Who are ya?

Time to start blogging

On the curiosities of personality profiling...

 

So after many years of people telling me I should, I have finally decided to start writing a blog. In the past I have shied away from it for such spurious reasons as not having a suitable theme or subject, not having anything of interest to say, generally any act of mental displacement activity to prevent me from actually doing something resembling work. Taking some small inspiration from PD James's 10 tips for writing novels (though I must confess I have never read any of hers) I decided that I simply have to start writing more. She says: "We learn to write by writing, not by just facing an empty page and dreaming of the wonderful success we are going to have. I don't think it matters much what you use as practice... but you must write and try and improve your writing all the time. Don't think about it or talk about it, get the words down." Ne'er a truer word spoken. 

What will I write about? Anything that exercises me I suppose, as I am determined to post as regularly as I can. There will be no theme, other than my own varied interests. Why "The Spectre Speaks?" Simply I have been referencing the latest Black Rebel Motorcycle Club album Specter At The Feast in various online profiles this year. I love the Macbeth theme, and I feel the Spectre (let's use the UK spelling) analogy applies well to me; I'm usually happiest on the edge of things trying to observe and influence silently, sometimes sinisterly it might be said. But now it's time to speak. So here we go...

It seemed an obvious place to start would be a bit about myself, but I hate completing those 'about me' sections. Handily, someone else has recently done it for me. Or rather something. At present, dear reader, you find me in a somewhat unemployed position and as such am engaged with the recruitment process on several fronts. As part of this I recently had to take a personality profile assessment, which gave me an interesting insight into my character. Or at least a computer algorithm's insight. The document it produced was quite frightening, a window into my soul I have described it as in my more dramatic outbursts this last week.

The test itself comprised of 24 groups of words, four in each group, in which I had to chose which most and least applied to me in the workplace. Obviously the majority of words were adjectives of varying degrees of sense: the usual office jargon you can probably imagine, with a few extras thrown in. A large proportion you could not think of as applying to many if any workplaces or methods of working, and on a personal level I found that in several of the groups none of the words really applied to me in any way (in the workplace at least). I suppose that herein lies the true element of the test: what you select when you really have to think. In these cases I would not have said the words I finally chose applied to me at all, but maybe the testers would argue that in fact they did given that eventually I chose them, albeit after a lot of swearing and hair ruffling. I'm not sure I would agree though as there was no 'pass' or 'none of the above' option: I was obliged to choose something whether I truly believed it or not. I would also add that I genuinely tried to complete the test as honestly as possible, not going for the answers that I thought would look best on a job application.

After completing the test, a report was automatically emailed to me by the software. This was a single page breakdown featuring some key words, motivators, values and general characteristics. My first reaction (as it often is) was one of indignation; clearly this document randomly generated by a machine could not possibly accurately sum me up! However on closer inspection and consideration, much of it was frighteningly close to the mark. Some of the key words did not seem quite on the money: mild? compliant? non-demanding? conservative?! I hope not. But I think I would find it hard to refute systematic, logical, reflective and suspicious. The sections that expand more on personality were 'written' in the third person, as though by a psychologist who had had me on the couch for a good old probe into my psyche. Did I mention 'probing' was also one of my key words? This is where I felt the report became rather more disturbing in its nature. Being described grammatically soundly in deeply personal terms by a machine is a highly unnerving experience. 

At the interview it got worse: I was presented with the long form version of my report, which is what had been generated for the recruiting staff. This document was a lot longer, running to four pages including graphs. It was also fairly uncompromising in its appraisal, and in some places would probably be enough to send shivers down the spine of any recruiter. "...a reserved and rather serious individual... His somewhat retiring nature suggests that he may encounter difficulty in creating a positive environment... While on the surface in fact this person may well appear withdrawn and cool, he is rather sensitive, particularly in antagonistic situations." OK, I'll give them the last part. Overall it paints a picture of a difficult, needy, meek, subservient, wimpish individual who works to rule and craves praise and attention. Personally I don't think this is a fair assessment at all. I know very well my personality flaws (which are legion) but I genuinely hope that a lot of this assessment is not really applicable. Maybe the machine knows all and I am simply in denial.

The longer report features a disclaimer at the end, stating that the report "...should never be used in isolation but always in conjunction with both an interview and a process whereby a person's experience, education, qualifications, competence and trainability can be assessed." This is reassuring, as my biggest concern with tests such as these is precisely how they are used in the recruitment process, how much attention is paid to them. The lazy recruiter will no doubt be tempted to take these reports almost as gospel, leading to prejudice against an individual before having even met them. Indeed my interviewers stated that from my report they were expecting to meet someone over-serious and completely unapproachable, which they were happy to find was not the case. As I have mentioned the report was presented as if written by a real person making a careful assessment of me, not a computer-generated document not intrinsically different to one of those How Northern Are You? type tests that do the rounds of Facebook. It's frightening in this case to think that it could be considered an accurate report. Ultimately the results are generated by a computer algorithm and surely as such cannot be accepted as a true and reliable picture of something as subjective as an individual's personality. How can it be possible that 'non-demanding' was one of my key words, yet 'Sets himself and others very high standards' was one of my general characteristics? On this basis alone the system is clearly not 100% accurate.

Overall then, are personality profile assessments of this nature a good thing, and a valid recruitment tool? As someone who has been on both sides of the interview table many times, I find it very hard to say yes. They can give a possible flavour of an individual, but can never replace real life meeting and experience of the person. In my previous employment I even witnessed the results of similar tests (in that instance ones that generated quantifiable points scores, an even more hideous concept) completely disregarded, rendering the testing process utterly meaningless. Of course it is extremely difficult to assess a person purely off the back of a single interview – I found this out to my cost during my earliest experience of recruitment when I had to fire someone barely a fortnight after hiring them after this seemingly eager individual turned out to be a complete nightmare on the job – but sometimes you have to take a bit of a chance, use all tools available to you but ultimately go with what you think is right. The test has given me plenty of food for thought, and in many ways has been a good trigger for a bit of self-reflection, which we all need at times, but at the same time I hope my prospective new employers don't read too much into it.


ADDENDUM (13/11/2013): I was unsuccessful in my application for this job. The one piece of feedback I received was that it was felt my 'personal style' did not fit in with the company's approach in certain areas. This was something that was flagged in the personality profile assessment, but was one of the things I disagreed with and contested strongly in extensive discussion in the interview. Sadly it seems in this instance, the machine won the day.