Can You Actually Fail A Personality Quiz?
Q. I didn't get a job that I interviewed for. The employer told
me that I had "failed" the personality quiz. How is that
possible? Does this mean that I have no personality?
A. "Fail" is a pretty strong word when it comes to taking a
personality quiz. In fact, it is so strong that it makes me
wonder about the professionalism of the potential employer that
administered the personality quiz to you.
There is no pass/fail in a personality quiz; especially an
employment personality quiz. There are simply factors that are
important to the employer that either are, or are not, present
in your personality.
To say that you "failed" the personality quiz is a misnomer. You
simply did not have some personality traits that the employer
deemed important for the particular job that you applied for.
Other than the fact that they insulted you, they probably did
you a favor by giving you that personality quiz. By screening
you out based upon a certain personality profile, they saved you
from accepting a job that you would probably have ended up
hating and leaving after a short while.
A personality quiz is an interesting animal. There are actually
many different types. You've already encountered a
pre-employment personality quiz, but that's not the only type
out there.
Before we go off into the subject of a personality quiz, it's
important that we agree upon the definition of the term
personality. Let's keep it short:
Your personality consists of all the traits and behaviours that
make you unique and that determine how you are likely to act in
any given situation.
Given that this definition is true, then a personality quiz is
designed to measure those traits and to quantify them into some
meaningful profile that enables someone to predict how you will
behave.
Is that really possible? Yes, in most instances it is possible
to accurately how someone is LIKELY to behave under a given set
of circumstances. The key word here is LIKELY. We've all seen or
read about people who have exhibited extraordinary acts of
heroism who were otherwise thought of as a most unlikely hero
due to being timid, shy, young, or whatever.
It is not possible to totally predict anyone's behaviour no
matter how sophisticated a test is or how educated the person
who designed it was.
While the pre-employment personality quiz is designed to match
candidates with job vacancies and predict the likelyhood of that
candidate thriving in that particular business' culture, there
are also other types of personality quiz that are used for other
purposes.
Closely aligned to the pre-employment personality quiz is the
promotion candidate personality quiz. A quiz of this type is
designed to match the personality of an existing employee, who
is being considered for promotion, to the type pf personality
that is needed to survive in the position for which there is a
vacancy.
A relationship personality quiz is designed to test the
compatibility factors between two people. It measures those
traits that have been determined to promote a long term
relationship.
There is also a type pf personality quiz that measures a
person's sanity. It is typically used by the legal system to
determine if someone is "legally insane" and can be held
accountable for their actions in a court of law.
And then there is the personality quiz that is designed for
entertainment purposes only. These are typically found in
magazines and are developed by writers for the sole purpose of
amusing their readership if not for simply filling pages.
You shouldn't put too much weight on your scores for this type
of personality quiz. The questions are rarely scientific and
there is no sense getting your panties in a wad over something
that has no real merit.
As far as the "scientific" personality quiz is concerned, none
of them are 100% accurate and a skilled quiz taker, or a
pathological lier, can skew a personality quiz to meed their own
purposes. Like anything else that can't be seen, touched, or
smelled, take these personality quiz results with a grain of
salt.