How do you account for people choosing answers based on what they expect you to want instead of answering the questions honestly? I’ve never known anyone who couldn’t see what answers were “correct” in the sense that the large majority of employers are pretty similar in their desires. They want “fast paced” employees over slow, steady types. They want optimistic people over pessimists. If a slow, steady, pessimist takes the test and gives the answers they think you want to hear how can you tell if they are lying?
I ran into these a couple times. Once when I was applying for a retail job at Blockbuster. I needed the job badly enough that I sucked it up and played along. I was able to google the right answers easily. Later on, I was applying for a bank teller job I wanted, but didn’t need. When they asked me to go through a personality test after looking at my resume, I told them to shove it up their asses (although not in so many words). Actually, I linked them an article criticizing the ethics of personality testing in the workplace and respectfully requested they withdraw my application.
Employers have quite enough information available to test my fitness as a worker without trying to get inside my fucking head. How are my job history, education, criminal background, credit history, and personal/professional references not enough to judge my fitness as a candidate? It’s *none of their business *if I’m planning to be a lifer or just using the job as a stepping stone to something better. And even despite best intentions, plans change. Hell, I wasn’t planning to stay long at my current job, and I’ve been here almost 5 years. If employers are only interested in hiring loyal lifers, then they should treat their employees with respect. They should provide them with a living wage and good benefits. They should allow each employee to maintain their work/life balance. People wouldn’t WANT to leave a job like that.
If talented workers refused to take personality tests and employers were negatively affected by that, personality tests would go away. In the current labor market, however, there is no downside for employers who use these. There will almost always be someone out there who is un(der)employed, better-qualified, and willing to do your job for less. So we’re stuck with the bastards for the foreseeable future. But, because it’s unethical to ask these questions in the first place, I have no compunctions with giving, rather than the truth, the answers they want to hear.
Trust me, it’s not that easy. Here’s a sample question from an optimism test - imagine the scenario happens to you and pick your most likely reaction:
**You run for a community office position and win.
a) I devote a lot of time and energy to campaigning.
b) I work very hard at everything I do.
**
Which answer should you choose if you want to pull one over on the company?
A shit-ton, most likely. I was recently disqualified because of one of those tests. I’m sure my application never even saw a human being, so no one read my multiple examples of how my skills would be useful to them.
Because of the aforementioned screening out of good candidates (and then the subsequent bitching that they can’t find qualified candidates – in this economy, that means you’re just. not. looking). Also, a true/false test doesn’t accurately assess a damn thing – the only authentic answer to any of those questions is “it depends,” but of course that’s not an option – nor is this a valid or accurate use of what personality tests actually measure. I may be naturally introverted and skeptical, and you may blindly assume that these are “bad” traits, but that says absolutely nothing about how well I’ve adapted my natural traits to a working environment. Having critical thinking skills and the ability to be pragmatic is actually quite useful at work, especially when work involves making decisions quickly and not wasting time on useless effort. Yet all they (not even “they”, just a computer program that screens your responses against a master key of “acceptable” responses) will ever know of me is that I’m skeptical; they’ll never know how I use that personality trait to the benefit of my employer.
We are more than just innate traits, we are our skills, knowledge, and behavior too.
Yeah, this is really stupid. I’ll bet the executives that have been sold this as a “loss prevention” idea (likely based upon spurious stats) would fail their own test.
A. You want to show the company you will focus on a goal and devote yourself to it.
I’d answer A even though B is the closest thing to the truth, for a generic non-answer. (Truth being. . .“Run for office? Are you off your gourd?”).
Even if my guess is wrong, it still has got to skew the results. People want to get a test correct, and most feel pretty strongly that there IS a right or wrong answer to this type of test, and they need a job. One a certain percentage isn’t answering honestly, doesn’t the data become pointless?
We took a Briggs-Meyers at work, and I ended up an ENTJ, despite the personality “traits” not fitting me much. The head of my group is a real one, and I answered the test based on what I knew would be the “right” answer to her.
Did he get the job? Were I an employer, I’m not sure I’d have the most positive impression of a candidate who “snorted with disgust and disbelief” while being interviewed.
There’s no right or wrong answer, of course, but you picked the one that pessimists tend to pick.
No, I don’t think so. Some tests are ambiguous enough that you’re generally not going to get to a strong score by trying to guess at what the company wants. Many people will try, but you’ll see inconsistency in their responses. So when someone does get an exceptional score, you can be confident it wasn’t through chance or guessing. There are enough applicants that you can just take those top people and still have some left over.
ETA: I’m not assigning judgments; it’s not wrong to be pessimistic. It just makes sales jobs really difficult.
The one I took for my last (relatively high level) position gave sets of three positive or three negative statements to rank. The test was adaptive, and there were continual checks for consistency embedded. It would be possible to game it to emphasize one trait over another, but it’s impossible to make it all positive or all negative. Every choice you made was a tough trade off.
But it was pretty clear there were some screens for obvious deal breakers. Some of the “negatives” were along the lines of “I completely lose my shit when things don’t go my way.” Others were more subtle probes into adaptability, etc. Its not always obvious when statements like “I value consistency” are going to count for you or against you.
So a good test won’t be easy to game, and even if it is, so what? On the bonehead tests, apparently some people do answer “yes” to “it’s okay to steal from the cash register sometimes.” While its not an automatic green light to hire everyone who says “no,” I’m sure as hell not hiring someone dumb, cheeky or light handed enough to say “yes.”
These aren’t (or at least IME haven’t been) during an interview. This is when you go to their site and submit your resume. The process is generally:
1.) Put baby to bed, finish dishes and otherwise finish up household chores for the evening
2.) Log onto MegaCompanyInc website
3.) Upload resume
4.) Cut and paste resume into website’s required form line by line
5.) Upload cover letter
6.) Click submit
7.) Follow link to separate site and take the personality test
Is that a question, even? What does it mean? You campaigned hard to GET the position, or you keep campaigning AFTER winning the position? (The latter being my definition of shallow and, I suppose, pessimistic.) I interpret it more as “what’s more important, doing a good job at everything, or spending time campaigning?”
So the system works (when implemented effectively).
I’m not sure what people are so bent out of shape about. It’s very difficult to hire good people and very expensive when they don’t work out. Would people rather be evaluated on the arbitrary whim of an interviewer? Or would you rather be hired based on a fair and analytical assessment of whether you would be a success, based on actual data?
The fact is, you may not know what personality type companies are looking for. A “docile subservient type” might be great if a company just wants a drone to do back office paperwork. It’s not a great fit for sales, investment banking or consulting. My brash, flippant arrogance is appreciated by senior management when we’re in a meeting with a bunch of underperforming vendors giving us bullshit about why they can’t complete a request. Not so much appreciated when dealing with a bunch of shy, introverted programmers.
Really, if a company makes you fill out a personality test as part of their hiring process, you are better off being as honest as possible. Obviously tone down the more extreme questions that reflect your “fuck you for making me jump through hoops, I just want a job so I can paid to bitch about the job I hate” attitude.
What’s the point trying to fake the test only to get stuck in a job where you are a terrible fit?
If the test is worth anything you can’t. There is no preferred answer.
One example is:
You are working on a project that was assigned, it’s about 75% done and the deadline is up. Do you:
A. Send it to your boss as-is.
B. Work past the deadline and complete it and send when finished.
Now, there’s no right or wrong answer there. There’s no preferred answer. Sure, in the real world you’d have way more context and you’d do a different thing based on circumstances for each project. But that’s not the point. The question isn’t trying to gauge how you’d handle deadlines, it’s not trying to understand how you’re react to a difficult project, it’s not trying to judge your compliance or commitment to work. The answer you choose with little to no context says something about what type of person you are. And, when taken along with 40 similar questions, paints a pretty clear picture of how you go about things and what your strengths and weaknesses are in the context of this company.
Note: There are laws about what types of personality test/profiles can be used as a litmus test for hiring. My company uses one that is meant for highlighting candidates’ strengths and weaknesses, it uses a different one for current employees as a way to foster better communication and motivation. Not sure what makes one okay and the other not, but this stuff is regulated.
And yes, my company struggles to find qualified candidates. Not because of the personality test but because of the aptitude tests. Too many people fail it, but we’re also the most innovative company in our space and most stable. We have high turnover but it’s entirely due to people moving onto bigger and better careers, they are achievers. We rarely have to fire people because they can’t hack it or are disruptive/unprofessional. It’s a trade off, but it’s part of a system that works.
I don’t know these tests are fair analytical assessments. I’ve seen scores of others very similar to mine and they are very different kinds of people. And my experience tells me I can find the desired characteristics by talking to people. Maybe my own personality gives me an advantage there because I don’t hesitate to ask the pointed questions. Everybody in the company takes these tests, yet there are still plenty of washouts. And perhaps it is easier with me because my personality is obvious from talking to me for a short time, but I know of businesses that start with the tests and don’t bother to interview if they don’t see the results they like. That’s foolish in my mind because there is a limited accuracy to the tests and companies may be passing up ideal employees because they haven’t bothered to finish the process.
Interesting. I still think the results of these tests are probably inaccurate much of the time but it is nice to have a better understanding of why they are administered. As a side note, if you had an applicant take the personality test and the aptitude test and they scored very well aptitude wise but the personality test wasn’t what you expected would you still call them in for an interview or would the personality test put them in the discard pile?
Good tests are extremely accurate. Bad tests aren’t. I’ve seen my own test from when I was hired and it was creepily accurate, both strengths and flaws. The full blown personality profile we did post-hire was downright disturbing in how good it was. My fellow managers and my g/f all took the same test and we shared results and they were about 90% accurate. The only part of mine I had any gripe with was that it said I’d be a foodie with a picky, discriminating palette and a affection for obscure indie music…I like Ke$ha and McDonalds, so a strike there, but otherwise flawless. These full-blown profiles are 13 page dossiers that qualitatively describe how your work and communicate and call out other personality types that you work well with and ones you work poorly with with suggestions on how to improve bidirectionally.
Back to the pre-screening test, I don’t see the test until the interview is scheduled. HR administers all the tests. If they pass the aptitude test and they meet the experience/skills criteria on their resume they get an interview scheduled with me by HR. I’m provided a resume, the personality profile and a set of questions which are suggested that I probe deeper on based on that profile (there’s maybe 25 questions, we tend to only pick the 3 or 4 that are most key for the job). We use behavioral interviewing to get a view on the candidate and then we make a decision. The personality test is just one component that’s intended to keep the interviewer from grasping at straws and going down unhelpful lines of questioning in the limited time available.
I suppose it’s possible that there’s a “lunatic” filter on the profile that culls some of the people before they get to me, but it’s never been communicated to me.
I get that these tests can make you feel like far more of a statistic than you already are in the modernized job seeking world. And I also know that there are enough shitty tests out there that poison the perception for all tests. But, in the grand scheme it really is good for applicants who truly want to be evaluated on their merits. It frees interviewers from wasting time on the wrong applicants, and it helps people with a less than perfect resume and a unconventional job history to compete on a more level playing field.
You’d be amazed at how many people are just terrible at selling themselves in the application process. The test helps uncover those people’s strengths in roles where being a marketer/salesman/bullshitter doesn’t help (think QA, accounting, engineering etc.). It also helps me differentiate the hard workers, great problem solvers and good listeners from the superstar bullshitters that tend to ace the interview/resume of the old school.
When used correctly is gets both parties closer to the the truth, and getting close to the truth should be in everyone’s best interest.
I know that I’d much rather have a test + an automated resume upload than just a resume upload. The days of knocking on a door and shaking a hand aren’t coming back, so you’d best adapt.
It’s all a big game. The testors know that people will figure out the answers are that the future employers want to hear. They then make the questions even more vague and almost argumentative to evoke results that are almost sure to trap inconsistencies. It becomes a viscious circle one side against the other. Almost like a competition.
I am so glad I am no longer in the job market. I took a couple of those tests and all they did was piss me off. I gotta tell ya, I would hate to be in my sixties and have to depend on tests like that to make a living nowdays.