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Personality tests in the hiring process: Are you the right fit?

Supposedly I’m a natural born leader, a budding CEO, an ENTJ – Extravert, intuitive, Thinking, Judging – according to the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a personality test designed by mother-daughter duo Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers in 1942.

You may not have taken the test, but you’ve surely heard about it… and may soon hear much more when interviewing for your next job. “Personality tests are becoming increasingly common – and increasingly sophisticated,” says Peter Harris, chief editor at Workopolis.

The granddaddy of them all, the 73-year-old MBTI – which features 72 true or false statements like “You know how to put every minute of your time to good purpose” or “You feel at ease in a crowd” – continues to dominate the landscape. According to CPP, the publishers of the MBTI, 89 of the Fortune 100 companies use the test, which has been translated into 24 languages.

But there are myriad tests just like it.

International recruitment behemoth Hays Canada – which has tracked down executive candidates for major Canadian corporations like Suncor – uses the McQuaig Word Survey psychometric test.

With the McQuaig test, questions for executives include “Were you ever in a situation where you were not kept in the loop on a key decision? Tell me about it” and “Give me an example of a time when the team was moving in a direction that you didn’t fully support.”

Much like the MBTI, the point is to see where candidates sit along several personality spectrums.

“These tests are designed to measure a candidate’s relevant strengths and weaknesses, aspects of their personality, analytical and decision-making skills,” says Harris. “They’re designed without clear right or wrong answers.”

The aim, he says, is to elicit honest responses from a candidate, rather than having them simply tell you what they think you want to hear.

“This is where they differ from the job interview,” adds Harris. “For an interview one can rehearse answers and pretend to be something they are not.”

Scott Dobroski, associate director of corporate communications at Glassdoor – a website which lets job hunters rate and share insight on the interview process at different companies – credits the aftereffects of the recession for the surge in psychometrics and Arduous, more intense hiring processes.

“Employers around the world had to cut back on hiring, and in some cases they had to trim their staff and lay off employees,” says Dobroski. “So now that the economy is bouncing back and we’re seeing a resurgence in hiring – employers are recruiting a cautiously, they’re willing to work harder to find the right talent.”

New York human resources consultant Nat Stoddard, estimates the cost of a CEO miss-hire could run a large-cap company US$50 million including salary, severance and lost productivity/opportunities.

“Companies know they can’t afford to get it wrong – they need to find the right fit, the right talent,” adds Dobroski. “By putting people through the ringer in the interview process, they’re hoping to weed out people who are not the best fit.”

But the intensifying job screening process isn’t just limited to personality tests, adds Harris.

“What more and more employers do is Google candidates and screen their social media profiles,” he says. Whereas in the past handwriting analysis might have given hints about the deeper nature, recruiters for major companies will now scroll through social feeds to paint a wider picture of candidate’s personalities.

“That presents them with a more accurate portrait of what a character is like and what their interests are than can be gleaned from analyzing their cursive style,” he says adding “If someone pretends to be something they’re not on social networks, their friends will call them out.”

Which begs another question.

In this social media age where we’ve gone to greater lengths to tuck away our weaknesses and flaws from the views of others, where we’ve carefully stitched together and curated the moments that make our lives look endlessly entertaining and pushed them out to the world, how can you ever really know who someone is? And does the culture of deception we practice on a daily basis not make us fine-tuned to fake our way through something like a personality test?

“Forcing answers or trying to trick the system is apt to show an invalid response,” says Angie Bjornson, an organizational and career coach with Toronto-based CareerCycles. “Applicants would then likely be asked to repeat the assessment.”

She says that job seekers need to understand that these tests are part of a wider hiring process. And besides, why bother trying to hack a personality test?

“Pretending to be someone you are not is likely to not be a good role fit,” she says.

Harris tends to agree.

“You wouldn’t want to end up working somewhere that you’re a bad fit anyway,” he says. “That’s a miserable situation for everyone.”

Instead he recommends job hunters should just be themselves – albeit a professional version that wants the job.

“Take it with a good attitude – some candidates resent the process and think it’s a waste of time, intrusive or insulting,” he says. “It’s a bad idea to have a negative attitude towards a test you’re taking to evaluate your attitude, so stay positive.”