What on earth is this gibberish? The four letter strings of initials above are abbreviations for the distinct psychological characteristics defined in Jungian typology, determined by the Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung. These characteristics have been applied to hundreds of famous faces by the team at highly entertaining website Celebrity Types.
The initials are also likely to be familiar to anyone who’s ever taken a psychometric test using what is known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator system, a proprietary method developed by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katharine Cook Briggs in the 1940s. It is based on Jung’s categories and, using the system, every personality falls into one of sixteen types.
By going through a special questionnaire, the way a person prefers to use their perceptions and judgement is defined and the four-letter abbreviation for their type determined. Is the person extroverted or introverted? Are they more about sensation (a realist) or intuition (conceptual)? Thinking (logic) or feeling (sentiment)? And are they more judging (prefer structure and hard facts) or perceiving (keeping options open)?
This sort of testing, or, more accurately, ‘typing’, is becoming more and more commonplace. It’s called typing because there are no right or wrong answers. As the Myers & Briggs Foundation puts it: “The goal of knowing about personality type is to understand and appreciate differences between people. As all types are equal, there is no best type.”
There can, though, be the right and wrong type of person for a particular role. Imagine, if you will, an entire boardroom filled with personalities identical to that of Jobs, who was a notorious perfectionist, bordering on obsessive. It’s safe to say Apple would not be where it is today had that been the result of the computer giant’s recruitment policy.
Recruiting the right person to a role is just one of the reasons why the use of such techniques has become more prevalent, says Jody Goldsworthy, director of consulting at global advisory firm CEB. “Today’s businesses have evolved to be as lean as possible. That means every single person counts – every appointment is important and each recruitment decision is being taken much more seriously.”
The field of psychometric assessments encompasses all sorts of related tests, such as behavioural profiling and aptitude testing, which can be useful to organisations as well as to individuals in gaining awareness of traits, skills or indeed skills gaps.
Test take-up
Jason Blackall, head of print recruitment at recruiter AIM Search, says he has seen an increasing uptake of these personality and learning-style tests among his printing industry contacts. “I have clients who swear by them, and I actually had a client say today that they are going to start using these tests,” he says.
The industry also has some long-term devotees of the techniques. Simon Biltcliffe, chief executive at print manager Webmart, has been using them in his business for at least a decade.
“We’ve just used them in some leadership training. Psychometric tests, such as Myers-Briggs, help you to understand what makes a person tick, and how they will work with certain clients,” he says.
“We’ve always used them when recruiting. Even if it gives you a glimpse into someone’s psyche it’s well worth it. We recently recruited a new CFO and we had 117 CVs from qualified people. We used a multi-stage process to narrow that down and psychometric testing was one of them.”
Biltcliffe was actually introduced to the concepts back in the 1980s by the late Kathy Woodward, when he was sent on a management training course by the then-Maxwell Communications Corporation.
“Psychology has always interested me and it gave me some insights. I did a Myers-Briggs profile and it was 80% me,” Biltcliffe recalls. “I thought ‘are we really that predictable?’ and the answer is yes. It opened my mind to it. There’s self-perception and then other people’s perception of you. And it’s useful to know what motivates and de-motivates other people,” he adds.
From Biltcliffe’s point of view there is no downside, as long as all parties are open about the tests and the outcomes. “I’ll happily do a psychometric test as long as I can see the results,” he notes. “If the interviewers said no to that, then perhaps it’s not a very open culture.”
Not everyone is a fan, though. CFH Docmail managing director Dave Broadway has deliberately decided not to engage with psychometric tests and their ilk. “I’m not very keen on them. They can be very clever but they can guide you badly,” he says. “We look for people who fit our culture and we are pretty good at finding the right people – most staff remain with us, we have good retention.”
For those companies that do want to embrace the methods, CEB’s Goldsworthy says that in order to get the most out of assessments when recruiting, it is absolutely vital to define the role you are aiming to fill. “Be clear about what a successful person will look like in that role and in your organisation – their skills, behaviour, competencies and cultural fit. Make sure you follow this through by selecting an individual with a good match against this profile. Online assessment tools can help you through this process.”
Such tools can cost as little as £100 per use, a relatively small sum in the context of the overall costs of recruitment.
And, as Biltcliffe and others have found, ongoing assessments can also be every bit as valuable, and possibly even more so, post-hire.
Goldsworthy adds: “Immediately after a new joiner starts, you can use the information captured during the recruitment process to ‘onboard’ them. This is critical to ensuring the person you’ve just hired doesn’t slip through your fingers within six months, and you get the best from them.
“Each employee should have clear objectives and a personal development plan, based on a firm understanding of their personal motivators. Again, assessment can play a key role in exploring the motivations and work style preferences of a new starter,” she says.
They can also be useful when it comes to developing individuals and teams, as Adrian Steele, managing director at Mercian Labels confirms. “It’s not a tool that works for every role, but we do use them to inform us about certain types of recruit, and they are also useful for internal promotions. For example if someone is taking on a new role that will involve significant changes in responsibility.
“They’ve proved most valuable when working with people you know already, but in different roles. In a new post, with different responsibilities a person can exhibit different behaviours. If you get a heads-up on that you can manage it proactively.”
Facing up
Steele has also found the assessment experience personally illuminating, to the extent that it has given him cause to pause for thought about his own innate characteristics: “I was given a very low score for empathy, in fact the tester said it was the lowest score they had ever seen!
“I have to be very careful how I address certain things, and I can inform my behaviour accordingly as a result of being aware of this trait – though some of my team might not agree that I do...” he admits.
As Steele’s candid personal example shows, it’s important that those on the receiving end of a test are debriefed properly afterwards, and for companies to use qualified individuals to carry out the assessments. This is something the Myers & Briggs Foundation is particularly hot on. After all, people might not be aware that they have certain characteristics. “It’s not the sort of thing you want to hit someone with in an email,” Steele warns.
And, as the use of these tests and tools has become more widespread, so an entire industry has grown up around implementation and assessment of results. If a concept’s popularity can be judged on the existence of a ‘...for Dummies’ book then psychometric tests are indeed mainstream.
Ultimately, success flows from playing to everyone’s strengths, and a healthy dose of self-awareness is certainly going to be a big help. Perhaps the last word should go to Carl Jung: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
USEFUL LINKS
Thomas International Behavioural Profiling
