Personality Tests: Do they Affect Your Career?

by Nik Nur Athirah

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When you go for a job interview and part of the process is to answer a personality test, it makes you wonder, is it important? The answer to this question is yes, it is.

Personality tests are widely used in companies to recruit new employees. The question is, what does it inform them of? Will it affect your chances? Are you going to lose the job if your personality test results are bad? Funnily enough, it does influence job decision but in a whole new different aspect. The result of your personality test will tell your employer the long-term effect of having you in the company.

We must bear in mind that the recruitment team holds a heavy responsibility. They are the ones who will change the lives of the applicants as well as the company. That’s a lot of pressure. So, they require a relevant assessment tool that can show them which candidate is suitable for their company’s culture. In comes the personality tests.

Some of the famous personality tests used by employers are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the DiSC behavioral inventory. These tests give the employers an in-depth analysis of the candidate’s personality. What kind of person you are, what is your strength, who do you work well with and so much more. Let’s break down some of the personality tests and see how they fit in the recruitment process.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or known as MBTI is a personality test that was made by Isabel Myers to help people understand themselves so they could find jobs that they honestly enjoy doing. Using Jung’s Theories of Type, Isabel managed to achieve that goal and the Myers-Briggs test constantly updates its format to suit the current need. What this test provides to the employer is that it can help them understand what the potential employees will need to fulfill their role successfully. One example of an MBTI type is the ISTJ, The Duty Filler, whose power of concentration enables them to fulfill their identified goal. However, ISTJ types are known to overthink when they are under stress. Now, with their personality identified, the people in the recruitment process know how to handle the potential employees without wasting too much time on a trial period.

Nowadays, even global volunteering organizations are using personality tests to match the members and volunteers to suitable projects.

“It’s (MBTI) really useful. You need to understand your members if you want to build a team with them. Match your personality with people who you can work with. Without it, you simply do what you think is right but not for the other person so, it won’t be a healthy team.” The following remark was given by Nur Aimi Aqilah, Vice-President of Incoming Global Talent in AIESEC in University of Malaya. Having experienced the repercussion of a bad personality match, she cautions on the dangers of taking personality tests lightly because no one likes a bad experience.

Although the MBTI is usually used during a recruitment process, it is not the only one. Smaller companies do prefer to use a simpler test to generally understand a candidate’s main traits. An example of a test that is used is the DOPE test. A test that shows which type of bird you are. The bird types are Dove, Owl, Peacock and Eagle, thereby making up the letters in ‘DOPE’. It is a toned down version of the MBTI and makes it easier for smaller companies to choose a much more versatile employee. Each type of bird signifies a certain trait of that potential employee and usually everyone has a mixture of all the types but some of them are more dominant than the other. Doves are people-oriented while Owls are detailed-oriented. A person with a dominant Peacock is ambitious and the person with a dominant Eagle is charismatic.

Having seen the results of your personality test and the type you belong to, the recruitment team will be able to find understand how you will fit in the company and the job you apply for.

Founder and Managing Director of eBright, a company specializing in children’s soft skills, Kevin Khoo, states that he uses the DOPE bird personality test to understand the type of personality the candidates have and where they would fit in as part of the team.

“I use the two dominant birds from the candidate’s result to choose which job-scope is good for them. If you have Dove and Owl as dominants then you are a person who is very detailed and precise so I will put you in the administration department.”

When asked the significance of such a test in the recruitment process, Abdul Rahman Ismail, one of the employees in eBright who went through the DOPE test, had this to say.

“I was given the position that I applied for and more. Since my DOPE test showed that Peacock and Eagle were my two most dominant types, I was given more responsibility in creating ideas than doing tedious work because my boss knows my strength and wouldn’t give me jobs that will take a long time for me to do.”

If an employee is mistakenly placed in a high-paying job but lacks any interest or initiative, bad things will happen. That employee will have low engagement with the team and no relevance to the work. They will feel hopeless, fatigue and affect the whole team’s results. Eventually leading to the employee either getting fired or quitting altogether.

This is probably one of the worst-case scenarios to happen in a company. All the time and money consumed during the recruitment process will go to waste just by overlooking the personality assessment. Thus, the tests are part of a company’s defense strategy.

Even though personality tests are not the decisive factor that will determine whether you get the job or not, it is crucial in helping to see whether you will be able to keep the job.

Personality plays an important role in answering two important questions: where your motivation lies and where you fit in a team. Faking a personality test will give you no benefits at all. There are no wrong answers in a personality test, just bad matches.

Think twice before you give an answer in a personality test. Giving nonchalant answers will result in an employers’ wrong assumption about you. It will definitely change your future in your career, even your happiness. Do the tests properly and hope that it will not bite you back in the future.