I thought I would clear up a common question about the personality test. When is a personality test not a a test? – well when it’s an assessment. How can you fail at being you? You are the only one qualified to judge how well a personality report reflects your personality.
It is not a test, so you can neither pass or fail it. Yes it is usually referred to as a test but this is more a symptom of an age obsessed with testing.
The assumption being that testing improves performance but is it so. Are we producing better educated children today? Are our schools and colleges delivering better thinkers or better people into the world since the advent of so much testing?
So think of it as self assessment. It’s an opportunity for introspection. It is not something to be improved upon. It is not something you can swat up on, after all you have been in it’s midst for all of your life.
This is the one questionnaire where every answer is correct. No one can correct you. You can only but “score” 100%.
Your opinion Counts
Personality is very subjective. This doesn’t suit many people, particularly scientist. And although it would be much more convenient if it was simple a test you could pass or fail, it’s not.
If you are recruiting then you need to see a personality report as the beginning of something not the end.
When you read your own personality report is perfectly legitimate to say which statements you agree wit and which you disagree with. Remember you cannot pass or fail. There is no reason you should agree with all the statements.
If you are using a personality report to help you understand “self” then it’s Ok to question it and think about what it says. if you disagree with a lot of the report this doesn’t mean the report is flawed or wrong, it merely means that you are surprised at the result.
If you agree with all of the statements this doesn’t mean that the system is accurate, it merely means you agree with most of the results and that you have found little to surprise you.
Both outcomes are useful.
Too many people get caught up on judging the accuracy of the system. This is a pretty useless exercise. Reports are produced based on the answers you provide. Any professional profiler will be accurate. Whether you agree with the accuracy or not is not the point of the exercise. What you need to focus on is why you agree or not.
If you disagree with more than 50% of a report what does this mean?
Well lets assume its a professional system, tried and tested by hundreds of thousands of people before you.
If you disagree with a lot of the report then this is more an indication of the disconnect you have with your preferred behaviour. In other words you think you prefer to behave in one way, when in actual fact you prefer to behave in another way.
Why you have this disconnect is the more interesting approach to take. It’s easy to say “this system is inaccurate” but if it is a professional system then the chances are it is accurate. By accurate we mean that it is able to produce a report based on the answers you provide in the questions.
Remember you provide all the input. So what you need to question more closely is what you disagree with and why. is it just the wording you disagree with or do you disagree with the entire notion.
So remember it is not a test, it is an assessment. use it to help you gain a deeper understanding of self. Don’t see it as an exercise in testing the system accuracy for the provider. The provider will already know how accurate their system is.
