"Employers love personality tests", the article starts out. Should they? Should they rely on this method to determine whether or not a person is fit to be hired for their position? Personality tests, in my opinion, can be very misleading. As much as they may be able to read a person better then if they just told you about themselves, I feel that they can also be unreliable. Most personality tests use questions that are indirect ways of actually asking what they want to know. Sometimes these questions are not easily answered. For example, when Malcolm Gladwell talks about the Myers-Briggs test example with being a "Judger" or "Perceiver". He goes on to say how he can't really choose between one or the other because he finds himself following both examples at different times, and I agree with this example completely. I've taken many personality tests before, and I find myself annoyed because I usually am not just one way or the other. I feel that I face this issue with a lot of the questions. Is that still portraying a good representation of my personality then? I'm not sure it is.
What I also found to be very interesting was the way psychologist Lon Geiser interpreted the stories Gladwell came up with for that test. I don't see that ever being a reliable test, because like Gladwell argues, the stories can be taken in many ways. It all depends on the person's opinion who would be analyzing them.
I believe your argument is correct Linda, however there is one thing I'd like to point out about hiring based on personality. The Meyers Briggs personality test was developed as sort of an aptitude test for returning soldiers from World War 2. It is heavily dissuaded by the Meyers-Briggs foundation in using its tests for employee hiring. This is just an informal restriction as employers can hire however they want. I would also believe that hiring under a personality test might be grounds for discrimination and could have possible negative repercussions. Lastly I'd like to say that any company that would hire using a personality test as a main factor in their process would likely not get satisfactory results, because of the subjective nature of some of the questions. In short I agree with you on everything you've, just adding my two cents.
ReplyDeleteI agree on the fact that personality tests give inaccurate results but I also think that it is a great way for the employer to find out a little bit of information about the employee. Employers are looking for someone that will accelerate within the company. If the two (employer and employee) are meeting for the first time, they obviously know little information about one another. The test could hopefully show how the individual is going to act in the future. I say this because someone might be a hard worker the first couple weeks and then slowly grow comfortable with their work environment and become lazy.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea that employers should use personality tests to try and learn a little more about potential employees since they very little about them prior to the first meeting. However, one caution with doing so is that the employee can skew the results to make it appear they have a personality that they don't actually have, since certain fields require a certain personality. For example, someone who isn't outgoing could answer the questions to make it appear as though they are. Other than that, I totally agree with your idea that the tests can be useful in the beginning stages of getting to know an employee
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