There is no doubt that personality profiling can provide coaches insight into client personality preferences and help to generate measurable improvements.
Yet Personality Profiling is not a modern phenomenon as the basic structures have been around for many years. You may well be familiar with the widely used Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test that was developed in the 1950’s and is still popular now. The MBTI was based on the work of Carl Jung in the 1920’s. The lineage of personality profiling can be traced back through the centuries, right back to Plato around three hundred and forty years before the birth of Christ. Psychometric profiles simply measure an individual’s psychological attributes using one of two basic styles or instruments:
Personality Profiles: Traditionally, these mainly consist of like me or not like me answers. They are constructed to measure a person’s ability or aptitude. Some tests gauge someone’s verbal or numerical skills and are used when a particular skill or aptitude is required to do a job. So, tests tend to measure “hard” skills.
Personality Questionnaires: Typically there are no right or wrong answers because questionnaires consider someone’s characteristics or how they prefer to behave. Questionnaires measure “soft” skills.
So, in an HR context, a psychometric profile may take the guesswork out of recruiting and give you confidence in making the right decision and perhaps appoint the right person. They are not always an objective mechanism to shortlist candidates or eliminate those individuals without the right temperament.
The problem with the old style word based profiles.
Linguistically based profiles are becoming easy to cheat and misdirect. The issue is not the process used but the nature of how the information is gathered. Both test and questionnaire style profiles use word based questions to drive the profile. And these questions, or variations of them, have been around for a very long time. As more and more people become exposed to them they are becoming increasingly used to the style, pattern and content. In fact you can buy books and attend courses on how to answer the questions in a way that changes the profile. Online there are many pre-interview courses that will help you ‘master’ personality profiles.
The trouble is that it’s not that hard to manipulate a profile, even without the ‘inside knowledge’. For example the question below was taken at random from a widely used and popular test.
Does interacting with strangers (a) energise you or (b) tax your reserves?
Now it doesn’t take much understanding of psychometric profiles to realise that this question is measuring the person’s preference for social interaction. Most popular profiles would define this as Introversion or Extroversion.
If you have a basic understanding of personality profiles you could predict the employer’s requirements, modify your answers and alter your profile. As familiarity with the questions and interview coaching increase the effectiveness of profiles can only diminish. This is a growing concern for employers.
New challenges require a fresh approach.
Coaching Success is the first personality test that records the subject’s response to non-verbal stimuli. This visual questioning technique works at a deeper more unconscious level, which makes them much harder to predict or second guess. Head-to-head tests show the answers given are even more accurate, eliminating the other issue with traditional profiles which is the number of questions that need to be asked. Instead of spending ten, fifteen or thirty minutes answering word based questions, the visually based profile can usually be completed in less than sixty seconds.
There is a huge and largely untapped market for faster, more accurate profiles.
Personality profiling is increasingly used by employers to assess potential employees. In an article that appeared in The Times the British Market Research Bureau stated that “Nearly three quarters of UK companies now rely on psychometric profiling when recruiting.” It is now increasingly commonplace for employers to use psychometrics to understand, enhance and improve personal and team performance.
The fast and accurate nature of visually based profiles is ideally suited to the needs of modern business. And with the Coaching Success as part of your coaching toolbox, you will be in an ideal position to capitalise on this trend.
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