Personality Tests are Useless (Most Of Them Anyway)

The other day I got an email from a former student of mine. It read:

“Dear, Dr. Burkus, thanks so much for your advice years ago in class on acing the job interview. I’m now at the final stages of the interview process with my dream company and I need to take a personality test. Do you have any advice for acing the personality test and getting the right personality type to get the offer?”

And the advice I had for her was pretty abrupt: Ditch the company.

If they’re assuming a certain personality “type” for certain jobs, then she likely doesn’t want to work there anyway. Her dream job is likely going to become a nightmare.

We use personality tests a lot. And most of them we use for harmless fun like taking a quiz with our friends to find out what Hogwarts House the sorting hat would sort us into. But many people who are taking these tests are taking them quite seriously. Eighty-nine of the Fortune 100 companies subject their people to some form of personality testing at some point in their career.

Somewhere close to 2.5 million people a year take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator-one of the most popular (and also one of the worst) personality tests out there.