In Ancient Greece, (c. 460 – c. 370 BC), the physician Hippocrates developed a theory that our temperaments were directly influenced by our bodily fluids. We know his test now as The Four Humors, each ‘humor’ representing a different fluid – yellow bile, black bile, phlegm (bear with us, we know this is disgusting), and blood.
If you were described as having a ‘phlegmatic’ personality type, your relaxed and peaceful demeanour would indicate that you have an abundance of phlegm in your system. If you were melancholic, you were full of black bile, and so on. Things, thankfully, have become more nuanced over the centuries that followed, but Hippocrates’ studies are indicative of a curiosity that continues to this day. Namely, how do you learn someone’s character, are there set character types and what should you measure to assess what character type someone is?
The 20th century
The godfather of the modern psychometric test is French psychologist Alfred Binet: creator of the Binet-Simon scale, designed to ascertain a person’s intelligence. It came about when a French professional group for child psychology, La Société Libre pour l’Etude Psychologique de l’Enfant, was looking for a test to determine the mental age of disabled children.
Things took a darker turn when the test was hijacked by H.H. Goddard, a champion of the eugenics movement, who used mental testing as a way to demonstrate the superiority of the white race.
“There were many tests developed in the 1900s which switched focus to personality.”
Binet’s test may have looked solely at intelligence, but there were many tests developed in the 1900s which switched focus to personality. Some are well known: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) for instance, has become universally popular thanks to its relative simplicity. Some are slightly less well known, like the Minnesota Multiphase Personality Inventory.
Both these assessments use a mix of testing points, including a list of self-reported statements candidates either agree or disagree with, and none of them holds much weight.
“In social science, we use four standards [to assess whether something is valid]: are the categories reliable, valid, independent, and comprehensive? For the MBTI, the evidence says not very, no, no, and not really”, organisational psychologist Adam Grant wrote in Psychology Today after reviewing all the science on MBTI. Myers-Briggs, in psychological circles, carries no more weight than horoscopes.
The trouble with all these tests is that they’re black and white – there is very little grey. So, people are either perceiving or judging. Or introvert or extrovert. Of course, personality types are far more nuanced than that. It’s worth noting that Myers-Briggs was devised in 1943. There is very little else in sociological or psychological science that has lasted that long without question.
While Myers-Briggs has gained popularity online as a quick and easy way to find out who you are, the people interested in testing have been working on more in-depth, realistic and rounded tests that give a true reflection of personality types.
One of the more scientific breakthroughs came with the ‘Big 5’ test. The initial model was proposed in 1961 by Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal, but it wasn’t until the 80s and 90s that the ideas became more widely adopted. The ‘Big 5’ assesses our personalities against five key traits – openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (OCEAN). This model, while still not without critics, is much more grounded in psychological science, and forms the basis for much of the research into psychometrics to this day.
Personality profiling in recruitment
Recruitment has changed very little in the last 50 years. You write a job description, candidates apply with a CV, you conduct interviews and choose the ‘best’.
The problem is that this comes with a lot of unconscious and personal bias. We are psychologically trained to warm to people who are like us. For businesses, this is an issue. You can look at experience on a CV, you can assess someone’s performance in an interview, but how do you accurately measure someone’s motivations or their values?
Psychometric testing, therefore, has become of more interest to savvy businesses looking to get the best people for the role and for the business as a whole. With the increasing understanding of the role cultural fit played in attracting and retaining talent, so psychometric testing became, and continues to be, more integral to recruitment.
That role has become increasingly essential. For instance, a 2017 study of 588 cybersecurity professionals found that employees showed high levels of self-efficacy, a love of lifelong learning, and a reliance on rational decision-making techniques.
Now, 75% of The Times Best Companies to work for use personality screening, as well as 80% of the top Fortune 500 companies globally. Employers want candidates that will stay in positions long-term, they want to understand the underlying motivations employees have to work, and make the best use of their talents to drive the business forward.
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In IT and cybersecurity specifically, technology moves so quickly that experience counts for less and less. The certs and knowledge of 20 years ago are almost irrelevant in such a fast-paced and quickly-evolving field. The key for recruiters and businesses is to find candidates who are eager to learn, and can demonstrate a willingness to develop themselves over time.
Unlike OCEAN or Myers-Briggs, what great recruitment psychometrics do is to compare personality profiles against thousands of other real-life people in similar roles, not simply against psychological ‘norms’. This is important for finding the right job fit, and the right person that aligns with the culture of the business.
A way to go
Psychometric testing has been around for a while, but often it’s been used towards the end of the recruitment process – generally, once a candidate has been chosen.
Also, the results of psychometrics have often been difficult to interpret, and there will generally be one savvy HR person or business leader with a specific interest in the discipline assessing results. Insights aren’t actioned, and the whole process becomes an extra job rather than a valuable exercise.
“It’s a powerful tool which is vastly underused and undervalued at present.”
For us, the real value of psychometric testing going forward is embedding the process throughout the whole talent management function from start to finish. This means using the insights to find a list of candidates who have the right temperament for a specific role, understanding how they fit into the company culture, what the company culture actually is in the first place (as opposed to simply words on a website), onboarding the candidate properly and helping them thrive once they’re in the business. It’s a powerful tool which is vastly underused and undervalued at present – when approached in the right way.
And psychometrics don’t have to be focused on the individual: they can help teams work better together too. Google did just that in their Project Aristotle initiative. Researchers set out to establish an algorithm that would give CEOs the perfect blend of team dynamics every time.
They compiled a list of ‘group norm’ characteristics that could prove useful to HR teams looking to foster a positive company culture. These included:
– Dependable outcomes
– Structured team roles
– Meaningful task delegation
– Psychological safety in raising questions/concerns
The findings, as described in the NYT, noted that, “norms can be unspoken or openly acknowledged, but their influence is often profound.”
To summarise, we’ve come a long way from checking bodily fluids to ascertain character types, and yet in many ways it feels like we’re at the start of an exciting new chapter in the use of psychometrics to build great companies, great teams and great individuals. With AI and big data becoming increasingly prevalent, too, we’re bound to see vast evolutions in psychometrics in the not-too-distant future. Whatever the tech, however, the fundamentals remain the same: foster a great culture, and get the people that fit it perfectly.
Get in touch if you’re looking to build the perfect cybersecurity team using personality profiling as part of your employee screening process.
