Why Personality Tests Are Useless

Personality tests are good entertainment. Personality tests are big business. 2 million people take MBTI every year. Overall, workplace personality tests are a 2 billion dollar industry. And yet, in my humble and not very expert opinion, when it comes to the job search, personality tests are useless.

When we are at the beginning of a job search process, we often feel lost. Maybe even panicking. How am I going to tell about myself when I seem to have no idea who the hell I am… We all need something, whatever, to help us see how we fit in, help us regain a sense of direction, a sense of control, a sense of… making sense of what is going on. Personality tests, seem to offer a quick and entertaining solution. A questionnaire, a few minutes of your time, and here you go, put in a nicely packaged box with an impressive label, say, 'Visionary Strategist' or 'Expansive Analyzer'.

And So What?

That's the first question I ask - So what?

Alright, you've just got a label that sounds so nice and sexy (Wow, I thought I was a Jobless Loser, and actually I am an Innovative Explorer!)

Alright, you've just ended up reading an accompanying statement that seems so you, so spot on.

And so what? Apart from a short-lived boost to your ego, where does it get you from here?

Maybe it can be a great help in job interviews? Because now, instead of saying that you are 'a motivated fast learner and team player', you can deliver a more sophisticated pitch saying that you are 'an analytical problem-solver, eager to improve systems and processes with your innovative ideas.' This second statement may sound a bit more sophisticated, but it is just as hollow.

Personality assessment tells no story.

Even the most sophisticated description you may borrow from a test debrief will sound void if you can't substantiate it with stories of what you actually DID.

Actions speak louder than words. Action verbs speak louder than the most sophisticated nouns and adjectives. We are what we do, not what we say. Show, don't tell. Show your work. If you can't show your work literally, show it by telling stories of your achievements, of the value you have created, of the projects you have delivered, of how you acted in the face of challenges, of how those experiences have transformed you. Give rich, sensory, exciting context. Let the interviewer imagine YOU victoriously tackling the problems she needs to get solved.

How can it be wrong when it's so spot on?

Let me tell you a story. More than seventy years ago, when MBTI was still in its teenage years, the American psychologist Bertram Forer administered another personality test, called the Diagnostic Interest Blank, to a group of thirty-nine college students. A week later, he handed to the students a personality description and asked them to rate how accurate their profile was on a scale of zero to five, five being a perfect match. The score of 4.26 was impressive - most of the students saw the Diagnostic Interest Blank as super sharp. Students’ comments included things like 'Surprisingly accurate and specific!', 'Applies to me individually, as there are too many facets which fit me too well to be a generalization.' How come we are all doing the MBTI and not the DIB then? 

Well, because the DIB was an experiment. It turns out that Forer scrapped the test entirely and gave every student an identical personality description with generic statements taken from an astrology book. And most of them bought in and identified themselves with this description.

I found this fascinating story in 'Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind' by Alex Stone. He explains further:

Psychologists have since given a name to the astonishing eagerness with which people will embrace stock personality sketches as unique portraits. They call it the Barnum effect, after P.T. Barnum's famous dictum "We've got something for everyone." One interesting corollary to Forer's original study is that the more personal information the subject willingly discloses, the higher that participant tends to rate the accuracy of his and her reading… Astonishingly, this means psychics can boost their powers just by letting their sitters talk more. And the content of the reading must be generic enough not to be flat-out wrong. Moderate praise also tends to be more compelling than outright flattery or severe criticism. Crucially, Barnum descriptions work not because they are sufficiently ambiguous to ring true in most cases, but because, on some fundamental level, people want to believe them.

Now, take a minute and look back at the nice and shiny statement you got from your personality test. Isn't it obvious that it is generic enough and contains moderate praise? Isn't it obvious that you want to believe it and stick to what you've read in your description? As goes a poem by my motherland's favorite poet, Pushkin, 'it's easy to deceive me: I'm glad to be deceived."

Fake it to make it

Another reason why I find personality tests are of no use is that the answers can heavily depend on the context, on many different external factors.  For example, if you take a personality test as part of your recruitment process, will you be totally honest? It's almost inevitable that to increase your chances and please the recruiter, you may give answers that are not true to you but increase the likelihood to fit a hypothetical mold of the role. What's that assessment worth then?

And how many times did people who considered themselves kind and compassionate behave differently, influenced by the context? Think of the Milgram experiment. None of the participants who administered high voltages to their “counterparts” in the process of the experiment would have qualified themselves as cruel before the experiment started…

We are humans, not boxes

Perhaps the biggest reproach I make to personality tests is that they try to put in a box something that's impossible to box.

Our personality is more complex than any personality test would suggest. Like in this song by Meredith Brooks: "I'm a little bit of everything, all rolled into one"

Our mood may come into play. If we take a personality test when our morale and self-confidence are low, our answers will likely be different from those we would have given if we were upbeat.

Also, our personalities change with time. Some may occur within hours (here I speak from experience :)). Some - within weeks. But most of all, our personalities can fundamentally evolve because of the things we've done.

So, if you need some good entertainment and a virtual pat on the back, please go ahead and take a personality quiz. Just remember, no personality test alone will find you a job.

What will? Actions. Connecting to people. Being curious about their needs. Being ready to share about the things you've done. Things that you have built. The value you have created. Things you're unique, freaking good at. Things that make you thrive.

P.S. I am ready to reconsider my strong opinion about the uselessness of personality tests if I hear wonderful examples of how a personality test has sparked a wave of actions that helped in a job search or career transition…