Tuesday 9 March 2010

Personality testing

I took a personality test for a new job application, and it consisted of 104 groups of three statements, one of which you had to pick as most true about yourself, and one as the least true. They were all starting to look exactly the same by the end. "I like to hypothesise" appeared in many different permutations, as did "I like to win" and "I am comfortable around others". I don't know what the 104 variations of the same questions told the examiners, but I hope they know it's really difficult sometimes to choose between "I finish things" and "I am organised".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And quite often one choice meant I had to say something negative about myself.
PPS - I guess that's all part of the process.

2 comments:

Erin Marie said...

I did some personality testing last year as part of my World Youth stuff, and made the same observation about the same question being asked in several ways.

Apparently it's to ensure consistency - making sure you're not trying to tell people what you think they want to hear.

I'm not sure how helpful personality testing is in the recruitment process, but it certainly did help us when it came to team stuff.

John said...

I'm glad they're trying to ensure consistency, it's just that by the end I'm not sure what I really think about myself. I don't know if I'm being consistent, even when I'm trying to be honest. About half of the optimism questions were worded so that I agreed with them, and the other half weren't. I can imagine that being flagged as "dishonest" when it's just confusing.