Personality Test Feedback from Bridge Building
As part of becoming very invested in my university and utilising the different resources at my disposal, I jumped at the chance to sign up for a collection of Bridge Building events. They were originally supposed to take place in the autumn but it got pushed to the spring because too few people signed up. That's atrocious. It's a wonderful thing that is supposed to help and support get to learn about ourselves and get us ready to tackle the job market after we graduate.
The five events include a lot of different things, like speed-dating with companies, working on our CVs and making an elevator pitch. But by far the one aspect I was most interested in was the personality test and the individual feedback we would get based on our test. I'm already a sucker for personality tests. I love seeing if I can learn something new about myself or if I think the result I get matches what I know about myself or if the test gets it completely wrong.
One of the tests that I recall the most and find very accurate has been the Myers Briggs personality test, which I've taken two or three times in the last five years or something. Each time I've gotten the INFJ type, which favours Introversion, Intuition, Feeling and Judging over Extroversion, Sensing, Thinking and Perceiving. I feel like the explanation hits spot on in some areas. But it is just a free test on the Internet and the written feedback is somewhat generic.
So I was really looking forward to getting feedback from a very competent consultant who has worked with the test for a long time and done this so many times. The test we were taking is called Master Person Analysis and it aims to distinguish in what types of areas you fit in and what kind of work environment you would thrive in. Initially, I had forgotten about the deadline and handed it in three hours after the agreed deadline and sent an apology e-mail to the consultant. She was very nice about it and assured me that it wouldn't be a problem.
Walking into the room, I was rather calm. It might have been because I was sat on the floor outside of the room for almost twenty minutes and by the time the door finally opened, then I was pretty ready to move on. I had met the consultant briefly at the introductory event and she seemed very nice. The first thing she did was pull out my CV and give me a few pointers, like numbering the page, adding a photo and stuff like that. But we'll get more feedback on the CV at a later stage so she mostly wanted to talk about my test results.
The first thing she did was talk about the scale and how 40 % of people land in the middle and then respectively 20% and 10% in the outlier categories. I think she did it to reassure me because almost all of my dots were in the outlier categories. I wasn't deterred by that though. I sort of expected that I might be a bit unusual. However, that means that I'm more likely to face a lot of issues in my work life because there's not a lot of people that think like I do and things that are completely natural to me might be foreign to a future employer.
She started by focusing on the work style section because that's where I had been the most active in my responses. The way the test is built up where you're given four statements and you have to rank one of them as most like you and one of them as least like you and the other two you leave blank. You have to choose and prioritise and it was surprisingly hard because sometimes several statements fit into either classification and sometimes none of them seemed to be the most or least like me. However, a lot of the statements I did pick was related to work style which indicated that it was the place where I felt most comfortable with how I operate.
The work style group included three parameters: Attention to detail, Security and Abstraction Orientation. I was over in the right hand side of the scale on all of them and in the 20% marking with the first and all the way out in the 10% marking in the other two. Essentially, this means that I am a specialist rather than a generalist. I thrive when I can get to focus on details and be a nerd about it. At the same time, I need a lot of stability in my work environment and I have a curious mind that likes to challenge set structures.
It a bit of an odd thing because I feel like sometimes I can work well within given structures but at the same time, I do have a creative mind and I like to think of "better" ways of doing something. So in that sense I do like to challenge the set boundaries and think more abstract. And I am definitely someone that loves to get nerdy and research and work with a topic that interests me. In relation to this, the consultant brought up potentially researching, like doing a PhD or possible working as a professor. I tensed a bit at that because over the past few weeks, it's a little idea that I've been playing around with myself. Could I continue to be at university for a little while longer, especially since I've fallen in love with it recently. But that's definitely something to consider at some future point. On some level, I think it could be cool but man, I would have to figure out what to study.
The next section was called Social Factors and included Emotional Control, Social Contact and Confidence/Trust, where I was located over in the right hand side and in Emotional Control I had my only dot falling into the 40% even if it was still turned more towards the intuitive and feeling. It means that I'm someone who is able to sense the room and read others emotions, which stems from empathy and also ensures that I feel things very deeply. The Social Contact is almost like the Introvert/Extrovert scale and I landed all the way over at the introvert side, which did surprise me a bit because I feel like I've become slightly more sociable as I've grown older. She noted that I landed on the more critically thinking side of Confidence/Trust, which means I don't automatically just take what people say for the real thing but I still trust people to a degree.
This whole section left me feeling a little confused, probably mainly because of the labelling and it made more sense when she explained it in the moment. In the last of the three, the dot is oval which means that I had answers that pulled it in both directions, which means that I'm a little torn or at least adapt depending on the situation I'm in, which is kind of cool. As for the emotional aspect, I get that I'm more in the middle but tilted toward the emotional side because I'm not cynic but at the same time I know how to keep my emotions in check most times. However, I still sympathise heavily with people and I am observant and find it somewhat easy to read people, so I also know where someone's weak spots might be. I would never take advantage of that but it still scares me a bit because I knew if I wanted to, I could do some serious damage to someone's ego.
We moved to the frist three towards the end of the session and this is also where the consultant drew the 10% - 20% - 40% - 20% - 10% divide that the lines on the scale is. Not surprisingly, I care more about the process according to Achievement Orientation, which means I'm about doing things right throughout and not just what the end results will be. In terms of Self-Assertion, my answers indicates that I prefer to listen more and let other people go run with the ball and be social. I can see that elements of that is true but at the same time the oval dot indicates again that my answers were conflicting. I think this is because I've actually gotten pretty good at asserting myself and when I know my stuff and feel comfortable in the surroundings, then I can dominate a space. As for the Use of Energy, that parameter relates to how many balls (or rather different things) people prefer to juggle at once, where I heavily gravitate towards fewer.
I think that's pretty accurate and it makes sense in relation to my answers in the work style section. I can't be a specialist and hone in on the details and follow a project from start to finish if I have to do too many things at once. I should be particularly careful not to take on too many juggle balls because it will just end up in me getting stressed and being unable to make anything properly. I think it's so important to do things the right way and I sometimes have an issue with control and letting go, which also ties into why I sometimes don't like group work. If I don't know I can trust and count on my group members to perform at the standard I want then I would rather just do the work myself.
This whole experience of filling out a test and getting verbal feedback from a proper consultant definitely made me feel like I got to see some different aspects of myself and I got some different stuff confirmed. Because of my personality, I am very reflective naturally, so the stuff wasn't necessarily new to me but as I learnt with therapy too, it can be beneficial to hear someone else say and confirm what you already think about yourself.
Life is one continuous journey of self-discovery and I will probably have changed by the time I actually make it to the job market properly. And if I had done this test three years ago, then it would probably have been a slightly different picture as well. Even for someone who likes and feels secure in returning habits, I still do so much different stuff that challenges my comfort zones and pushes me to become better.
The five events include a lot of different things, like speed-dating with companies, working on our CVs and making an elevator pitch. But by far the one aspect I was most interested in was the personality test and the individual feedback we would get based on our test. I'm already a sucker for personality tests. I love seeing if I can learn something new about myself or if I think the result I get matches what I know about myself or if the test gets it completely wrong.
One of the tests that I recall the most and find very accurate has been the Myers Briggs personality test, which I've taken two or three times in the last five years or something. Each time I've gotten the INFJ type, which favours Introversion, Intuition, Feeling and Judging over Extroversion, Sensing, Thinking and Perceiving. I feel like the explanation hits spot on in some areas. But it is just a free test on the Internet and the written feedback is somewhat generic.
So I was really looking forward to getting feedback from a very competent consultant who has worked with the test for a long time and done this so many times. The test we were taking is called Master Person Analysis and it aims to distinguish in what types of areas you fit in and what kind of work environment you would thrive in. Initially, I had forgotten about the deadline and handed it in three hours after the agreed deadline and sent an apology e-mail to the consultant. She was very nice about it and assured me that it wouldn't be a problem.
Walking into the room, I was rather calm. It might have been because I was sat on the floor outside of the room for almost twenty minutes and by the time the door finally opened, then I was pretty ready to move on. I had met the consultant briefly at the introductory event and she seemed very nice. The first thing she did was pull out my CV and give me a few pointers, like numbering the page, adding a photo and stuff like that. But we'll get more feedback on the CV at a later stage so she mostly wanted to talk about my test results.
The first thing she did was talk about the scale and how 40 % of people land in the middle and then respectively 20% and 10% in the outlier categories. I think she did it to reassure me because almost all of my dots were in the outlier categories. I wasn't deterred by that though. I sort of expected that I might be a bit unusual. However, that means that I'm more likely to face a lot of issues in my work life because there's not a lot of people that think like I do and things that are completely natural to me might be foreign to a future employer.
She started by focusing on the work style section because that's where I had been the most active in my responses. The way the test is built up where you're given four statements and you have to rank one of them as most like you and one of them as least like you and the other two you leave blank. You have to choose and prioritise and it was surprisingly hard because sometimes several statements fit into either classification and sometimes none of them seemed to be the most or least like me. However, a lot of the statements I did pick was related to work style which indicated that it was the place where I felt most comfortable with how I operate.
The work style group included three parameters: Attention to detail, Security and Abstraction Orientation. I was over in the right hand side of the scale on all of them and in the 20% marking with the first and all the way out in the 10% marking in the other two. Essentially, this means that I am a specialist rather than a generalist. I thrive when I can get to focus on details and be a nerd about it. At the same time, I need a lot of stability in my work environment and I have a curious mind that likes to challenge set structures.
It a bit of an odd thing because I feel like sometimes I can work well within given structures but at the same time, I do have a creative mind and I like to think of "better" ways of doing something. So in that sense I do like to challenge the set boundaries and think more abstract. And I am definitely someone that loves to get nerdy and research and work with a topic that interests me. In relation to this, the consultant brought up potentially researching, like doing a PhD or possible working as a professor. I tensed a bit at that because over the past few weeks, it's a little idea that I've been playing around with myself. Could I continue to be at university for a little while longer, especially since I've fallen in love with it recently. But that's definitely something to consider at some future point. On some level, I think it could be cool but man, I would have to figure out what to study.
The next section was called Social Factors and included Emotional Control, Social Contact and Confidence/Trust, where I was located over in the right hand side and in Emotional Control I had my only dot falling into the 40% even if it was still turned more towards the intuitive and feeling. It means that I'm someone who is able to sense the room and read others emotions, which stems from empathy and also ensures that I feel things very deeply. The Social Contact is almost like the Introvert/Extrovert scale and I landed all the way over at the introvert side, which did surprise me a bit because I feel like I've become slightly more sociable as I've grown older. She noted that I landed on the more critically thinking side of Confidence/Trust, which means I don't automatically just take what people say for the real thing but I still trust people to a degree.
This whole section left me feeling a little confused, probably mainly because of the labelling and it made more sense when she explained it in the moment. In the last of the three, the dot is oval which means that I had answers that pulled it in both directions, which means that I'm a little torn or at least adapt depending on the situation I'm in, which is kind of cool. As for the emotional aspect, I get that I'm more in the middle but tilted toward the emotional side because I'm not cynic but at the same time I know how to keep my emotions in check most times. However, I still sympathise heavily with people and I am observant and find it somewhat easy to read people, so I also know where someone's weak spots might be. I would never take advantage of that but it still scares me a bit because I knew if I wanted to, I could do some serious damage to someone's ego.
We moved to the frist three towards the end of the session and this is also where the consultant drew the 10% - 20% - 40% - 20% - 10% divide that the lines on the scale is. Not surprisingly, I care more about the process according to Achievement Orientation, which means I'm about doing things right throughout and not just what the end results will be. In terms of Self-Assertion, my answers indicates that I prefer to listen more and let other people go run with the ball and be social. I can see that elements of that is true but at the same time the oval dot indicates again that my answers were conflicting. I think this is because I've actually gotten pretty good at asserting myself and when I know my stuff and feel comfortable in the surroundings, then I can dominate a space. As for the Use of Energy, that parameter relates to how many balls (or rather different things) people prefer to juggle at once, where I heavily gravitate towards fewer.
I think that's pretty accurate and it makes sense in relation to my answers in the work style section. I can't be a specialist and hone in on the details and follow a project from start to finish if I have to do too many things at once. I should be particularly careful not to take on too many juggle balls because it will just end up in me getting stressed and being unable to make anything properly. I think it's so important to do things the right way and I sometimes have an issue with control and letting go, which also ties into why I sometimes don't like group work. If I don't know I can trust and count on my group members to perform at the standard I want then I would rather just do the work myself.
This whole experience of filling out a test and getting verbal feedback from a proper consultant definitely made me feel like I got to see some different aspects of myself and I got some different stuff confirmed. Because of my personality, I am very reflective naturally, so the stuff wasn't necessarily new to me but as I learnt with therapy too, it can be beneficial to hear someone else say and confirm what you already think about yourself.
Life is one continuous journey of self-discovery and I will probably have changed by the time I actually make it to the job market properly. And if I had done this test three years ago, then it would probably have been a slightly different picture as well. Even for someone who likes and feels secure in returning habits, I still do so much different stuff that challenges my comfort zones and pushes me to become better.
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