personality tests before employment

[weflyhigh]

what are employers looking for? last one I took seemed to have some common themes:

- enjoying being around people?
- confidence
- finishing a task all the way through
- reliability
- emotions (do you get anxious?)
- are you exhausted at the end of the day?
- take risks or prefer less-efficient straight-forward way

and then they started to rank these against each other (for example, it would say, pick which is most like you: a. I make sure tasks get finished completely; b. I rarely get flustered; c. I prefer to work alone d. sometimes I lack confidence - and then you have to rank them)

one question was "I'm not afraid to confront someone for cutting me off in line T/F" how do you answer that? confidence in confronting, but also getting emotional (bad?)


basically,
what are employers looking for?

 

[akahoovy]

When I got a job at a valet, I saw the piece of paper that had the results on it. The scores were a bell-curve, highest point in the middle, and I fell between two hash marks that indicated the extremes.

I pretty much answered the average answers for the most part. You probably don't want to mention anything about being violent, thinking violence is OK, and you definitely want to get the idea across that you're not even sure what illegal drugs are.

edit: You want to be social and hard working. I'm not sure how to answer the confronting someone in line thing. I wouldn't answer everything exactly as they want to hear, as that will probably weed you out.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Probably best not to mention how high you fly.

 

[TheDev]

Say true to the question about being cut in line. Confronting doesn't necessarily mean your willing to punch the guy. You could politely confront them.

 

[Destiny]

Most questions are repeats but worded differently than previous questions throughout the test... just make sure your answers stay consistant accross the board and you should score pretty high...

 

[gothamhunter]

These make me laugh. I'm applying for a customer service position, so OBVIOUSLY I'm going to choose that I'm quiet and don't like confrontation or working with people /sarcasm

 

[Kntx]

For these tests choose the answers they want to hear

 

[rudder]

one question was "I'm not afraid to confront someone for cutting me off in line T/F" how do you answer that? confidence in confronting, but also getting emotional (bad?)


[\QUOTE]

The questions asks if you are afraid to confront someone... not that you would if someone cut in line. So basically there is no way to tell what a company is looking for. You could interpret questions like this many different ways. Basically a guessing game unless you know someone in HR.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

For these tests choose the answers they want to hear

Except the questions are worded in ways that make it impossible to guess the right answer.

When I masturbate in public, I do it in front of a school:

A. Always
B. Most of the time
C. Sometimes
D. Almost never

There's no good answer to that question. Even if you answer D, you're still saying you masturbate in public, you just generally stay away from schools while you do it.

Incidentally, this is why I was fired from writing personality tests.

 

[SketchMaster]

I took one when I applied to bestbuy and I got a perfect score.


...I lied my ass off.


Here's how I turned out: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=61646

 

[psyjsay]

there are unified behavioral expectations that everyone should be law abiding citizens

john holland 1997, states that there are jobs for every personality type and that personality type seeks the job that it is fit for. There is no unifying all jobs expect this particular personality type over all the others. However holland labeled seven personality archetypes. what briggs attempted to do was actually quantify components of a personality. which is probably why mangers rely on it the most in their hiring decisions. Because despite an individual seeking a job description that my match their personality what a manger is really doing is looking at the discrete components of that person's personality that may or may not conflict with their own. The boss has to be able to get along with the potential employee, even if they don't have to be personal friends with the employee.

 

[sactoking]

After bouncing around at a few different jobs over the years and really studying corporate personality tests and their uses in grad school my rule of thumb is never take a job that requires a test. Honestly, nothing good can come of it.

 

[mb]

Except the questions are worded in ways that make it impossible to guess the right answer.

When I masturbate in public, I do it in front of a school:

A. Always
B. Most of the time
C. Sometimes
D. Almost never

There's no good answer to that question. Even if you answer D, you're still saying you masturbate in public, you just generally stay away from schools while you do it.

Incidentally, this is why I was fired from writing personality tests.

Have you ever tried sugar... or PCP?