Ian Wat­son, 4 June 2010.

Matt was nervous. Most people are under the cir­cum­stances. Matt sat in front of the HR spe­cial­ist, hop­ing that he’d end up with the job that was on offer. It was a step up from what he had done in the past – in pay, respons­ib­il­ity and influence.

Daniel, the HR Man­ager, pushed a fol­ded piece of paper and a pen­cil across the table to Matt and then did some­thing appalling. He lied.

“Please answer the ques­tions for this per­son­al­ity test – there are no right or wrong answers”, Daniel reas­sured Matt.

There are no right or wrongs answers.

Mind you, Daniel had no inten­tion of lying nor did he even real­ise that he had, at the time. “There are no right or wrongs answers”, is a lie that many man­agers and human resources pro­fes­sion­als use from time to time. The per­son­al­ity tests that are con­duc­ted in work­places through­out the world in job inter­views have no answer that is intrins­ic­ally cor­rect — as you might find in a high school math­em­at­ics exam. How­ever, the pres­ence of a series of ques­tions that is included as part of the selec­tion pro­cess for an employ­ment role makes a lie of Daniel’s reassurance.

If a test of any kind is used as part of an employee selec­tion pro­cess, there is an inten­tion to use it to jus­tify the selec­tion of a par­tic­u­lar can­did­ate and to exclude oth­ers. It has already been decided by the inter­viewer, selec­tion panel or organ­isa­tion that a par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­ity is required for the role (or, con­versely, that par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­ity pro­files are to be avoided). This means that, for the organ­isa­tion, par­tic­u­lar responses on the per­son­al­ity test are, in fact, right or wrong.

Look­ing at per­son­al­ity tests from the point of view of the can­did­ate exper­i­en­cing the job inter­view pro­cess, there are also right and wrong answers. In our example, Matt des­per­ately wants the job but does not neces­sar­ily know what per­son­al­ity pro­file Daniel is look­ing for, nor does Matt know what responses he needs to give to present the ‘right’ per­son­al­ity pro­file for the job. Addi­tion­ally, he knows that he should be hon­est dur­ing a job inter­view. When nervous, the ten­sion cre­ated by the need to be hon­est and also the desire to meet the ‘needs’ of the inter­viewer is unlikely to help Matt through the selec­tion pro­cess nor help Daniel find the right candidate.

Set aside for now whether there is any valid­ity in using Myers-Briggs, Keir­sey, DISC or any other per­son­al­ity test or tem­pera­ment sorter in a job inter­view, the simple mes­sage is that there are lies in the work­place that we use to smooth the path or pla­cate people; but they are still lies. A lucid man­ager will make every effort to assist Matt through the inter­view pro­cess and would also be aware that, truth be told, there is a right or wrong answer to every ques­tion in a job inter­view — the answer that demon­strates suit­ab­il­ity for the job.

For more inform­a­tion and cri­tique of per­son­al­ity pro­files, con­firm­a­tion bias and the Forer effect check out Peter’s essay, Know Thy­self. Also check out Peter’s recruit­ment, arguing that every busi­ness gets the employ­ees they deserve.