As some of you know, I’m an unemployable loser. Today I had a phone call with a gentleman hiring for financial advisors. I’ve not studied finance proper, but I did study economics. The thing is that this is a sales position. I’ve never done sales. He tells me that they get people good at analysis, but they find that they’re poor at sales and therefore in bad shape. “Do I expect this to be a problem?” he asks. Salesman answer: “Hell no! I could sell ice cubes to an eskimo!” Or some other culturally insensitive but over confident remark. Instead I hem and haw and say something lame like, “Gosh, I’ve never really done sales – but I get along with people…” Or something even more lame. I can hear him deflate on the other end of the line. So he emails me some personality test that all prospective employees fill out. Way to make a first impression.
How good are you at lying on paper? I’m a terrible liar in person, but find it easy to “talk up” my skills in written applications. That is, now that I’ve learned that the complete truth gets you nowhere in the area of job applications.
I once sat one of those on-line tests for a prospective job. The questions were a mix of problem-solving and comprehension questions that were designed to test one’s IQ and survey-style questions that were supposed to evaluate one’s personality. The personality questions were so awful that I figured attempts to lie would be horribly obvious, so I told the truth. An example of one of the questions:
Which would you prefer to do?
(a) attend a pottery class;
(b) work in the garden; or
© balance your cheque book.
(This was for a job in the corporate finance area, incidentally.) Figuring NO employer would believe anyone in their right mind would select ©, I truthfully picked either (a) or (b). I followed a similar pattern for the rest of the test – I picked honest answers which showed that I’d rather spend time doing “hobby” type stuff (like gardening) than “work” tasks (like adding numbers or writing reports).
(And who wouldn’t? There’s a good reason why people are PAID to do their jobs – because simply they’re not as enjoyable as hobbies!)
Of course I didn’t get the job. I saw my results later which showed that I thrashed the two benchmarks for the IQ questions (they compare you against other professionals in the industry as well as against those in executive or managerial positions), but flunked the “aptitude” test.
(My honest answers “revealed” that I would rather be a farmer or an artist than an analyst. :rolleyes: )
So my recommendation is to lie on the personality test; it’ll probably be an awful, inaccurate test of your true suitability for the position.