Careers and Personality Assessment

Whether it was through watching a television show where high school students take a career aptitude test, or through our own investigation in career counseling, most of us have been exposed to personality testing and career exploration and development. Often in the media, results of this sort of testing have proven as either complicated and potentially harmful (as seen in the Divergent book series by Veronica Roth) or completely unexpected. However, in my own experience, I have found that the attributes of careers that have been suggested to me through doing extensive testing bode well with the way I see my own personality composition. This begs the question, is personality testing in career counseling really beneficial? And if so, is it society’s responsibility to provide this testing to everyone and our own responsibility to fit ourselves into an occupation that complements our attributes?

Personality has been reported to have significant and meaningful correlations with work performance, one’s management and leadership abilities, learning and skill acquisition, and a plethora of other items related to one’s occupation and career development. We already know that some employers require personality testing during the hiring process, and that most interviews now consist of sneaky situational problems to assess candidate’s inner selves. Does it make sense that employers use these assessments and potentially judge someone as incompetent after they have worked hard at studying something to lead them to applying for a specific position? One option would be to instead have everyone take career placement tests so we know that they are somewhat reliably suited for an occupation. That way they could work hard at something they have a high probability in succeeding at. This could also motivate people to work harder at something as they know it is within them to be good at a particular thing.

Of course, this would have its limits as well. We know that personality isn’t as stable as we like to think it is, and that biases from the individual can be expressed when taking a test that would limit one’s results validity. It is also hard to guarantee there would be enough jobs for everyone fitted into a specific position. But these are interesting issues to explore, and to expand, it all comes down to whether people should be more involved in testing as a whole — and if learning more about oneself would make for a more well-rounded, compassionate, and efficient community.

ID: 260528106

Reference:

Hough, L. M. and Oswald, F. L. (2008), Personality Testing and Industrial–Organizational Psychology: Reflections, Progress, and Prospects. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1: 272–290.