IFS Assessment Practice
A behaviour questionnaire in a software hiring process surprises people. Here is what IFS is actually using, what it measures, and why it is not the technical screen you were bracing for
Why an enterprise software company sends a DISC questionnaire
IFS is an enterprise software company, building ERP, field service and asset management products, headquartered in Sweden with a large international engineering and consulting workforce. Thomas International publishes a case study naming IFS as a user of the Behaviour assessment in hiring.
Candidates applying to software companies expect a coding challenge and a system design conversation, so a personality questionnaire reads as either a gimmick or a trap. It is neither. Enterprise software is a consulting-heavy business: implementation consultants, solution architects, customer success and pre-sales staff spend their days inside other companies' organisations. Behavioural fit is a real selection criterion for those roles in a way it is not for a pure back-end engineering hire.
The format
Twenty-four sets of four adjectives. In each set you pick the word most like you and the word least like you. That is 48 selections from 96 words in total. Thomas does not time it, advertises it at under eight minutes, and supports it on any device.
The four DISC factors it reports are Dominance, described as a response to power, Influence, a response to people, Steadiness, a response to pace, and Compliance, a response to policy. Thomas describes both ends of each factor in neutral terms. There is no good column.
Three graphs and what each is for
- Work Mask.Built from your twenty-four “most like me” choices. How you believe you are expected to behave at work.
- Behaviour Under Pressure.Built from your “least like me” choices. The instinctive style you fall back on when the project is late.
- Self Image. The first graph minus the second, which is why it can be negative. Read as the size of the adjustment you are making.
For a software implementation business, that second graph is genuinely informative. Every ERP rollout has a bad week, and how someone behaves in it matters to a customer relationship worth years of revenue.
The forced-choice format defeats optimisation, by design
Every set makes you trade one desirable quality against another. Driven against dependable. Persuasive against precise. There is deliberately no option to be all four, which is exactly what a candidate trying to look ideal wants and exactly what the instrument refuses to provide.
Layered on top of that, the third graph is arithmetic on the first two. A profile engineered to look like an ideal consultant sits in the work mask and rarely survives into the pressure profile, and the gap between them is precisely what a Thomas-trained reader interprets as behaviour modification. In practice that turns into an interview question rather than an advantage.
IFS role families
Customer-facing
- Implementation and solution consultants
- Pre-sales and solution architects
- Customer success and support
Product and engineering
- Software engineering and platform
- Product management and design
- Quality engineering
Commercial and corporate
- Sales and partner management
- Marketing, finance and people functions
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Thomas PPA the same as a DISC test?
It is a DISC instrument, yes, but not interchangeable with every product marketed as DISC. The PPA has its own item set, its own three-graph output and its own ipsative scoring, so practice on a generic DISC quiz is not the same as knowing this format.
Do I need to prepare for it?
There is nothing to revise. What preparation buys you is familiarity with the forced-choice mechanic and an understanding of the output, so you are not seeing the format for the first time and are not surprised by what your recruiter refers to afterwards.
Will IFS also send an aptitude test?
The Thomas case study on IFS names the Behaviour assessment only. Thomas also sells the Aptitude assessment, the GIA, which is a five-task timed cognitive battery. If your invitation says the test is timed and mentions a mouse, that is the GIA rather than the PPA.
Can I see my profile?
Ask. Thomas reports are written to be discussed, and a debrief is the most useful thing a candidate can get from a personality assessment regardless of the hiring outcome.
Practise the format
Our Thomas practice hub runs the PPA exactly as Thomas builds it and shows all three graphs afterwards. If your IFS process includes a recorded interview stage, the video interview practice covers that separately.