By Ellison Bloomfield

I have never been a fan of personality assessments or profiles, I’ve found them in the past to be narrow, one sided and the cause of bias. I have worked with someone who within minutes of meeting someone would say, ‘Oh they’re an ENFJ’ (Myers-Briggs personality type) and the profiler would see them as only ENFJ from that point forwards.

I also feel that the more basic tests will be skewed by your current situation and as such should be taken as ‘point in time’ rather than a long term indication of how someone will behave in a certain situation. But my concerns aside when it comes to making effective and successful recruitment decisions the more tools you have the better your result will be. I’ve discussed the importance of predictive recruitment in a previous post and as the economy recovers and there is more competition between candidates it will become even more important for companies to be sure they are recruiting the right person.

As we’ve established by now I’m looking for The Job and I thought it would be beneficial for me to be able to narrow down what I should be looking for in a role. I asked if anyone had recommendations for a personality profile / assessment tool and received a response from Mindset Group and after as discussion with Aaron Dodd yesterday I received the links and information to go ahead with the assessment.

The assessment used by Mindset Group is called Prevue and is a bit more of an all round assessment, not just on personality preferences – e.g would you like a fly a helicopter? But also focuses on skills around;

1. Working with Numbers (Numerical Reasoning);
2. Working with Words (Language Skills); and
3. Working with Shapes (Spatial Reasoning)

In short it is a more comprehensive assessment and while I lost the ability to un-jumble words in one part of the assessment I found that the reports I received back regarding my skills, abilities and interests fit with what I believe my skills are.

In terms of the reports that you receive for this assessment there is the overall report in relation to skills, interests etc but there is also the working characteristics report which would provide an employer with an overview of:

1. Is Ms Bloomfield inclined to take risks?
2. Does she live to work or work to live?
3. Does she prefer a fixed salary or flexible income?

In case you’re wondering, I prefer to work things through but will react appropriately in a crisis, I live to work rather than work to live, and would prefer basic salary with a modest bonus or commission plan.

When it comes to making a decision about a role it is important that both the candidate and potential employer have all the information they need to be able to make the best decision. By going through this assessment it assisted me in knowing which roles I should apply for and if it was an employer conducting the assessment would provide them with an indication of how well I would fit in a role. I was able to find out what I shouldn’t operate heavy machinery and that I would be best suited in a role where I’m collaborating with people and working with data (numbers, stats or words).

A personality assessment is just one part of making a decision; it shouldn’t be relied upon for all the information and should only be used by people who understand the results. I’ve seen some pretty average personality tests in the past, but the prevue assessment is one of the tests I would be happy to use again.

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