31–40 of 251 posts
Any personality test is bad in my opinion and I wouldn't like being tested in it but this statement and article feels like feel good pseudoscience. Is there any data on any kind of test that it works? At least for Myers-Briggs it has been tested and it hasn't been proved or disproved.
In Europe I've never seen these tests as an entrance exam; just yesterday I watched Persona and was surprised that McDonalds of all companies seems to require such testing. What's the deal here? Companies are so desperate for any criterion to reduce the pile of applicants? Do they believe it helps? Do they look for a few of these profiles and never the others? Hiring is hard, I know, but I only know of these models i…
It's actually pretty draining and difficult doing multi-way comparisons between so many candidates, let alone doing it day after day. And recruiters/HR are only human.
So any technology or approach that can attach a number/rank a job application is seen as hugely welcome. If Bob scored 56 out of 100, and Sue scored 87, then even if we have doubts about the methodology, surely we can still go ahead and reject Bob based on such a large difference! Then we don't need to spend a lot of time looking at Bob's resume, we can screen him out early on.
The dirty secret is that it doesn't even matter that much whether the scoring process has any real science behind it - the mere fact of attaching a number is so desirable that employers are wide open and begging for this kind of capability. At the end of the day, who really cares if Alice was better that Bob or not? Virtually no companies have the HR performance monitoring in place to even know this anyway.
That's why in the HR world, psych testing firms are not quite fly by night, but they are the kind of companies an entrepeneurial type can set up in a couple of weeks with very little tech but a lot of powerpoints, and immediately start selling to really big companies that will funnel a lot of money their way. Such companies normally make a big song and dance about the scientific verifiability of their technology/approach, even to the extent of having on-staff psychologists.
Many people would feel though that the process has little more validity than reading tea leaves, or drawing up astrology charts.
I appreciate it when a company asks about or tests my Myers-Briggs type early in the hiring process, because then I know that I don't want to work for them, and they wouldn't be happy with me either. Win/win.
It was a half-day seminar. "Professionals" gave the tests and told everyone their type. That took only an hour. The rest of the time was spent doing role-playing, where you were supposed to use your coworkers' MB types to adjust your interaction with them in various settings.
It was a waste of time then and I bet it still is.
To me, MBTI or Big 5 (not the actual tests, but their framing of aspects of personality) are mental tool kits for trying to make better predictions from limited data (i.e., the interview process). As a manager, I've found them incredibly helpful for avoiding problems (i.e., assigning the wrong task to a person).
Interestingly, in my personal experience, I've found logicians (ISTJs in MTBI) seem to be the most resistant to quantifying aspects of personality.
It used to be used at a large company that I worked for. The preferred types were RED and BLUE around 2010. GREEN AND YELLOW I remember were overlooked for promotions. Everyone was trying to be the biggest idiot in the room to prove they were RED person. It propogated bullying and prevented good teamwork. Credit Stealing was legitimized with preference for RED. If Helen Fischer is correct and RED people are the closest to testesterone heavy people, the RED people have the shortest neural circuits.
The article makes the mistake assuming that companies are using these tests to maximize for performance, when in fact they are trying to maximize internal culture fit.
Where said internal culture is either "people who'll believe in fortune tellers if they're wearing lab coats" or "people so desperate for employment and/or validation they'll cast aside their values to fit in".
No right minded person would hire me for an “energetic, outgoing go-getter” job.
This doesn't answer the "Why" in the headline "Why Companies Are So Interested in Your Myers-Briggs Type".
"And that’s it — there’s simply very little data on how well the Myers-Briggs (and other type-based personality tests) measures personality and even less on how it might predict job performance."