Personality testing in applications is hardly a new phenomenon. It was first popularized in the 50s, and has been resurging in lower paying or less technical industries for years to decades. William H Whyte's opus "The Organization Man" (1956) will be very informative to anyone looking to learn about why these tests are appearing in our jobs (especially with the current market), especially I think the fifth section, "The Organization Scientist", which is about research and technical workers interfacing with the broader corporate bureaucracy, even though in the context of the time it focuses on chemical and engineering researchers. This interview summarizes the broad strokes of the book:
https://www.thirteen.org/openmind-archive/sociology/the-orga...The Appendix, "How to Cheat on Personality Tests", should also be required reading for anyone entering the career hunt. This is one of its opening paragraphs to see its usefulness:
>By and large, however, your safety lies in getting a score between the 40th and 60th percentiles, which is to say, you should try to answer as if you were like everyone else is supposed to be. This is not always too easy to figure out, of course, and this is one of the reasons why I will go into some detail in the following paragraphs on the principal types of questions. When in doubt, however, there are two general rules you can follow: (1) When asked about the world, give the most conventional, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian answer possible. (2) To settle on the most beneficial answer to any question, repeat to yourself: a) I loved my father and my mother, but my father a little more. b) I like things pretty well the way they are. c) I never worry much about anything. d) I don't care for books or music much. e) I love my wife and children. f) I don't let them get in the way of company work.
It could be updated a bit for the culture of 70 years later, but the general pattern is clear and easy to follow. Looking at the book and interview again, it's striking just how simultaneously insightful and down-to-earth Whyte was; the universal appeal comes from his investigation being both concretely practical "to the nth" and humanistically aspirational "to the nth". He didn't allow his important work to become either a watered-down compromise or an off-kilter harangue, and was too exacting to be unduly impressed either by the "death-rattle" sloganeering of his time's protestors ("Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate" to "The Ascent of Stan","Love is all you need", etc) or by the benevolent assurances of the time's testers ("The Pipe Line", "The Fight Against Genius", "Society as Hero"). His prose is also excellent. They just don't make social scientists like they used to, and the field is worse off for it. Physics envy and/or the paper mill may have distracted from an old societal good that could be a huge boon today.