best way to answer on personality test (for a job)? help REALLY appreciated

[DangerAardvark]

One of the main things these tests are looking for is internal consistency. So if you answered that you would lie to someone if you strongly disagreed with them just to keep the peace you will get negative marks for answering that it is always wrong to lie on another section.

So they want a liar. But not a liar who will lie about lying?

 

[sactoking]

You prefer to wait until you start the job to release the shit storm of personality issues?

No, a good interviewer should be able to isolate most personality issues.

These tests only serve two purposes, neither of which is legitimate:
1) The employer says that only certain "personalities" can succeed and hire only those candidates that score in a certain fashion. Financial companies and sales companies use this quite often. They reason that if most of their 'successful' sales people score a certain way they will only hire future applicants that score that same way. Depending on their desired score "traits" they effectively eliminate up to 95% of the applicant pool for a stupid 'correlation, not causation' reason.
2) The employer wants an employee to take a test so they can "better understand" the employee. Only a truly enlightened and effective manger will be able to use the results effectively. Since most managers are neither enlightened nor effective what usually ends up happening is as soon as the manager gets the results they start making assumptions, pigeonholing people, and in the worst instances refusing to deal with people they are "incompatible" with.

Using pre- or post-employment personality screening is, in most cases, no more effective than basing hiring decisions on Zodiac sign and horoscope.

 

[ShawnD1]

Maybe it's like when your teacher asks you to write an essay to prove that you're not a retard. As long as your paper demonstrates that you read the assigned book, you'll pass.

IMO, putting black and white answers often means someone is retarded. I'll take an example form the P&N forum. When talking about some kind of socialized service like school or healthcare, someone too far left will rule out anything that involves any private industry at all because they are under the firm black-and-white believe that all private industry is bad. Someone too far to the right will rule out any kind of government subsidy because "poor people should rot in the streeets!!!"
Both extremes are profoundly retarded. The people who are not retarded are in that grey middle area.

 

[gophins72]

In my experience if an employer wants you to take a MBTI or Kolbe or related test as a condition of employment you will want to run away as fast as possible. Nothing good ever comes of a pre-employment personality test.

I once had a boss that made everyone take this test as a gift so everyone can see how to improve themselves. In the end, he kept the results on a thumb drive and nothing came of it except he, with his newfound knowledge, acted in "this type of person greatly dislikes this type of behavior" around people he disliked.

OP, just give them what they want to hear.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

The answers to these are on the internet. Do not answer them honestly.

 

[sactoking]

I once had a boss that made everyone take this test as a gift so everyone can see how to improve themselves. In the end, he kept the results on a thumb drive and nothing came of it except he, with his newfound knowledge, acted in "this type of person greatly dislikes this type of behavior" around people he disliked.

OP, just give them what they want to hear.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

That boss is/was a complete moron. As any Organizational Behavior specialist will tell you you cannot "improve" personality or change others' personality, the best you can do is learn to deal with yours and others' personalities.

Personality is the most hard-wired, least-likely-to-change character trait.

 

[Whisper]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

That boss is/was a complete moron. As any Organizational Behavior specialist will tell you you cannot "improve" personality or change others' personality, the best you can do is learn to deal with yours and others' personalities.

Personality is the most hard-wired, least-likely-to-change character trait.

It really depends on how you define personality, and what aspects of it you're examining. There are quite a few social scientists who don't buy into the idea of anyone having a set of well-defined, universally-applicable personality "traits" or "characteristics." Rather, they see humans as being a dynamic set of interactions between overarching themes and situationally-dependent processes.

Personally, I am of the opinion that certain characteristics that might be deemed a part of your "personality" can indeed be changed, although in most cases only to a certain extent, and often not in all situations.

 

[DougoMan]

What a stupid test. I don't see how agreeing or disagreeing with anything on that list would suggest that you have a personality problem.

I'd be seriously pissed off if an employer made me take that test.

Are we all just drones that have to think alike now?

Be honest and be glad you didn't get the job if they reject you.

 

[ahenkel]

I always feel like a sociopath when I have to take personality tests for jobs.

 

[MovingTarget]

That sounds a lot like the test I had to take before I took a job at Best Buy a few years back. Where are you applying again?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

It's really quite simple, figure out how you would honestly answer and choose the opposite.

 

[sactoking]

I'm using 'personality' as used in MBTI and Kolbe style tests.

It's not that 'personality' in that context can't be changed, it's that change is slow, incremental, and cannot be forced upon others. Personality also cannot be "improved" in that the types of personality described in those tests are not better or worse than others.

Now, if someone is thinking that "bitch" is a type of personality then yes that can be changed and improved but I've yet to see a legitimate business-use personality test that doesn't read like a horoscope (a la MBTI and Kolbe).

 

[Whisper]

I'm using 'personality' as used in MBTI and Kolbe style tests.

It's not that 'personality' in that context can't be changed, it's that change is slow, incremental, and cannot be forced upon others. Personality also cannot be "improved" in that the types of personality described in those tests are not better or worse than others.

Now, if someone is thinking that "bitch" is a type of personality then yes that can be changed and improved but I've yet to see a legitimate business-use personality test that doesn't read like a horoscope (a la MBTI and Kolbe).

Which is definitely one of the reasons why many psychologists aren't very keen on those types of tests themselves. Or if they are, they prefer them to be used in ways that most companies probably don't.

I definitely agree, though, that any type of personal change isn't going to occur in the absence of some sort of internal impetus.

 

[ShawnD1]

Which is definitely one of the reasons why many psychologists aren't very keen on those types of tests themselves. Or if they are, they prefer them to be used in ways that most companies probably don't.

Psychologists aren't keen on them because they don't help the psychologist in any way. My patient is outgoing? Well no shit; I already know that because I talk to him for an hour every week!
It's more useful for employers because they don't know you at all. If the job involves dealing with customers, it would probably help a lot if the employees were extroverted instead of introverted. If it's a logical job, thoughtful people might be more useful than emotional people. If you want to interview 10 people and 100 people applied, a personality test might be a good way to cut through some of the people you don't want.

 

[Paladin3]

I worked at a large Southern California theme park that implemented a similar test via the Internet that prospective employees had to pass in order to get their application even considered. As the summer season approached and we were staffing up, we noticed a marked reduction in the number of incoming applications. Turned out that in the first two months the system had rejected over 4k applications.

HR was so invested in the wonderful new labor saving technology that nobody would call the system a flop. They quietly started printing and leaving out huge stacks of rejected application and the scrambling department heads had to weed through them and call to schedule interviews.

The company is still using the system, from what I've been told.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

AMC movie theatres asks a set of questions like this: 90 questions of this crap.