Re: Personality Tests, Myers-Briggs etc
Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2021 2:46 pm
As has been pointed out above, appointing someone is a lengthy process and shortlisting generally gets harder as the pool of applicants gets bigger. However, the use of these tests, frequently way outside the parameters of what they were originally conceived for, bothers me. Not only are they an incredibly blunt tool, but I suspect much misused. Great, you can divide your applicants into 16 personality types - but are you correct in assuming that you know which personality type will work for that particular job?* And then there's gaming the system - there are already websites where you can practise these tests. In all you can easily lose people who would have been good.
*Not that that isn't true of a more manual process - I'm just against the idea of reducing things to simple labels. For example the first postdoc position I applied for, I got immediately rejected. Odd, I thought I was well suited... 2 months later I was surprised to be called for an interview and got the position. It turns out that initially the small company made up of biologists had decided that they needed a biochemist for the synthesis and testing of their planned electrochemical labels. After their first round of interviews they realised that maybe they had been shortlisting people with the wrong skill set. Daft, you might say, but at least it was a human error and being of quite a technical and specialist nature one that was easily remedied. Chucking people off the shortlist because the computer (test) says "no" is quite different.
*Not that that isn't true of a more manual process - I'm just against the idea of reducing things to simple labels. For example the first postdoc position I applied for, I got immediately rejected. Odd, I thought I was well suited... 2 months later I was surprised to be called for an interview and got the position. It turns out that initially the small company made up of biologists had decided that they needed a biochemist for the synthesis and testing of their planned electrochemical labels. After their first round of interviews they realised that maybe they had been shortlisting people with the wrong skill set. Daft, you might say, but at least it was a human error and being of quite a technical and specialist nature one that was easily remedied. Chucking people off the shortlist because the computer (test) says "no" is quite different.