One day, while working on-site at a client, word got around that they were going to start doing personality tests of their employees at some point in the future. Supposedly, this "test" would tell the folks in charge what kind of people each of their employees were and could be used to determine if new hires would mesh well with the existing team.

The day finally came for the tests which consisted of two sheets of paper. Each one was exactly the same and contained three columns of adjectives. On one sheet you were to select the adjectives that apply to you, and on the other you were to select the adjectives that described what you perceived management wanted. Being a contractor, I refused to take their silly test; however, the poor FTE's all around me had to subject themselves to this modern rendition of reading tea leaves.

Shortly after everyone submitted their results, the company that administered the test e-mailed the results. Not unlike one of those novelty "tests" you can take at places like Tickle.com, some were somewhat right, and some were completely wrong. That didn't dissuade management from thinking they were the greatest thing since sliced bread and they made all new hires do this silly two-page thing. They even used it as a criterion for hiring (along with the IQ test that I didn't have to take for some reason - I guess they could tell from looking at me I was a moron, and didn't need a test to confirm it). I felt bad for those that came after me.

At another place where I used to work, I hear that they have instituted handwriting analysis. I am not kidding. From what I understand, a very able, skilled professional was denied a job there because her handwriting analysis came back saying she was more inclined to being a salesperson than a technologist. She disagreed, obviously. They actually decided not to hire this person, who I understand took a while to find, because of the handwriting analysis results.

What I would like to know is this: do people really think these techniques work? Where are they getting these ideas? I know companies like Google and Microsoft don't do these things. They do crazy things like having the person interview with a good number of the people they would be working with and then getting a consensus opinion from that group regarding whether to hire the person or not.

The best a personality can do is possibly tell you some miniscule aspect of the person's personality with something like a 50% probability of being right (or wrong). Bear in mind these are not multi-day interviews held for hours on end with psychiatry professionals; nay, they are canned 36-word tests or (GASP!) handwriting analysis. They don't have any more founding in science than a correlated graph of stock prices to the weather.

An interesting thing to note is that neither of these companies were huge corporations looking to streamline a hiring process that took millions of dollars to run. Both of these companies were tiny (less than fifty employees) software companies that hired maybe five people a year.

As a contractor, I find tests such as these an instant "eject" sign. In other words, if I encounter one, I hit the eject handle and never go anywhere near that contract. Even if I were an employee, I'd wonder what a test could tell my manager that the past twelve months of working closely with them hadn't. I guess these managers just don't trust their own judgement, which is bad, because if they don't, why should those that they manage?