Personality test

Personality test

What is a personality test? Personality tests provide a conversational basis for a job interview. A personality test has nothing to do with your intelligence. But for an employer it is interesting to know what type of personality you have so that the applicant who is chosen will have the best fir for both the job and the team.

If you are thinking of cheating on a personality test, then you are cheating not only the employer but also yourself. If you are not honest with this part of the job interview you risk that either the employer gets tired of you pretty quickly after you have started working in the company, or you get tired of the team or the job.

For example, if you say at the interview that you are an extrovert (an outgoing type), but you really have an introverted personality, then the job will stress you out from day one.

And it's a huge misconception that introverted personalities are not attractive in a workplace. Because there is a need for all personality types, as there are many different job types in a workplace.  A strong team is combines many different personality types.

It can not be said that introverted people are socially challenged, not suitable as leaders, or become stressed more easily.  In fact, introverted people can be really good at keeping track of even the most stressful situations, which an extroverted salesman might find more difficult to do.

A personality test should just give a snapshot of

• Who you are
• How are you expected to react in different situations

The different personality types are based on well known psychologists such as Carl Gustav Jung and William Moulton Marston amongst others. However, we will not go in depth here with their theories, but will instead focus on how personality tests are used to describe different traits that are the basis for being able to tell what type of personality you are.

Personality test characters

We're basically the same type of person across our lifetime - at least when we talk about personality test types. But the truth is we change our personal character over the course of our lives. So what is your character?

There can be different types of personality tests, but whether you fill in a

• DISC analysis (4 personality types)
• MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), which indicates 16 personality types
• Emneagram personality test that works with 9 personality types

Whatever your test is, the aim is to get a good impression of your personality. We return to how the answer to your personality test is used in relation to a job interview.

But since the DISC analysis is the simplest and the other test types are just further developments of this one, we will briefly review what the 4 different personality types are when we talk about a DISC analysis.

Which character am I?

A DISC personality profile is characterised by the following 4 personality types

• Dominance (red)
• Influence (yellow)
• Stability (green)
• Analytical (blue)

The colours of a DISC profile may vary, but the division is the same. So do not focus on whether your personality is red, yellow, green or blue.

It is not the case that you always lie at the outer edge of the circle and thus get the impression that you are extremely dominant, analytical or only seeking stability or influence.

Once you have completed a DISC personality test, a dot will be inserted in the circle. It may be that the dot leans most towards the green colour or is blue, but very close to the center.

In other words, a DISC profile simply shows what you value highly and what you do not think it as important, and that's exactly what you want to talk about in a job interview.

Personality test interview questions

So let us check out some examples of personality test interview questions:

Let us check out some examples of personality test interview questions

The dominant personality type

Let’s imagine that your dot is placed in the red box where you are basically dominant and very direct in your behavior. To clarify whether this is true and to hear how to tackle different situations at work, you may be asked questions such as

• "How do you react if you do not have all the information when you need to make a decision?"
• "Are you good at sharing the wins with your team?"

Notice that the question is actually based on what challenges the dominant personality type,   because a dominant person is characterised as 

• Loves having control over the situation
• Does not stay in the background when presenting results (perhaps at the expense of a team member)

The person seeking influence

Now your dot is in the yellow box.  You are characterised as being

• Impulsive
• Optimistic
• Lively and moody

Questions could therefore be

• "Are you detail oriented?"
• "How do you react if you do not get new tasks or goals often?"

The interviewer knows very well that this personality type is not a big planner and would very much like to drink coffee with colleagues to create social relationships.

So the person here should have so much self-insight that the applicant knows that there must be a focus on a more structured approach to the work tasks in order for the team collaboration to be good.

The stable personality type

The stable personality type is characterised as being

• Calm and patient
• Humble and tactful

Therefore it is about helping others and forgetting oneself. Changes can be stressful.

The questions could therefore be

• "How do you feel about things being changed at the last minute?"
• "If you're happy to help your colleagues, how do you take care of yourself?"

The analytical personality type

This type of person wants to know everything before making a decision. They work systematically and have a disciplined approach to the job.

The interviewer can therefore ask these questions

• "How do you react when you do not have enough time for a task?"
• "How do you tackle criticism?"

Intelligence test

We have now looked at what a personality test can look like in a job situation and how 4 different personality types show what behavior we are likely to have in given situations. 

Last but not least, we have reviewed examples of what questions you may encounter for a job interview.

Even though we know that job personality tests have nothing to do with your intelligence, this topic is very interesting to know more about because the next thing you may encounter in connection with going for a job interview is an intelligence test.

Not many people know this, but you can actually train yourself to get a better result in your intelligence test if you practice before taking it.

We can compare it to going to exams. As the saying goes, "An exam is a party for the well prepared student".

So let's look at how you get (even) better at doing an intelligence test.