Job Personality Tests Defeated by Facebook
Posted by CathyG in career advice, career tests on 01 7th, 2009Today’s Wall Street Journal carries a story about applicants who subvert personality tests. They search online and find the answer keys. They hire others to take tests for them.
Frankly, I applaud these efforts. But there’s little correlation between tests and career success. I wrote an article on this topic: How Career Change Really Happens.
Ultimately Facebook and Twitter will accomplish even more than unions: empower employees by sharing information.
read comments (0)Wall Street Journal recommends bogus test
Posted by CathyG in career tests, retirement, testing on 03 22nd, 2008Today’s WSJ includes a retirement living section. It seems that some of the over-60 set can’t handle all that leisure and they need help figuring out what to do.
One woman sought help from a career counselor who administered the Strong Interest Inventory and the notorious Myers-Briggs. The WSJ article included helpful tips on taking the test: you can pay $100-$300 to work with a counselor and discuss results.
The article failed to note that Myers-Briggs has been largely discredited (despite widespread use). You might as well check in with a good astrologer.
Frankly, I can’t believe so many organizations (including universities) continue to use Myers-Briggs. See
http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html
Responding to some of this criticism, a person associated with a university says, ‘It is perception-based and is therefore subject to threats to validity…”
http://world.std.com/~lo/95.07/0081.html
The Strong Interest Inventory may be a better test…but I remain skeptical. Before paying anybody to take tests, I would invest in a copy of Annie Paul’s excellent book, The Cult of Personality.
A while back I wrote an article about how people really change careers. Read it here.
