DocuSign PI Assessment Practice
The Predictive Index published a case study on DocuSign's sales hiring. It is one of the clearest published examples of an employer building a behavioral benchmark from its own top performers and then measuring candidates against it.
What the Case Study Documents
DocuSign is an American electronic-agreement company whose sales organization grew very quickly, and the Predictive Index case study about it is specifically a hiring story rather than a team-building one. That distinction matters: PI sells hiring tools and performance tools, and plenty of its published customer stories are about the latter.
The mechanism it describes is worth understanding before you sit anything. In PI’s words, “the executive team reviewed top performers and created a PI Job Assessment™ based on their behavioral profiles.” In other words DocuSign measured the people already succeeding in the role, turned that into a target profile, and then compared candidates against it, using PI Interview Guides to probe the gaps in a conversation afterwards.
PI reports that 900 Behavioral Assessments went out in a single year and that 250 sales executives and representatives were hired, during a period when DocuSign grew from 700 to 2,500 employees. The case study was published in November 2019 and describes a growth phase before that, so treat it as documented history rather than a guarantee about today’s process.
The PI Behavioral Assessment
This is the assessment the case study names, and its format is unusual. The Predictive Index describes it as two questions over one list: candidates “are presented with two questions, each pertaining to a single shared list of adjectives.” The first pass asks which words describe how others expect you to behave at work; the second asks which describe who you really are. PI states it is untimed and takes about six minutes.
Results are reported on four drives, using PI’s own definitions:
- Dominance– how a person naturally approaches control, independence and decision-making on the job.
- Extraversion– how people communicate, persuade and engage with others.
- Patience– how someone prefers to manage time, pace and change.
- Formality– how strongly a person seeks structure, rules and precision in their work environment.
The PI Cognitive Assessment
PI sells a cognitive test alongside the behavioral one, and employers frequently send both. The case study does not say DocuSign used it, so this section is about the product rather than a claim about DocuSign’s process. It is worth knowing anyway, because it is the half with a clock.
The Predictive Index publishes the specification: 50 cognitive reasoning questions in 12 minutes, covering verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning mixed together rather than separated into sections. That is roughly 14 seconds a question. PI states that scores reflect speed and accuracy, and that the assessment uses a linear-on-the-fly design so that each candidate receives a unique set of items. That is not the same as a test that gets harder when you do well: it means different people see different questions of comparable difficulty, which is an anti-cheating measure rather than an adaptive one.
Where DocuSign Hires
The documented assessment use is in sales. The rest of these role families describe DocuSign’s hiring generally, not a published statement about which roles include a test.
- Account executives, sales development and inside sales
- Customer success and renewals
- Software engineering, product and design
- Marketing, finance and corporate functions
Practice the Tests
Behavioral
Cognitive
The full range is on the Predictive Index practice hub.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does DocuSign still use the Predictive Index?
We cannot say. The case study was published by the Predictive Index in November 2019 and documents that DocuSign built its sales hiring around PI in the growth phase before that. Whether that is still true of the role you are applying for is something only your recruiter can confirm.
Which test will I be sent?
The case study names the PI Behavioral Assessment and the PI Job Assessment. The PI Job Assessment is completed by the hiring team, not by you: it is how the target profile gets built. Employers often pair the Behavioral Assessment with the PI Cognitive Assessment, but nothing in this source says DocuSign did.
Is there a right answer on the behavioral assessment?
No, and the Job Target approach is the clearest illustration of why. The benchmark is built from DocuSign’s own high performers in that specific role, so there is no generic winning profile to imitate, and a manufactured one will be probed in the structured interview that follows.
Are your tests the real DocuSign assessment?
No. These are independent practice exercises built to match each test’s published format. They contain no real test items and are not supplied, reviewed or endorsed by DocuSign or the Predictive Index.