I recently had the opportunity to attend an MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) session in my company. A woman with a Harvard MBA and a perpetual, albeit annoying, smile spent three hours explaining to me how I go about living my life and doing my work. Ironic, isn't it?
If you google (in the verb form) for Type Indicator, most of the top search results point to MBTI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator), which for me is a clear indication that this must be a really popular and accepted way for employers to to assess their employees' personality types. I found MBTI extremely convoluted and complicated.
However, spurred by MBTI's success, I have decided to come up with my own type Indicator (Carl Gustav Jung might just have stirred in his grave and chuckled at this cockiness) but I have a very good reason, or two. Firstly, if this works, I would show up in the first page of a google search for type indicators. Secondly, I would have simplified type indication to the extent that you will not need a Harvard MBA degree holder to come and spend three hours and 300 busy powerpoint slides to explain your own personality type to you. Hey, I can even make a facebook app and have some cool pics of Hollywood hunks and babes to go with the personality types.If the app becomes popular, I can add cool verdicts like - 'Hey, you are totally unfit to be hired even by MacDonalds, and your lucky mascot is Paris Hilton', or 'You cannot survive 4 hours in any job, and your role model is Lindsay Lohan'.
For the MBTI assessment, I had to take a humongous 140 questions long psychometric questionnaire, the answers of which were used to determine my "type". By the way, are these questionnaires designed to find what level of psycho you are? Do they really have a metric for the degree of psycho-ness? Can they look at my answers, shake their head and say, 'You are a psycho with a metric of 9, you should be in a loony-bin.' Another thing that worries me about these questionnaires is their fixation with the number 4. Every question has four choices. If they could only think of three, they add d) None of the above, or d) Other. If they could only think of two, they add c) All of the above and d) None of the above. Why is four the magic number? Do people find choosing one out of four tougher and/or more confusing than choosing one out of three, or five? Is that the idea here? And believe me, answering these questions is hard. A typical psychometric question can have the following choices:
a. Rarely
b. Frequently
c. All of the above
d. None of the above
Look at the odds of giving the correct answer here. Rare and frequent are two highly subjective terms, and I, the person taking the questionnaire, am allowed to decide what is rare and frequent to me. To a software developer, 'the code rarely breaks' might mean 40-60% of the time. To his boss, 'the code frequently breaks' might mean 0.0001% of the time.
I turned out to be an ISTP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISTP_(personality_type)), which is one of the 16 possible types using the four dichotomies of MBTI (Extraversion/Intraversion, Sensing/iNtuiting, Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perceiving).
Well, cutting to the chase, here is my theory about personality types. There are only two things about an employee that an employer need to know.
1. Are they clean(C) or dirty(D)? and 2. Are they lazy(L) or industrious(I)?
If a person is clean, their work will also reflect that cleanliness - clean clothes, clean desk, clean code, clean documentation. If a person is industrious, their work will reflect that - they will work extra hours to get things done, they will go the extra yard to finish tasks at hand. So we can have 4 personality types now, instead of 16. You can be one of CL, CI, DL, or DI.
And that's it. The employer must hire a CI type and should not hire a DL type. A DI type can be hired if the emphasis is on getting the job done without much focus on quality, and a CL type can be hired if there is little to do, but the job should be done in a clean, methodical fashion. I am sure that if you are a CL, you are perfectly suited for being the chairman of the budget-making committee in California.
And then here is my sample questionnaire (so as to not annoy Mr. Meyer and Mr. Briggs). But there are only 10 questions. If am convinced that we do not need 140 questions to determine whether a person is lazy or not. In fact, if they are, and they get a 140 questions booklet, they will never get to the end of it.
So, here it is, the ultimate questionnaire for the greatest Type Indicator ever:
1. Do you shower daily?
a. yes
b. no
2. Do you brush your teeth at least once a day?
a. yes
b. no
3. Do you eat home-cooked meal at least once a day?
a. yes
b. no
4. Do you do the dishes before you go to bed every night?
a. yes
b. no
5. Do you like to host a party?
a. yes
b. no
6. Do you get your car washed at least once a fortnight?
a. yes
b. no
7. Do you hire someone to clean your house?
a. yes
b. no
8. How many times do you wear your ______* before you wash it?
a. <=2
b. >2
* Employer can put in which item of clothing they fancy.
9. Do you prefer a condo/apartment to a house with an yard?
a. Yes
b. No
10. Do you unpack your suitcases as soon as you get back from a trip?
a. yes
b. No
If you take the questionnaire, please do send me the answers and I will tell you what personality type you are, and who your lucky mascot/role model is.
** If the employer so desires, they can administer this exercise with a polygraph hooked to the employee, because like all tests, this one also allows all forms of cheating.
If you google (in the verb form) for Type Indicator, most of the top search results point to MBTI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator), which for me is a clear indication that this must be a really popular and accepted way for employers to to assess their employees' personality types. I found MBTI extremely convoluted and complicated.
However, spurred by MBTI's success, I have decided to come up with my own type Indicator (Carl Gustav Jung might just have stirred in his grave and chuckled at this cockiness) but I have a very good reason, or two. Firstly, if this works, I would show up in the first page of a google search for type indicators. Secondly, I would have simplified type indication to the extent that you will not need a Harvard MBA degree holder to come and spend three hours and 300 busy powerpoint slides to explain your own personality type to you. Hey, I can even make a facebook app and have some cool pics of Hollywood hunks and babes to go with the personality types.If the app becomes popular, I can add cool verdicts like - 'Hey, you are totally unfit to be hired even by MacDonalds, and your lucky mascot is Paris Hilton', or 'You cannot survive 4 hours in any job, and your role model is Lindsay Lohan'.
For the MBTI assessment, I had to take a humongous 140 questions long psychometric questionnaire, the answers of which were used to determine my "type". By the way, are these questionnaires designed to find what level of psycho you are? Do they really have a metric for the degree of psycho-ness? Can they look at my answers, shake their head and say, 'You are a psycho with a metric of 9, you should be in a loony-bin.' Another thing that worries me about these questionnaires is their fixation with the number 4. Every question has four choices. If they could only think of three, they add d) None of the above, or d) Other. If they could only think of two, they add c) All of the above and d) None of the above. Why is four the magic number? Do people find choosing one out of four tougher and/or more confusing than choosing one out of three, or five? Is that the idea here? And believe me, answering these questions is hard. A typical psychometric question can have the following choices:
a. Rarely
b. Frequently
c. All of the above
d. None of the above
Look at the odds of giving the correct answer here. Rare and frequent are two highly subjective terms, and I, the person taking the questionnaire, am allowed to decide what is rare and frequent to me. To a software developer, 'the code rarely breaks' might mean 40-60% of the time. To his boss, 'the code frequently breaks' might mean 0.0001% of the time.
I turned out to be an ISTP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISTP_(personality_type)), which is one of the 16 possible types using the four dichotomies of MBTI (Extraversion/Intraversion, Sensing/iNtuiting, Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perceiving).
Well, cutting to the chase, here is my theory about personality types. There are only two things about an employee that an employer need to know.
1. Are they clean(C) or dirty(D)? and 2. Are they lazy(L) or industrious(I)?
If a person is clean, their work will also reflect that cleanliness - clean clothes, clean desk, clean code, clean documentation. If a person is industrious, their work will reflect that - they will work extra hours to get things done, they will go the extra yard to finish tasks at hand. So we can have 4 personality types now, instead of 16. You can be one of CL, CI, DL, or DI.
And that's it. The employer must hire a CI type and should not hire a DL type. A DI type can be hired if the emphasis is on getting the job done without much focus on quality, and a CL type can be hired if there is little to do, but the job should be done in a clean, methodical fashion. I am sure that if you are a CL, you are perfectly suited for being the chairman of the budget-making committee in California.
And then here is my sample questionnaire (so as to not annoy Mr. Meyer and Mr. Briggs). But there are only 10 questions. If am convinced that we do not need 140 questions to determine whether a person is lazy or not. In fact, if they are, and they get a 140 questions booklet, they will never get to the end of it.
So, here it is, the ultimate questionnaire for the greatest Type Indicator ever:
1. Do you shower daily?
a. yes
b. no
2. Do you brush your teeth at least once a day?
a. yes
b. no
3. Do you eat home-cooked meal at least once a day?
a. yes
b. no
4. Do you do the dishes before you go to bed every night?
a. yes
b. no
5. Do you like to host a party?
a. yes
b. no
6. Do you get your car washed at least once a fortnight?
a. yes
b. no
7. Do you hire someone to clean your house?
a. yes
b. no
8. How many times do you wear your ______* before you wash it?
a. <=2
b. >2
* Employer can put in which item of clothing they fancy.
9. Do you prefer a condo/apartment to a house with an yard?
a. Yes
b. No
10. Do you unpack your suitcases as soon as you get back from a trip?
a. yes
b. No
If you take the questionnaire, please do send me the answers and I will tell you what personality type you are, and who your lucky mascot/role model is.
** If the employer so desires, they can administer this exercise with a polygraph hooked to the employee, because like all tests, this one also allows all forms of cheating.
