Personality Tests in Hiring

[Douglas]

Does anyone have experience with these?

I know a lot of companies use various personality type tests for hiring and managing. It sounds like a valid concept to me and I'd like to start using them, but there are various different ones out there and I'm curious which tests and which services you've found helpful.

 

[greekgeek]

I took one for Taco Bell when I was 15. They never called me back!

 

[Blackhood]

I'm not an employer (at least one with established hiring practices) but I have undergone all sorts of psychometric and personality test. The Myers-Briggs test appears to be the most comprehensive, though all told I feel they are useless.

Testing has told me:

I am a detail oriented person with excellent spatial awareness - excellent pilot.
Ideas driven, Hyperactive and unreliable (Belbin result: Plant) - Terrible pilot
Extrovert, Sensing, Thinking & Judging (Myers Briggs) - Basically temperamental and likely to go on instinct rather than fact when pushed.

Three different results, each administrated by highly qualified people. In the first and last cases I was being tested for courses in which fees are in excess of £100,000 so a great deal of weight was placed on their results.

I have yet to meet anyone for whom a coffee and a chat is less revealing than one of these tests. On the other hand they are *********-covering tools. If you decide to give a guy a higher starting salary or are asked to justify a hire, these are nice metrics to throw at higher ups.

 

[brokencycle]

I not only had to take a personality test, but I also had to take an IQ test for one job. The IQ test was one right off the internet that I had taken once before. I don't know: from my perspective, I don't see how they could help.

 

[in stitches]

i woulnt say i have an official test but its def something i try to gague when hiring

 

[Pennglock]

Are you talking about the kind of tests that asks whether it's okay to steal company ballpoint pens and the like? They're probably useful to screen out the real weirdos in blue-collar jobs, but not much beyond that.

As for an actual Myers Briggs, I think they're very accurate and interesting. But Im not sure how useful they are for hiring. I come out on those tests about as introverted as it gets, but perform well on a job that requires a lot of selling and team leading.

The best way of judging a person's effectiveness on the job is always going to be his past performance.

As an interesting aside, I would be money that a hugely disproportionate portion of this forum tested INTJ on the Myers Briggs.

 

[scientific]

my current employer required me to take one. actually it was the first step in their process and supposedly they value it highly. it was straightforward, slightly bizarre, and could easily be manipulated by someone of sufficient intelligence.

i'm guessing some moron in HR came up w this bc i cant imagine my boss wasting time with such garbage

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

I had to take one last year for a prospective employer. I asked them what type was it and they informed me it was a variant of the Myers Briggs test.

I smiled and asked the muffin who set me up how would she like me to answer it and then explained how I had done psychology at Uni and then we had a chat about the test its self.

I gave them the result they were looking for but didn't take the job in the end.

 

[globetrotter]

in israel these are very very common, I did these type of tests many many times over the years. they are pretty accurate, if done well - but doing well is really expensive, and usually takes soemthing like a two -three day battery of tests.

when I hired people last, I used an online testing system, it was about 25-50 bucks a person tested. I found it very usefull. I got a good report on each applicant before I interviewed them. I can get you the name of the company.

 

[forex]

I never took one but I think it is pretty helpful,you just need to know which one to use for a certain position. There is the "Big Five" personality factors which are pretty helpful: Emotional Stability,Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Openness. Each factor is a spectrum and depending on where you fall on the spectrum,you can tell the personality of the person.
I think it is relevant to most sales positions and positions where a lot of people interaction is involved, i.e. senior management,etc.