to a single order, and each person gets their own link.
What does the candidate see?
A short consent line, then the assessment, six items to a page, with a progress bar. Their name and the role are filled in already, and nothing asks about anything personal.
What if a candidate does not finish?
You can resend their link from your dashboard. A report is generated only once the candidate completes the assessment.
Scoring and accuracy
How is it scored?
Each trait is scored from the candidate's answers and mapped to a descriptive band. The scoring is deterministic, so the same answers always produce the same report, read by the same fixed logic.
Can people game it?
It is built for normal candidates. Using work situations rather than self-ratings makes it harder to game than a questionnaire, attention and consistency checks catch rushed or careless answers, and a reading is marked less certain when a person's answers disagree. Even so, an assessment like this is honest by design. Someone who is set on presenting a false picture can do it, the same way they can in any self-report or in the interview itself. Keelworth reduces the light inflation most people are tempted by, not deliberate deception, which is one reason it is an aid to your judgment and not the decision, and why the interview and your own read still matter.
Is it validated?
The Keelworth model is built on the Five-Factor Model, the most validated framework in personality science, and it uses an established behavioral method with built-in quality checks. It reads work-style tendencies as a clear, structured signal to use alongside your judgment. It does not predict job performance, and no work-style assessment should be the sole basis for a hiring decision.
What do the bands mean?
Each trait is read as lower, moderate, or higher between two everyday descriptions. The band cuts are calibrated against real responses and refined over time.
What stops someone from just picking the answers that look best?
There is usually no obvious best answer to pick, since the options inside each situation are written to read as about equally reasonable. Attention and consistency checks catch rushed or careless answering, and a favorable-responding flag is raised when someone rates a trait high in the situations but ranks it at the bottom when forced to choose. These checks do not prove honesty; they give you a signal to weigh alongside everything else you know about the person.
Will I get the same result if a candidate retakes it?
The scoring is deterministic, so the same answers always produce the same read, and the logic is the same for every person. If someone retakes it and answers differently, the result can shift, because the read reflects the answers given. The bands describe tendencies, so small changes near a boundary are normal and worth holding loosely.
Using it fairly and lawfully
Can I base a hiring decision on the report?
Use it as one input alongside your own process. It must not be the sole basis for any employment decision, and you are responsible for following employment law.
Does it comply with employment law?
You are responsible for lawful use. The report is descriptive and built to support your judgment, not to make the decision. The responsible use page covers your duties in more detail.
Can I use it to compare candidates?
You can read several candidates for the same role, since every person is scored by the same fixed logic. Use the reports as one input alongside the rest of your process, and apply the assessment the same way for everyone.
Data and privacy
What data do you collect?
The candidate's name, email, and answers. Nothing about health, background, or anything personal. The privacy policy sets out how the data is handled.
Who can see the report?
You, through your dashboard and a private, expiring link. Reports are not public.
Can a candidate see their own report?
The report goes to the employer who ordered it. If you took the assessment yourself, you receive your own report.
Pricing
How much does it cost?
A one-page overview is free. The full report is $9.99 per person, and free during our current beta. There is no subscription and no annual contract.
Is there a guarantee?
Yes. If your first full report is not useful to you, we refund it.
Accounts and sign-in
How do I sign in?
Employers sign in to the dashboard with a one-time link, no password. Use the log in link at the top of the site, enter your email, and open the link we send you.
I did not get my sign-in or report email. What now?
Check your spam folder first. You can resend a candidate's link from your dashboard, and you can ask us to resend a report. If you are still stuck, email us and we will help.