I Failed my Personality Test! | The Reschool'd Podcast

Welcome to the reschooled podcast, the show that discusses all the things that schools may have missed with your host, A.J. Kootie and Jason Gordon

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. We are the reschooled podcast, the show that discusses all the things that schools may not have prepared you for

As always, I am A.J. sitting across from me, Jason. Jason, how you doing today? Doing great, AJ

Enjoying this lovely pollen-filled spring weather. Amen. I'm already getting the stuffy noses

Yep, my nose has been running all morning. Oh, it's awful. I love Georgia pollen

Yeah. I mean, we have an index down here. Whoever's listening out there doesn't know, right

You know, it's like, just like the humidity metric, we have a pollen count metric

Of course. You know, I feel like anywhere you go in the U.S., you're giving up something to get something

Like if you give, you go up north, you're giving up necessarily, not necessarily the pollen count in total, but what we have here in Georgia for the cold weathers

We don't have the snow like up there. Or if you go over to Arizona, they got the heat

Oh, yeah. Or you say it's dry heat, which doesn't change. Fire is dry heat

I'm not going to jump into it. I think the, probably the nicest climate in the U.S. is out there around San Diego area type scenario

But once again, you know, who can afford to live there? Yeah, you're right

It's so crowded. Well, today's episode, we are going to be talking about personality tests

And I'm interested in this. I work at a camp every summer, and this is one of the things that we teach

I love personality tests. I just love the information you get from them

I'm interested to hear your take on it. What do you think about that? Absolutely, a good idea

Before we do, though, let me remind everybody, go to our website, check us out, reschool.com

check us out on the social media profiles, send us messages, let us know what you want to hear about

And, of course, wherever you get your podcast, give us those stars as many as you can give us

We appreciate it, right? That keeps people interested. No kidding. Well, in today's quick questions, since we're going on a personality test

I want you to rate the results from a personality test you've taken on how you are really

Like, another way of saying that is, do you feel it fairly accurate based on the one you took

I have mixed feelings about these types of tests. Okay. Problem is, and I've taken a couple of them, career-related and just a personality-related non-career focus

It depends so much on how you answer the questions in terms of how well you understand yourself

And so many of the scenarios, you may be disposed towards, no, I want to be this type of person, but I don't necessarily believe I am

And I'm not certain that the questions on these are capable. of teasing out of people who they are rather than who they want to be or who somebody has told them they are

So in that way, I honestly don't have a ton of faith in most of the test out there for the overall purpose that they're supposed to, you know, do to somehow encapsulate your personality in a few metrics like letters or numbers or something like that

which one did you take by the way? Well, I've taken Myers-Briggs

I've taken, I believe I've done a disc assessment a good while ago

but the one that I thought was the most, in a way

focused towards career was the Burtman 360. And it was, you know, I like the concept and the premise behind it

not 100% certain how accurate it was in terms of helping you identify

what career paths or types of jobs are best for you, just because I'm not certain I answered the questions fully based on who I am

as opposed to who I think I'd like to be. And there again lies the problem

What about you? You ever take any of them? I've taken the disc. Like I said, that's what we used for our camp

And I've taken it. And I will say there are concerns that I have with it

Now, I will say one of the things with the disc is it tells you what it, it gives you what it thinks

It predicts who you are really versus who you are mask-wise, so who you want to portray kind of thing

which is an interesting metric. But I do think in any of these

whether it be Myers-Briggs, whether it be Bergman's 360, whether it be any of the other ones

I do feel like the best results come from when you are absolutely cold

Like you have no idea. You don't know what the outcome, what they're going to base it on

You don't know what the outcome possibilities are. you don't know anything about that because you don't have the likelihood of trying to become something you're not

You're not going to answer it in a specific way just for that purpose. And I realized that when I took the disc the first time, I thought, okay, this is really cool

And this is fairly accurate to my personality, at least what I've been told

But then if I took it again, I found myself going towards what I expected it to be

And I think that's a problem with these things. So if you have any prior knowledge of this, like even if you, even if you're

you've never taken the disc assessment before, but somebody has told you about it, you kind of know

where to aim or you kind of feel like you should aim at these places. And I think that takes away

from the integrity of the exam or the assessment tool. So I do think they are good in certain

situations. I mean, they do give you somewhat of a baseline. Like you said, I don't know how the

accuracy of the baseline. So it's almost more precision. But if nothing else, they're fun

They make you think. Well, you know, before we talk about it too much

back up a little bit and kind of give an overview to whoever's listening out there. What kind of

employment test are you going to take, period, right? What that you expect that in order to gain

employment or in order to, I don't know, stay in your job type scenario, what could you expect

to see out there? Well, again, we're looking at this from the career standpoint because we are in

the career series. So these are personality tests, but we're looking at it from a career

standpoint. These are things that you would possibly take in an employment situation. Like if you're going in for an interview or you're trying to gain a job, you may take one of these or an abbreviated version of one of these. I'm not sure. But you have the personality tests that you, like what we're talking about, what we're going to be talking about in this episode. You also have skill tests to test your skills, which tend to be more, you know, not, I wouldn't say projects because they're not what you would consider projects. But there's some kind of example of the skills that you have

where you do something or solve something. We're looking at specifically from the personality side of it today in this episode

So that's a great question. We are looking at it from the career side, but these are personality tests

These are things that you're going to be taking within the employment process, getting employed

And in a different episode, we haven't done it yet, but we'll likely talk about perhaps some of these skill-based tests

And you know, you see skill-based tests all the time in technology and things like that

And then if you're going to go into consulting, everybody knows who aspires to consulting

that the big hurdle of getting picked up by a consulting firm is making it through their

case-based interview process, right? Where you're breaking that down. And that's a form of skill-based test as well type thing

You really have to practice that going in. But for, you know, lots of jobs, really just want to see if you're fit with the organization

that or a fit with this type of career path. They have an idea of the type of person that they believe would succeed here

And they want to see if you're it, right? And they're using these off the shelf out of the box tests that say, look, this type of career path, you're looking for somebody like this type scenario

The ones I do have a little bit more faith in are the ones that are kind of sculpted to the business that says, okay, this is the environment that you're working in

These are the people you're around. This is your manager, your leader. This is their motivational stance, right

Because there's a history behind this, right? Now, I teach principles of management

and the Hertzberg two-factor theory or the hygiene theory, as you often hear it referred to as

focuses on motivation in the employment context. And everybody knows that motivation is a product of engagement, right

And usually, if you're engaged, you're motivated to work towards something, you end up being a high performer, right

People learn how to do things. It based far less on intelligence far less on prior experience and things like that than it is your overwhelming desire to do that thing and your engagement in what you doing

So that being said, right, that theory focuses on your internal needs, right

It says that people have certain things that need to be satisfied internally

And if those things are satisfied, then you will be content. I use the word content, not happy, because happy is a fleeting emotion, right

You can win the lottery. You'll be happy for a few minutes, but then you're stuck in traffic on the way to go cash to check

You're going to be frustrated and you're not happy in that moment, right? So happy is a very fleeting thing

So you want to be happy. It's all what you're driving to that moment. Yeah, right. You want to be happy eat chocolate

It'll make happy in the moment, right? But it's not a long-term continuous thing

Contentment is, right? And that longest running the happiness study at Harvard, the longest running study in history, right

is really more focused on contentment throughout life and things and the effects of that type

scenario. But with that being said, this whole two-factor theory says that the employment context

has elements that affect your internal needs. So if I'm a type of person that for some reason

I need recognition, or I need, for example, I need a completed project that if I don't feel like

there's some end to what I'm doing, that I'm working towards something, I'll lose engagement in it

Or if I resent supervision, I want autonomy, right? If I'm not allowed to be creative in what I do, that type of thing, all of these factors that have internally

Well, these are direct factors that the job can give me. They can either be high structure or low structure

It can be team-based or it can be individual work. It could be, you know, I may be a person who

who sees what I do as a way of keeping score in comparison to others

You know, we don't like to think of ourselves like that, but lots of people do. They see money as, oh, I've got more money than you

It's how I'm keeping score against you, right? Some people see money as possession, right, or opportunity for things

Others see it as security. So most of us have heard these types of things before, how you perceive different things like that

Well, that's directly related to our internal values, our internal wants and needs again

So if we do have that need to compare ourselves to others as another example, if a job rewards you based upon performance in terms of the more you perform, the more compensation you get, how you see that compensation, right, can affect whether that's a motivating force for you

Lots of people in sales tend to love that eat what you kill environment, right

That hire you perform, the more money you make. Okay. And that motivates them

other people who see, you know, quality of life and balance, right

The things that motivate them internally, like the experiential nature of life, right

would be less motivated, right? Because once you hit a certain point of compensation, you don't need more

Any more time spent on that compensation or earning that compensation would take away from things that you value or need

So at a certain point, you would be less motivated, right? And I know I'm talking a lot here, but the idea is like you're looking at two sides of the coin

You're looking at the motivational environment and you're looking at your internal needs to see how they match up

Right. And that's what a lot of these tests in a way are trying to tease out

They don't say that explicitly, right? They get it a little vague, right

They get a little imprecise in what they do. They say, we're just going to say, what you're just going to say, what you're

personality is and see this personality fits in this career path. And that's the problem I have with most of them, right

Because it's not necessarily about personality. Lots of people have these combination of internal needs that is completely separate from personality

So a lot of different personalities in a way could succeed in the job

It's just whether the nature of the job with that specific employer, the environment

that the employer creates aligns with your internal needs, right? So that's why I say the ones that are tailored to the environment, the actual employer

and it's very difficult to put these in a test. So really none of them exist, right

Yeah. This is you internally scoping a personality test to your environment and then giving it to the employee

So these aren't off-the-shelf tests. I'm talking about. These are, you know, kind of you get a

consultant who had expertise in this to design a test for your employment environment, right, type

scenario. Now, when, when employers do that, I think it has a lot better effect

All right. So anyway, that's, that's much feel going down that way. So anyway, that's what

you're going to say. This is the purpose behind these tests and stuff like that. Yeah, I would just to

kind of piggyback on what you were saying and just, you know, what it is and the purpose. I do think

there's validity to them to a certain extent. Just to kind of, maybe my professor that I have this semester is going to listen to this and be like

hey, he really knows what he's talking about from the stuff that we talked about in class. Don't count on it

Probably not, but, you know, there's always hope. You know, this is, I see a lot of factor ysis going into this

You know, they run a bunch of stuff to see where the commonalities are in different areas

And they put those together and go, okay, if you do this, then you're this type of personality or you do this

or if they answer this way, you're this type of personality. And for the majority, maybe, that works

But you always have outliers and where those outliers are or to what extent those outliers are

that can be detrimental to a certain degree. You know, if you're looking specifically at the Myers-Briggs, you know

they do the introverted versus extroverted, thinker versus feeler, those kind of things

If you're looking specifically for, I'm going to use teachers. For an example, because normally with teachers, you're probably going to look towards extrovert because you're around a group of people

And if you lose a lot of your energy, or if your energy is drained from a lot of people, which is an introvert, it's going to be tougher on you as a teacher because you're always around people, a lot of people, and you're having it to directly communicate with them, interact with them

you may your company may focus too heavily on the extroverted personality

and you're giving up or you're putting a priority on that and not getting what comes with introverts

which is a huge piece like that's you know not everybody in class are introverts

or excuse me extroverts some people so it's nice to have that balance

to be able to say okay I need a good mix or good balance

for all the balances in the class in this situation in the example I'm using

or for the manager of the business. You're not going to have everybody that is motivated a different way

You need to understand the motivation. So being able to limit it based on what you see from these personalities

I think is detrimental to the company. But they are good in their own rights

And what you just said, like, you know, an employer presupposing that an extrovert is going to be better

just based upon the idea that, you know, you're around people. but there's plenty of research that anything that these tests are based upon

these suppositions about a personality type is going to gravitate towards some activity

or be better at it or be more engaged by it or you're going to get more out of it. There's plenty of research in every particular element that you're making these presuppositions about

or these suppositions about that are going to say you're wrong. Right

So, you know, an extrovert gets energy from interacting with others. An introvert tends to be exhausted by interacting with others

But introverts tend to have a stronger, more in-depth relationship, and the people that they do have a very close relationship with, right

that's something more than superficial, does not exhaust them. It actually energizes them in the same way

So the depth of the relationship tends to be stronger. Now, you're saying, okay, you're going to put them in an environment

where they have the potential to make more of an impact because the strength of relationship that they could form

with a tight-knit group, like a class, right, could be stronger. So once again, you could do this with every single factor

And in my mind you know I got to put out there I done some research in this area myself right in terms of personality career fit And that my biggest problem right I actually working with another professor

on putting together a model that is better at, that works from that Hertzberg theory that

we just talked about of two factors, right? More along the lines of how you assess the environment

And the number one factor research shows for the environment. environment or employment is the immediate supervisor

So if the immediate supervisor isn't laying out more along the lines of what happens in the

work environment, then you're not using the true baseline to determine whether somebody will

be successful in this job or career. Because every job, every job, every career path, while your functions in it may be similar

across industry, it changes. all these things that relate to your engagement and motivation change based upon that particular, that sculpted, molded environment

So I tell my students all the time, I'm like, you know, you think you're, you want to definitely be an accountant in the sports industry or fashion or film or music

You think that because the idea of this industry, which you don't know anything about yet, interest you

but you have no idea whether the environment you'll be around on a daily basis

Not just the activities you'll be undertaking, but the environment that it creates because you haven't experienced it yet

You have no idea whether that will meet your internal needs. The best you can do is start to identify based upon past experience what type of internal needs you have

Me personally, the worst job I ever had was Lifeguard. And I grew up on a farm, castrated cattle

I mean, I shoveled. Yeah, that was a shocking. We found that out a while back. Right

You know, I shoveled nasty stuff, right? I mean, hot days in the sun, time on a tractor, that type of stuff

Things that lots of people would definitely not like, right? That would be miserable work for them

But for me, the worst job was when I would lifeguard. It, you know, at least on the farm, I had a finished product

I had a finished job. I had something to do, something to complete, something that kept me engaged

And usually I had a lot of autonomy and how I got it done, right, type scenario

And just those two factors alone meant enough to me that it kept me motivated, engaged in what I was doing

But sitting by a pool, just simply skimming the pool, right, looking back and forth all day long with very little else to do, except for when you call it break, you're skimming bugs off the top

That was the most monotonous, tedious. I mean, my numbing type thing to me

But my personality type is such that I'd rather be doing work that I enjoy

than sitting on any beach anywhere, right? And that's a personality factor that you can't necessarily judge

You know, you have to experience and you have to say, okay, I realize that. Everybody would say, you know, having a Baywatch type job has got to be better than, you know, scrubbing floors

but not necessarily for the person, right? Not necessarily. And that is the difficulty

That is why these tests tend to be very imprecise. You know, one of the things that's interesting to me is, you know, with Myers-Briggs

you know, you have the E versus I, which is extrovert versus introvert

the S versus N, the J versus P. It seems to me, and same one thing with the disc ysis

you're either high D, high I, low S, low C, whatever, they put you in a category which tends to be more binary

than the spectrum, which it really is. Right. And no degree of assessment, right

And so, for instance, you know, you have, in Myers-Briggs, you have extroverts and you have introverts

But then you have this middle ground, this gray area in the middle

which is those extroverted introverts. you know, the ambivorts. Right. And that there is, it doesn't talk about that

It doesn't get, it feels to me when you get the results, it kind of feels like if you're not in one of these categories or whatever the category you're in, it doesn't give you the full story

It just says this is you and you fall into this group

And I don't, I don't, that part of it I'm not a big fan of because, you know, there are those gray areas

It is a spectrum or continuum if you want to call it that. if it goes, you know, to the extremes

And it doesn't give you that, that, it doesn't give you the range. And I'll tell you another downfall of that

So you've got the, you know, lack of degree of assessment on each of these personality factors

Then on the other side about the job, you have some, you know, you suppose things about

what type of personality would do better in a given job. Oftentimes, the doing better determination is not a good determination

some of the best. So, for example, we know that extroverted people

tend to move up in organizations more quickly. But we also know that it's not based upon quality of work

The number one factor is how, for you moving up in an organization

is how closely you relate to your manager. So if you relate well to your manager, your work

it is far more important than the quality of your work. And as a matter of fact, people who do great quality work

women fall into this category. Research shows, early on that women do far higher quality work than their male counterparts in professional

services jobs. Strangely enough, right? I mean, it's just whether it's, you know, the difficulty level it is for women to break

into a work field or force, right, that requires that extra level or performance, right

A male doctor is nearly three times as likely to commit malpractice on you than a female doctor

That's comforting. Yeah, I know, right? I always, believe it or not, I know this is crazy, I always go to a female doctor

You know, it's not saying for any individual case that's true. It's just saying across the board

So for whatever reason, right, and there's a whole study, and I've done a little research on this

is a little writing on this as well in terms of the genesis behind that, right

And this whole aspect of fit. So, but the takeaway from this is people tend to move up because you relate better to your manager

historically more men have been in the workforce, that type of thing

We know that men tend to relate to men better in terms of camaraderie and things like that type scenario

Oddly enough, that does not always remain true with women in the workforce. But that being said, so if you're going to move up based upon fit rather than competency

most of the people you see at the CEO ranks or the high executive levels tend to be

well, because of historical tendencies, men, right? And they don't always tend to be the most competent at what they do

they tend to be the most social. So we get this supposition again

that somebody who rises to the top and is a leader of an organization

whether they are a good leader or not, right? That's the ability to inspire and motivate

versus the ability to assemble resources. So for whatever reason, they rise to the top

We assume that an extrovert is the best person that I have at the top

But there's plenty of evidence throughout history that some of the most effective CEOs, right

in terms of their performance. However, they arrived there, but the most effective

in terms of performance, their personality spectrums were across the board. Some were extreme introverts

Some were highly extroverts, right? There's a whole theory propounded by Carl Icahn, particularly

that says, you know, he's a very well-known corporate venturist, right? You know

that he basically buys companies, restructures, and breaks them up, does whatever, and then resells them, right

A lot of people use the pejorative term. Common day stuff, huh? Corporate Raider, right

And he's made a lot of billions of dollars doing it. He said the number one factory looks at when taking over a company is the CEO

He says it's always the same person and they're never the most competent person for the job

They were just the most competent person at rising through the ranks. He's like, so I can always replace them with somebody who is competent

who would never in most scenarios have been able to rise through the ranks because their personality wouldn't allow it

But their competency level in terms. And he said I can add value there just by doing that All right So there tons of anecdotal like that but also tons of research out there that shows we don

have a good understanding of the alignment with what is going to make us individually

successful in a job, whatever our determination of success is, right? So these tests, they suppose things about us and they suppose what success means in a job

and they suppose things about, and there's very little way if you don't customize it

or tailor it to the job and then do an adequate job

of assessing the person in comparison to that job to determine whether somebody's a good fit

in a given career path. So my warning to people out there is this, don't push too much stock in that crap, right

It is not going to, it is not to be all in

though, right? Career centers will promote them. You'll hear all about them, advertising stuff

And people just really, honestly, don't know any better. Okay. When you say it's more of a starter

point? Like, if you have no idea what you want to do, isn't it at least a good foundation that you can

kind of grow from? I think there are better ways. I think you can start learning what people do

in an industry or career path. And then you can start trying things, things of similar structure

My advice is not to focus on industry or career alone. Focus on yourself and what keeps you motivated

I love a good project. Give me a project anywhere. I'm content

Take away the project and make it mundane where I have to do it over and over and over

And my quality of engagement goes down dramatically. Let's pivot a little bit

This will be the last question, but I'm really interested, and I'm sure some of the listeners are thinking about this too

All right, let's just say you're sitting in an interview, and this would probably be, what, the third or fourth step in the interview process

depending on where you're going, maybe second or third. And they say, okay, we're going to give you a test

and you've taken the Myers-Briggs test, so you kind of know what they expect. You know what the outcomes are or a disc ysis

You're sitting there about to take this. Is there a way for you to gain that assessment

Absolutely. And one step further, should you? Yes. Okay. On both. So you can game it, you should

All right, explain. I'm a firm believer in opportunity, right? Amen. Everything we do in terms of school, in terms of skill development, things like that

is partially with the idea of we want to have that ability

But more so than not, it's we're trying to create an opportunity for ourselves

We're trying to give that signaling fun. when we got a degree. We're trying to say we got this experience in something so hire us

Most of the time, we're going to have to learn the job when we get there. Most of us do, right

It's just across the board. So getting the opportunity is as important as anything

You can't be sure that anybody out there, you can't be sure that anybody out there that is trying to assess the, you know, your fit in the job or the position is going to be able to do that accurately

okay. So for that reason, they don't know. They don't know whether you're going to be engaged

You can make that determination. And if you believe this is for you and you say, well, they're not going to hire me unless I can put myself out there as being more of an extrovert, well, answer those questions in a way that's going to point you out as an extrovert when they ask you, would you rather go to a party or would you rather sit in a library and read? Well, that's a pretty obvious one. Even if you are the person who's going to sit in a library, tell them you'd rather go

to the party, that type of thing. And, you know, if that's not true, is that being disingenuous

Well, in a way, I guess you can look at it however you want to

I don't see it as unethical because you can look at it in terms of they have no idea

whether I'll be engaged for this job. They're trying to figure that out. What I am telling them is that don't look at me as an introvert or ex-revert

Look at me as somebody who wants this job, who will be engaged by the job, and give me

opportunity to do the job. So in that way, I'm all about gaming it

Yeah, it's strategy. If they're going to ask you the question that opens the door for strategy to be put in

then I think part of it is the strategy of putting it in. Like, it's not, like if somebody, like you go back to your example

If they said, well, would you rather go to a party or sit a library and read

that question in and of itself is, there's too many, there's too many variables in there

that you can't apply with. You know, you can't, there will be times where I'd rather be

well, not me. If you'd have said anything other than library reading, I would have said, you know, there's other things

But, you know, if you just said, whether you rather go to the party or stay at home

and binge watch some Netflix show, okay, there are times when I'd rather go to the party

and there are times when I'd rather watch the Netflix show. There are variables that in that question are not being factored in

so I'm going to factor in the only variable that's relevant to me at this moment

and that is what I think this person wants to hear. Because if you were to ask me, would I rather go to the party on a certain night

or with certain people there or the certain outcome there, then maybe I would go to the party or maybe I wouldn't

It depends. So if it depends, then it depends on the situation you're answering that question in as well

So that's the strategy that you're going into. I don't think it's unethical because

the question is already loaded. Like you can't now, granted, if you wanted to put yourself and play both sides of the coin, you can explain it

Like, your qualifications of all the questions that we ask and the quick questions, pretty much, it's a great example

But if you want to go that route, you can. But, I mean, shoot, if I know that they're looking for a certain personality, then why not go for that

If I know that they're looking, it's the same way, you're never going to have a, we've talked about this in our resume episode

You're never going to use the same resume for every job. you're going to have to, you know, personalize it and make it specific to the job that you're going in because you're going to put your best foot forward for that position

And that may include answering some of these questions as well. So I don't think it's unethical. I think you absolutely should do what you need to in order to get the job

Yeah, me too. And so I'm going to give my idea for the perfect scenario for hiring somebody

Do. Doing an extensive, extensive personal interview. just trying to get to know the person better

I'm a big proponent of, man, come work here for a month

This will be a trial period, but we're not offering you the job. You're going to be an independent contractor

for one month until the end of the month. And then we're just going to see your level of engagement

We're going to see whether this motivates you. We're going to see whether you're a personality fit

And we'll go from there. We'll make a mutual decision as to whether you want to stay on

with this company type scenario. That would be far more effective because internally, we can process when we interact with somebody

we can process whether they fit in the environment and we can tell, right, whether they're engaged by the work

But just in cursory interviews, just in personality assessments and things like that, we can't make those determinations

The tests aren't precise enough. I have very little faith in them

You have to tailor it to the job and the position. And, you know, that's why companies use recruiters, right

rather than simply hiring somebody based upon off of paper, right? That, oh, you've got a few internships

You got to, you went to the best college, blah, blah, blah, you get the job

It doesn't work like that. It shouldn't work like that. I agree

So, well, that was a great show. I hope you all enjoyed it, listeners

Jason, you got any parting words before we head out? Yep, just going to tell you one more time. Same thing I tell you every episode

Gotta let us know what you want to hear about. We need to hear from you through any channel you want to reach us

You can reach us through the social media profiles. You can reach us on our website

Email. That being said, you know, check us out on your favorite podcasting platform and give us those stars

And we'll continue to show up higher in the results. And we'll have better and better topics. And it just benefit you more

So there you go. Awesome. Well, listeners, it's been fun. Until next time, we hope to see you there

Goodbye. Take care. Thanks for listening to the Reschooled Podcast. Be sure to head over to reschooled podcast

for news and other information on things we're getting into