Proficient in Word, Excel, and the MBTI?
As I rapidly approach graduation and “real life”, I’ve started to enter a surprising new world of interviews, job skills, and of course, resumes. There is a plethora of information available on what to include in your professional representation of yourself, but I was most intrigued by the increasing number of people who believe that Myers-Briggs personality types should be included on resumes. For most people in the psychology field, Myers-Briggs is known as a hallmark of pop psychology; it’s a test with very little validity or ability to properly represent all people. But for people without this knowledge, the test’s acronyms have become viewed as easy routes to explaining a large part of who you are as an individual without needing to take up valuable page space.
I asked my friends at McGill graduating from other programs what benefits they thought their personality type would bring them in the job market. Many in engineering felt that it set them apart from the stereotype of the dry, analytical engineer. One friend in pharmacology told me that it showed they were a real person rather than just a list of jobs. And another in economics told me they even used to include their IQ on their resume!
The issue is including this info without understanding the professional perception of Myers-Briggs. When applying, you obviously want to set yourself apart from the rest of the field. However, a personality test you took online doesn’t offer validated insight into your truest self, and to most with a knowledge of the test, it seems to indicate that you’d rather fill your resume with pseudoscience than actual work experience. When I mentioned to the friend in pharmacology that including the MBTI on your resume is kind of like putting your zodiac sign in your contact info, she immediately pulled her document up and edited it.
For me, the reverse perception holds true for employers who require this information in order to apply. In completing several online applications, I was asked to include my MBTI result, leading me to question whether I really wanted to spend time with a company that would rather use 4 letters to get to know me, than allow me to fully describe myself in a more professional way. I’d love to live in a world where this test could actually provide info that makes me a stronger candidate. Unfortunately it represents a lack of information and professionalism (you couldn’t bother to do a basic Google search?) that is somewhat insurmountable. Most verified testing methods, such as the MMPI, are not easily accessible for this very reason! In the meantime, armchair psychologists will continue to write about being an ENFJ, and I’ll keep hoping that that means less job competition for me.
