This does not bode well. Two of the more promising applications I’ve made this past month have just been reposted on the job website. One of them was, in a way, expected after what transpired during the job interview. It turned out that my background is really far from what the position demands. What I can’t figure out is why they would specify manufacturing experience when the position clearly calls for a service industry professional?
As for the other company, I only got as far as the personality test. They reposted their vacancy a day after I submitted to their online personality test. Does this mean that I don’t have the personality that companies want in their management team? I answered the personality test during a failed bout with insomnia at 3 AM. I wonder if my answers were in any way affected.
The first time I encountered a personality test such as the one I took, I was being considered for a promotion. As part of HR’s new requirements, I had to undergo an online personality test. I had a difficult time then (as I had a few days ago) as the questions were asking me to make choices when decisions were not always clear cut. Fortunately, I passed the test barely ten points from the passing rate, or so they told me. When the results came out, there were many complaints from employees as to the reliability of such tests and why it was necessary to go through them to get promoted. The company administering the test even stated in their website that the test was only predictive and not prescriptive. (I wonder what the HR would do if the test predictions were not exactly favorable. Would it not be tantamount to a prescription not to hire or promote the employee?)
The HR countered that there were no really correct or wrong answers and that the test would not be really be used for promotion purposes. Yet in the end, they had to delay the promotions of the candidates who ‘failed’ and had them to retake it after a few months. I don’t know if they were able to ‘pass’ the second time they took the test. As far as I know, these tests tend to give the same results even if they are taken repeatedly.
From my HR Management and Organizational Behavior classes, I found out that such tests were mainly administered to assess the personality traits of people and to what extent they possess the Big Five Personality Traits. The Big Five were extraversion, emotional stability, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. According to research, these five traits are strongly correlated to effective management.
Okay, I don’t think I can challenge data but I wonder if there is something can go wrong as to how a test was designed and administered, e.g. if I take the test when I’m in a certain mood, such as when I am too busy to do administrative tasks for HR or when I am cranky and groggy from insomnia. Then, there’s Hofstede’s Theory of Cultural Dimensions that shows how values of people from different geographical locations can differ according to their culture. Will the test be valid for a Filipino of a certain age and background as it was for Americans or to whatever citizenship of the sample used by the test designers?
And why force people to make choices when they can be flexible and choose differently depending on the situation or, as I mentioned above, their mood. For example, I often take a participative management style when I am leading a high performing team whom I have worked before and already trusted. When in a crisis mode, however, or if there is a change that I immediately had to implement, I had to take an authoritative stance. How would I answer the test given two opposing decisions I made in the past and both turned out positively.
When I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Assessment, it revealed that I have an INTJ personality which is one of the rarest personality types at 1 - 4% of the population. I wonder if the personality still holds true, that is if they designed the test based on the general population or did they also consider rare personalities.
As for extraversion, the Big Five studies showed that high extraversion leads to emergence of leaders but it does not mean that they are going to be effective. It may even be dangerous to make leaders of people just by virtue of their extraversion, as influence and charisma can only take them so far. In my case, MBTI showed that I am deeply introverted. I can say that that is true as making speeches, attending parties, going to social gatherings, and other social rituals make me uncomfortable, but I can still perform on the job. I can still communicate with people from all levels, conduct meetings, make presentations and perform activities that normally would call for extraverts, albeit I can do them with greater emotional labor.
Personality tests seem to be the trend nowadays in hiring and promoting for managerial and supervisory jobs. I just hope that HR officers understand that these, unlike mathematics and physical sciences, are not exact and should be treated with some wariness. After all, we are talking about human beings here with their own free will and can act unpredictably in most unexpected ways in specific situations.
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