Hogan Development Survey Preparation (2026)

The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) is one of the Hogan Assessments and is used to evaluate whether you have the required characteristics to succeed in a specific position.

It's an online personality test that focuses on tendencies that may limit your performance when you're under high stress or in extreme situations. These potentially problematic traits are known as the Hogan "dark side personality traits". 

Here is a snapshot of the HDS test format: 

• Number of questions: 170
• Time Limit: The HDS is not timed but takes approximately 15 - 20 minutes to complete
• Application: It's mostly taken online, together with the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI)

The HDS is predominately used to assess leadership potential as part of leadership development programs or for building teams. 

Knowing the format of a test and familiarising yourself with practice questions is half the battle won. Here's what Hogan Development Survey questions look like: 

Answering HDS questions may seem relatively straightforward.

For example, as someone who is very organized and has high standards for yourself and others, you may answer "strongly agree" on the above statement.

On the HPI, agreeing strongly with a similar statement would be a positive signal, reflecting conscientiousness, reliability, and a commitment to quality.

However, the HDS works differently: Unlike the HPI, which measures your personality at its best, high scores on the HDS indicate risk. Scoring extremely highly here doesn't mean you're impressively detail-oriented. It flags that under stress or pressure, these tendencies are likely to tip into perfectionism and micromanagement, including struggling to delegate, being overly critical of others' work, and creating bottlenecks because tasks don't meet your exacting expectations.

The "right" answer to HDS questions depends on the context of your job. Always ask: Are the potential drawbacks of this trait critical for your position?

In this specific example, if you're in a people-management or leadership role, scoring extremely high could be a red flag.

• Managers who need to trust their teams, empower direct reports, and maintain morale may find that perfectionist and controlling tendencies undermine their effectiveness.
• But if you're in an individual contributor role requiring precision and attention to detail, such as compliance, quality assurance, or financial auditing, a high score on this trait would be well-suited to the position.

Becoming familiar with the types of questions being asked will help you prepare better for test day. You can get more sample questions in the style of HDS and other Hogan assessments in our full Hogan Bundle PrepPack.

The main purpose of the Hogan Development Survey is to measure behavioral tendencies that may impede your job performance.

These are assessed by focusing on 11 personality traits that could be seen as strengths. But, higher scores on each scale also indicate a higher risk for these traits to cause problems in work relationships and performance, especially when stressed, tired, or distracted.

For example, being highly diligent indicates many traits that are considered strengths, including being precise and meticulous with much attention to detail and sticking to high work standards. But, if you're highly diligent, these characteristics could also make you hard to please or be perceived as controlling or overly critical. 

These HDS personality traits are known as the dark side personality traits or job derailers.

Take a look at all 11 dark side personality traits:

Each personality trait is composed of 3 subscales, adding up to a total of 33 subscales. 

Read more about this in the Hogan HDS subscales guide.

HDS scores are given to employers as percentile scores, indicating where you stand on a certain trait scale compared to others.

This is what an HDS report would look like:

As opposed to HPI scores, you can have good and bad HDS scores.

The higher you score on a certain trait, the higher risk the negative aspects of this trait could be to your job performance. But, this does not necessarily mean that a lower score is better.

Let's look at diligence as an example:

• As a manager, having very high standards and paying close attention to detail could risk your ability to meet deadlines and prioritize or finish projects effectively. It could also make you seem controlling and critical, making it difficult for your employees to perform effectively.
• However, as a quality assurance engineer, being detail-oriented is very important, even if it means not seeing the bigger picture. Poor attention to detail and having difficulty working in a systematic manner would actually negatively affect your job performance.

So, high diligence is a negative in one job but a positive in another, reiterating again that whether or not a lower or higher score is better really depends on the context of your job. 

It's helpful to practice for the Hogan HDS to gain a better understanding of each of these dark side traits and what they could tell potential employers about you.

Here are a few guidelines that can help you answer HDS personality test questions effectively.

With the HDS, it’s all about answering in a way that doesn’t put your job success at risk. To do that, you should first consider which characteristics are required to succeed in the job and which tendencies could contradict those.

For example, a highly excitable individual would likely be enthusiastic about working, but might also quickly lose motivation when things don't go as expected. But whether or not this is a negative would depend on the job you're applying for. If you're applying for a research position, for instance, dealing with frustrations and being persistent is a critical competency, so here you would want to avoid a high-risk diligence score.

Each trait on the HDS test has shortcomings for both very low and very high scores. When choosing an answer, it's best to understand both the benefits and the limitations of each score, and aim for the optimal range.

For example, as mentioned, excitability has clear drawback at a very high level. But being somewhat excitable also means having a passion for working, which is extremely important within a team or as a manager. On the low end of the scale, individuals may seem calm and stable, but they'd lack an important sense of urgency and drive for work.

So, this trait’s optimal range would be somewhere between low to high risk (35th - 90th percentile), depending on the position.

It's important to avoid high-risk scores on important traits, so when answering questions related to critical traits, it's best to avoid scores above the 90th percentile. 

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