I have never given credit to personality tests. I always think they are silly and have a hard time believing in the results. I re-read Principles by Ray Dalio again and I realized how heavily he used them in his company. That got me to thinking.
I have been more willing to be open to engagements from complete strangers lately. So when I get hit up on linked in or something mechanism, I generally ignore the ones that look like spam or possible fraud. However, for the last year, I decided to just be more open to new thoughts coming from left field. I mean, what is the harm in hearing their pitch right? I met this one guy from New Zealand or some place that actually teaching sales people how to do voice overs in different accents. I thought it was funny at first and then he gave me some examples and I was stunned. It was pretty effective actually! I did not hire him, but it was an interesting 15 minutes to explore something that I had never thought of before.
Last week I got approached by someone selling a few business ideas. I thought I would listen. He wanted me to do a personality test. At first I thought this was completely ridiculous, then I remembered what Dalio said. So I reluctantly agreed. I did the test, being as honest as I could. The results came back. I am an extreme personality, who knew? Ok, so that was an easy one. What else did it get right? Well apparently the current occupation I am in is stifling my creativity. I value creativity more than anything, more than money, more than loyalty. Creativity is my highest regarded value. Now that is interesting. Come to think of it, the test is pretty spot on!? That was weird. How did it know that?
The other thing that I learned is that Larry Page and I apparently very similar in our value structure and what we think is the most important in business. Now that really pissed me off. Not sure why. Maybe I should be honored that the personality test would link me to the founder of Google. I was suspicious that the test was just putting flattering people in the profile to stroke my ego. Then I did some more research on the subject, apparently the test has thousands of profiles of business leaders and my answers were very similar. Interesting.
Then the test through out a company that I would appreciate the culture of the most. I have never heard of the company before. So I looked it up. I could not believe it. I was like this is 100% opposite of my personality in every way. Then I watched a video from the owner of this company and I realized that he sounded almost exactly like me, same voice emphasis. Now this is getting eerie. Is nothing unique? We all think we are unique and anonymous when in reality we are so predicable that there is no such thing as anonymity anymore.
What is interesting is that this test pulled things out of my personality that I know are part of who I am, but the test really emphasized those. I then decided to look at the results of this test through the lens of how people might view me. Now that was interesting, because now I say myself the way people might see me. That was a bit of a revelation.
Anyway, I sort of changed my tune on this personality test thing. There actually might be some science to it. I imagine that in a few years, my computer will tell me exactly what I am interested in and why. My computer will tell me what I should do and what is the best thing for me to do with my time. What fits the best so they say. We may actually get to the point where we no longer even interview people, we just match them up based on a profile of what we need for the work being performed.
Guy Reams
