It Is in Your Head
The next time you go on a job interview, in addition to the usual "why do you want to work here?" discussions, be prepared for questions that are a little odd. For example, would you describe yourself as direct, gregarious, patient, or accurate? Or, to what degree do you agree with the statement, "I take things as they come, rather than think ahead a lot"?
If it seems like psycho-babble, well, it is. The use of these kinds of behavioral or personality assessments, which ebbs and flows along with other corporate trends, is on the rise again.
In March 2005, more than a third of employers surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management were giving job candidates personality tests, with more planning to start in the coming year. And 36 percent more were formally testing employees for organizational fit by assessing things like team-orientation, entrepreneurial inclinations, and comfort with a "traditional" work environment.
One reason these tests are back in vogue, according to executives who use them, is that the more sophisticated ones have become increasingly accurate and adaptable to different industries and job descriptions. "You can have a database full of the traits of salespeople who are successful and match a candidate for a sales position against that," explains Luis Valdes, executive consultant at Corporate Psychology Resources in Atlanta. And technology has made the tests easy and cheap to administer. The giant retailer Best Buy even includes a personality assessment in its online job application.
Mind games. Additionally, in a buyers' job market, employers don't mind putting candidates through these extra paces, which they believe break through the upbeat, earnest, and diligent facade everyone puts on for job interviews to ferret out a person's true work style and inclinations.
"You don't need to face an Enron-size problem," says Willard Lewis, CEO of One Georgia Bank in Atlanta and a big believer in assessment tests. "If you have one employee who's not getting done what he's supposed to and hiding his work in a drawer instead of telling someone, for a financial institution that could be problematic." Lewis has nixed candidates because a personality test indicated they weren't "as motivated as I would have liked."
Applicants for lower-level jobs are likely to sit in front of a computer for 20 minutes to an hour to answer multiple-choice questions that will tell employers whether they are suitably outgoing for a salesclerk position, or if they deflect stress well enough to last long in a call center. High-level executives are likely to take a similar test as part of a battery of diagnostics that could include a chat with a psychologist and other assessments. "We're trying to literally get at how a person is hard-wired," says Valdes. "We want to get at how they think, what motivates them, how self-aware they are, their emotional intelligence, their work style, and how they use certain skills in certain situations."
Richard Carlton, who has taken an assessment test for four different jobs, including his current one as chief lending officer at One Georgia Bank, received a copy of the results from his latest test, which read like an annual job review, summing up the strengths he had that were important to the job and pointing out skills or personality traits his boss wanted him to work on. The company asked him to keep it around as a sort of road map for his career development. "It's not quite constructive criticism, but it's something to think about," he says.
Predictably, people who give the tests say it doesn't pay to try to game them by giving what you think are the right answers. Coaches and outplacement experts who advise job seekers also say honesty is the best policy. For one thing, the tests are structured to detect possible cheating. "For any given character trait, say independence, there's an optimal amount," Valdes explains. "If a person seems to be really extreme, well, most people aren't that extreme, so it suggests they tried to answer all the questions in a positive but not very realistic way."
More important, the tests aren't about aptitude or intelligence so much as fit. If the test steers the company away from you, it might be for the best. "If you are a Type B and they really want Type A's, then getting that job could be all headaches," says Deborah Brown-Volkman, a career coach based in East Moriches, N.Y.
Kenneth Honeycutt, 55, former CEO of a division of Acuity Brands in Atlanta, took a personality assessment two years ago when he was vying to be CEO of the parent company. "I didn't get a whole lot of what I would consider to be new information about myself," he says. Still, the test and the discussion he had with the test's administrator afterward helped him to understand what the job would be and what type of person the company was looking for, and Honeycutt decided he wasn't it. "I wanted a role where I could be more engaged in the business and operations than this job would allow," he says. So he took himself out of the running and remained in his division chief role until retiring this January.
His advice for someone facing a similar battery of tests: "Before you go in, spend a bit of time thinking about yourself. What are your talents, your interests, what do you love doing, and what do you not like doing? Think back over your career and experiences and what you learned about yourself from them." Then, he says, "don't try to anticipate what they want to hear-the value comes in being transparent."
Gerry Crispin, a human resources consultant in Kendall Park, N.J., and coauthor of CareerXroads, suggests asking questions about the test itself, too. "You're sharing personal information about yourself, so you want to know where, how, and how long it's kept, who uses it, and, especially, will you be able to see the results and have them explained to you?"
If the company can't or won't explain how the test results are kept and used, he says, it could be a warning sign. "If they're defensive or too casual about how they use and store this personal information when you're a candidate, then how are they going to treat you as an employee?"
It's also worthwhile to ask for a practice test, or a sample of the test, so you have an idea of what's coming, says Crispin. If the company doesn't have that, find out the name of the test or which classic test, such as the PF16 (which measures personality factors), it is based on. You might be able to find a sample, or the test itself, online.
"If you're honest with yourself, and know your strengths and weaknesses, this test isn't going to tell you anything you don't already know," says Carlton. And if you've handled the rest of the interview properly (and honestly), it should only confirm your prospective employer's good impression of you.
This story appears in the October 16, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.