Your Mother Doesn't Work Here - How To Ace Employment Tests

Part One

Many employers now use testing as part of the pre-employment selection process. Known variously as aptitude tests, personality profiles, personnel selection tests, skills, or integrity tests, in the end they are all the same thing: an attempt to find out if you show signs of being a "risky" hire.

You can be asked to answer "a few routine questions" that end up being anything but routine. These testing instruments, are frequently used as a litmus test to rule people into or out of consideration. If one of these tests is in your future, you should understand what you are likely to face so that you can present yourself as a consummate professional, without compromising your integrity.

Understanding The Different Tests

There are five different types of tests:

Personality	Personnel Selection
Aptitude	Skills	Integrity

Personality Tests

Are you a people person? Do you get upset easily? Are you quick to anger? Employers are using tests of general personality more frequently these days to screen job candidates because they believe that certain personality traits are required for success in a particular position.

There are two basic kinds of personality tests: projective and objective. The projective tests ask you to tell a story, finish a sentence, or describe what you see in a blob of ink. In an employment selection context, these tests are generally looking for leaders, achievers and winners. They search for analytical and system thinking skills, and look at decision making and consensus building styles. Objective personality tests ask dozens, sometimes hundreds, of questions using a rating scale, for example strongly agree to strongly disagree, true/false, or just yes/no.

Personnel selection

Personnel selection tests are personality tests designed specifically to screen job candidates. These tests measure psychological behaviors such as trustworthiness, reliability and conscientiousness. Some of them also psychologically screen you for potential alcohol or substance abuse.

Aptitude

If you don't have the skills it takes to do the job, do you have the aptitude to learn? In a work world where the learning curve for new skill development becomes increasingly interesting to potential employers, you can expect to see the use of aptitude tests on the upswing.

Skills

If you are a programmer, for example, you may be asked to take an objective test of programming skills, or to debug a program. As long as the employer is measuring a job relevant skill, testing such skills make sense. If you have made the effort to develop the skills necessary for your profession you should have no problem with most of these tests. However in fields such as sales and customer service, behavior itself becomes a critical skill set; we'll address this shortly.

Integrity Tests

Some companies are leery of personality tests, so they turn to integrity tests to screen out the liars, cheats, and thieves. Some tests measure honesty, or integrity, whereas others measure other psychological traits.

Getting To Know Yourself

Born independently wealthy, very few of us would be doing the jobs we do. But we are doing them, and we have learned certain sets of skills and behavioral traits that are critical to our ability to survive and succeed professionally; you will find discussion of the importance (and application) of learned professional behaviors throughout the Knock 'em Dead books. With this in mind, the first thing you must do is identify and separate the professional you from the personal you.

We Are All Professional Schizophrenics

Most of us have two distinct personalities, the one we grew up with that we display outside of working hours, and a slightly different personality that we developed to survive and prosper in the professional world of work. Remember, the first day on your first job when you realized this? You went to find the coffee machine and on the wall behind you saw a note

Your mother doesn't work here Pick up after yourself

And you realized, "whoa! Gotta learn a whole new way of behaving!" And so began the development of your professional persona; this is the one you need to bring into play when addressing employment tests.

More advice on acing employment tests...

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