Career filter: Interview then… personality test!?
I’ve worked with many of the supplied tests and services, and found most of them to be crap that tells me the same commonsense things I can observe in a person. More recently I’ve been working with a startup that designs such tests specific to a company’s needs or preferences and it’s been a lot of fun and pretty damn interesting. As folks say above, the best approach is to not worry about it much, answer honestly and try to avoid trying to “outthink” the test, because that leads to scattered results that make you look neurotic. It’ll be full of annoying questions that don’t have nice tidy answers (answer from first reaction, don’t try to guess what they “want” you to say), and it will seem to repeat itself often… just roll with it. You’ll be fine.
File this under workplace BS like saying “nice weather” and “how was your weekend.” It’s ordinary, it means nothing. Just pray to whatever god you have that this new job doesn’t require, at some point, sending a day in a conf room with your co-workers taking tests and going over the results as a group… or at least that, if it comes to that, you get breakfast and a decent lunch. There are employers who make their employees climb ropes.
Adding to what ten pounds of inedita said, sometimes there is a disconnect between the way these tests are designed and the way they are actually used. Most of these tests have a couple of questions intended to reveal the more obvious liars, like: Have you ever thought of doing something illegal? Or, Have you ever broken a law (for example, by driving faster than the posted speed limit)? The test designers expect you to answer “yes” to these questions, because that’s the truthful answer for 100% of the population. A “no” answer should set off a red flag. But these tests are often administered by idiots. So if you are applying for a security job in small city X, and the supervisor takes a look at your response, he may think “I can’t hire this lawbreaker!” That’s fine. No one wants to work for an idiot anyway.
