Job roles and personality types
One of the tragedies associated with career choices have often been rooted in the choices we make at the time of entry into a profession or same choices we made way back in college when we were selecting subjects which would later form the core of our future careers.
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And as much as we may disgust some of such college choices today, we still have an opportunity to right whatever went wrong in the past as regards the choices we made.
Some of such opportunities, strangely, may await us at the threshold of the labour market and the HR specialists who may be affording us such chances may seem first like an enemy to our advancement.
The interviewer, when very experienced, may deny a prospect the opportunity to be on the team that the prospect may view as ideal even though on the interview score sheet, this candidate has the most impressive results.
But when interviewers have cultivated the habit of rewarding the jobseeker with the most marks on the score sheet with same job regardless of other considerations, career dissatisfaction and subsequent low productivity may result, denying the business all the immense fruits otherwise entitled to it.
In my couple of years of practice in this narrow area, I have interacted with HR specialists who have screened job prospects and rated them highest. Afterwards, these specialists have to invite these cream candidates to inform them that the opportunity they came to wrestle with others should be theirs.
Unfortunately, however, they won’t have the job because they seem better predisposed, judging from their personality type, to excelling in another roles currently unavailable or simply not available in the business in which the prospect is seeking admission.
Pleasant surprise
A client of mine who now works for a multinational mobile phone maker attended a job interview because there was an opportunity at the time in one of the dealers of Unilever in the Ashanti Region.
By the time the preliminary selection was over, my client had no place in the team. And while he waited for the interview to end, he was asked to leave behind his particulars and join his family back home.
About two months later when his phone rang, he received good news of an opportunity much higher than the one he had come earlier to battle.
The earlier interview had revealed that as per his personality type, he would be better off at the role that was unavailable at the time. When the role became due, he was on the team.
If you are serious about the career you wish to pursue, even before you write your final paper and bind your little dissertation, you should know your personality type. Personality type tests abound online, some of them costing nothing and a few requiring you to pay a modest fee if you wish to have a detailed result of your test.
At www.thepersonalitytest.com, www.personalitytype.com/career or any such address with the key word “personality” typed into the search window of any device with internet connection will take you to the offices of micro firms whose business it is to guide persons interested in what careers will positively exploit their kind of personality types.
If you have walked out of school and still haven’t had the time to know your type, maybe time has just come for this assignment.
The candidate who steps into a job interview room without even a faint ideal about personality type is bound to make a joke of herself, especially if the business that is hiring is serious about the kind and type of personalities it requires for its new roles.
Test for personality type
As much as the job interview itself may be a laboratory for telling the personality types, the candidate with test result in her pocket will be viewed as more serious about the job than her counterpart who comes in without one.
Besides, with a test results in the hand, such a jobseeker may be making the work of the resident HR a lot easier.
My advice has always been that if the last time you did such a test was about two years ago, take another test. Like our passport size photograph, we need to have the most recent results.
This is so because two years is such a long time that if we have undertaken some personal exercises aimed at improving some aspects of our personality, the results of two years ago may not match the candidate sitting in front of the interviewer.
In the same way, if in the last two years we have become victims of some of life’s contingencies that have reshaped our outlook, we could swing from extroversion to introversion, for instance during the last couple of years. A new test is, therefore, necessary.
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HR specialists and talent hunters across the globe seldom hire without first ensuring that the talent they are bringing on board has the necessary personality dispositions to fit into the role and team.
In the so-called blue chip companies, interested new applicants are often sent an online personality type test which actually forms the base of their decision as to whether they get to get on board or are left behind the door.
For instance, businesses that are starting up often need persons with the character mix and toughness of spirit capable of persisting through hard and difficult times typical of the beginning of new businesses.
Such businesses will not advance a step without a preliminary personality test confirming the kind and type of personality as had been in their mind at the onset of the hunt.
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When you are asked the above question, therefore, depending on the profile of the person as presented in the vacancy announcement and your understanding of the role and the likely challenges and heddles that line the way of the ideal candidate, you craft your answer to reflect these.
While a judgemental personality may be inconsistent with qualities typically required for sales jobs, such quality is consistent with journalism, accounting, finance and several other roles in a lot of services sector.
Unique qualities
It is noteworthy to mention that while nearly every candidate wishes to describe himself as extroverted, initiative-driven and thinkers, not all jobs require such a personality mix.
And while a ready-made answer such as in the above may get you a nod in some of the opportunities opened in one company, same mix will get you taking an early lead home without an employment contract.
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The secret, therefore, lies in doing an honest personality type test and discovering your true self. From here, hunt jobs that make adequate use of the personality type you are gifted with.
Bear in mind that even though more job prospects are opened to a certain personality mix, literally no personality mix is without value.
While the profit-driven private business sector may require interested candidates to possess the character and personality mix you may not be gifted with, , NGOs, and private people operating the new Business for Humanitarian models will need people with your kind of mix to give meaning to a world sometimes mistakenly seem as driven by ambition and even greed.