How to Be Memorable in a World of Goldfish Brains: A Review of Sally Hogshead’s “How to Fascinate” Personality Test

I’ve always seen personality tests as nothing more than a form of reassurance. While I haven’t taken too many in my lifetime, I’ve found the ones I have taken to be merely an affirmation of what I already know about myself. There’s never been any “aha!” moments or advice that has changed my perspective on my identity and how I present it to the world. Sally Hogshead’s “How to Fascinate” test, however, is a different case.

Upon watching Sally’s Ted Talk (titled the same), I was intrigued. Her main thesis is that much of our interactions in life are akin to online dating, in that they are extremely fast paced and victimized by the ever-shrinking attention span of today’s society. “Standing out” or “being unique” are things that we are often told to do in life, with little to no actual instruction on how to achieve those feats. Sally points out that in order to be truly unique, we must learn how to hone our inherent traits or “advantages”, and bring out their full potential.

Before I go into how the test works, as well as an analysis of my own results, go ahead and take the test for yourself here if you’d like to follow along and compare.

The “How to Fascinate” personality test starts off like any other with a series of statement-based questions with an ordinal answering scheme. I noticed that it was shorter than I’d expected, with just 28 questions. But the results, or rather how they are presented, is where it gets interesting. They can be summed up as follows;

• Your Archetype: This is the overarching title that best fits your personality. Mine, for example, is “the orchestrator”. Archetype’s are fleshed out with five accompanying adjectives. For me, these were attentive, dedicated, efficient, open eyed and vigorous.
• Your primary, secondary and dormant advantages: Your archetype is determined by a combination of your primary and secondary advantages. There are many different advantage combinations that could constitute the same archetype, but mine were “Passion” (primary) and “Alert” (secondary). My dormant advantage, one that is least likely to influence and impress others, was “Prestige”.

The results of this test are summarized in a virtual dashboard with multiple sections, including a video clip from Sally herself giving you a two minute run down of how your archetype can thrive in the real world. In my case, Sally emphasized that my passion advantage is what draws people in, makes them feel comfortable and creates meaningful connections. The alert advantage is more about attention to detail and efficiency. I am very communicative when it comes to my expectations for deliverables, but I am also able to create an atmosphere in a team where everyone can feel heard. Sally also goes over some things that I may need to work on, like tapping into the “Mystique” advantage and taking a step back to listen to others.

I’ve never been 100% comfortable in leadership roles, which is why a grandiose term such as “orchestrator” took me a little by surprise. But upon diving deeper into the archetype I realized that it wasn’t as far off as I initially thought. Being able to empathize with others and making people feel welcome and at ease are things that I take pride in. On the other hand, I am extremely detail oriented and particular, sometimes even bordering on being a micromanager. I’m good at setting clear expectations, as well as communicating them effectively and getting others on board with my ideas. I realized that this delicate balance between two rather different personality traits is what makes me unique.

As a 25-year old grad student at the start of her career, building a personal brand and understanding how to best position myself in this increasingly fast-moving world is imperative. The “How to Fascinate” personality test not only helped me reaffirm my best characteristics, but also taught me how to incorporate them into both my professional and personal lives. I believe that self-awareness is the first step in all of this, so if you’d like to run an internal analysis on yourself then this is the personality test for you.