June 25, 2019
Job Search Tips
If you’re not sure what to do, here’s a list that might help.
1. Know thyself.
Identify what interests and excites you. Understand that these traits define you and use them to explore career choices and opportunities.
2. Take a career assessment test.
There are a lot of career assessment tests available online. Find the time to take one. The test gives you a lot of insights about your core competencies and work preferences.
3. Ask others.
It’s quite challenging to see yourself as others do. It would be to your advantage to ask friends and family on your traits and skills. Your co-workers are also a good source of information. Knowing how they perceive you, what they like and don’t like about you, and what skills or traits that need to be changed can help determine your professional profile.
4. What moves you?
Would you be more interested in status or a six-figure salary? Do you want to make a difference in your community and the world or just on your company’s net worth?
5. Take charge.
In the ’80s, when you worked for a large company, you usually could conclude that you would be working there for your entire career. In those days, the corporation drove your career path, advancing as it saw fit.
At the turn of the century, times have changed. In the span of your career, you would probably work for at least five companies. In most cases, you will probably work for more than five. Know which career track you desire, and make sure that track brings you to where you wish to go.
6. Determine the company fit.
With the current emphasis on streamlined and productivity-focused companies, the cultural and company fit are just as important as the professional goals. Consider the values and principles of the company and compare them with your own. It is essential that you feel comfortable and fit in with the company.
7. Free your mind.
The career path you choose is about change and more change. It includes expansion and new opportunities. All of these changes require a desire to journey and discover.
8. Balance is the key.
A tremendous amount of time is devoted to your career when you are in your 20s and 30s. When you reach your 40s, your personal life might take precedence and maybe more relevant to you. Find a corporation that will provide you with a balance in your work and your life.
9. Don’t hang around.
If you’re not satisfied with the way your career is going, do something. Always be in control of your career path to have a satisfying career.
July 27, 2019
The Psychometric Profile — A Useful Recruitment Tool? 0
by Wordscapes® • Job Search Tips • Tags: job personality profiling
Personality profiling is increasingly used by employers to assess potential employees. In an article that appeared in The London Times, the British Market Research Bureau stated that “Nearly three-quarters of UK companies now rely on psychometric profiling when recruiting.” It is now commonplace for employers to use psychometrics to understand, enhance and improve personal and team performance.
Because there are many psychometric tools from which to choose it helps if you are clear about precisely what it is you wish to measure. Based on a recent online poll, the most popular uses of Psychometrics profiles fall into three distinct areas:
Recruitment and Candidate Selection — mainly to provide insight and reduce risk.
Employee development — to ensure employers retain and make the most of existing staff.
Team Building — significantly improve communication and productivity, both internally and externally.
There is no doubt that psychometrics can provide insight into these areas and generate measurable improvements. This trend to use psychometrics is not a modern phenomenon as the basics of personality profiling has been around for a long time. You may well be familiar with the widely used Myers Briggs Type indicator test that was developed in the 1950s and is still popular now. It was based on the work of Carl Jung in the 1920s. 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.
Surprisingly the fundamental nature of all personality profiles has remained static in all that time. They measure an individual’s psychological attributes using one of two different styles or instruments:
Tests:( like me) or ‘wrong’ (not like me) answers. They are constructed to measure a person’s ability or aptitude. Some tests gauge someone’s verbal or numerical skills used when a particular skill or talent is required to do a job. So, tests tend to measure “hard” skills.
Questionnaires: Typically, there are no right or wrong answers because surveys consider someone’s characteristics or how they prefer to behave. Questionnaires measure “soft” skills.
So while it is true that 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 profiles
The issue is not the process but the method of gathering the information. Both test and questionnaire-based profiles used word-based questions to drive the profile. And these questions, or variations of them, have been around for a long time. People exposed to them are becoming used to the style, pattern and content. You can buy books and attend courses on how to answer the questions in a way that changes the profile.
It’s not that hard, 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) energize you or (b) tax your reserves?
Now it doesn’t take much understanding of psychometric profiles to realize that this question is measuring your 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
Increasingly psychometric tests are emerging that record the subject’s response to non-verbal stimuli. This questioning technique works at a deeper, more unconscious level, which makes them much harder to predict or the second guess. There is even a suggestion that the answers given are 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, often a visually based psychometric profile can be completed in less than sixty seconds.
If words and questions are being replaced by images and preferences, perhaps this will make psychometric profiling not only faster, fun and more accurate, it might appeal more to a wider audience, rather than just being the preserve of business. In the future, it could be that a picture really is worth a thousand words.