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Most of us find some aspect of our jobs that require us to modify
our preferred behavior. Perhaps you’re more assertive at work than
you really feel comfortable with or maybe you’re more ‘inclusive’.
The point is that we can and do deal with the demands of the
workplace by adopting a ‘work’ personality. Most of us do it
fairly effortlessly. We accept that the world of work is not about
living within our ‘comfort zone’ all of the time and we all have
the ability to step outside of our natural behavioral preferences
in order to get something done. The problem is that the way
personality questionnaires are applied in the real-world takes no
account of this.
One argument that you may hear, is that if you try to influence
the test results then you will have to operate ‘outside’ of your
personality type for 40 hours a week. This is overstating the case
to the point of absurdity; very few people would even consider
applying for a job which was totally unsuitable for them. You do
not need to fake a 180 degree change in your personality, but you
may need to modify how one personality trait appears in the
results of a test. This is perfectly reasonable as most of us
modify our behavior at work anyway and these tests are attempting
to infer behavior from our personality traits.
Despite all of the platitudes to the contrary, either you have the
‘right’ personality or you get rejected in favor of someone who
has. The idea that there are no right and wrong answers is
patently untrue. The test publishers and the organizations that
use the tests admit as much when they say ‘personality
questionnaires help to replace subjective judgments with objective
ones’. If there are no right and wrong answers, then what exactly
is the test replacing subjective judgments with?
If you want the job then you had better find out what it is that
the employer is looking for and make sure that your personality
questionnaire answers reflect it. At the very least you need to
make sure that you don’t blow your chances because one trait comes
over as too extreme or inappropriate. Remember, almost all of the
interviewees have to be rejected.
The amount of effort you need to spend on ‘engineering’ your
personality questionnaire answers depends on two factors.
Firstly, the organization. Some organizations have a distinct
personality type that they actively try to recruit. This will
usually be obvious from both their marketing material and their
reputation. Any organization that promotes its people as being of
a certain ‘type’ will probably be using personality questionnaires
to reject anyone who doesn’t fit with the corporate image that
they want to promote. This is common in management consultancies
and in jobs above a certain level in big corporations.
Secondly, the job. Some interviewers suffer from a very blinkered
approach to what type of personality is required for particular
jobs. For example, if the profile for successful salesmen
indicates that extroversion is a desirable characteristic, you had
better be sure that you score highly on this trait if you want the
job. Whilst you don’t want to pursue jobs that you are obviously
unsuited for, you need to make sure that your personality
questionnaire answers won’t cause any ‘red-flags’ to appear in
selection for jobs that you feel comfortable with, or where you
already have a track record.
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