The new CPO, aka Chief Pain Officer, is worse than Big Bad Boss when it comes to random decisions. She has added a new HR project to have us all psychometrically tested, and in the same breath has cut annual pay increases globally, which arguably would do a lot more for morale and productivity. She does not know that we did psychometric testing only a few years ago, and the result was no noticeable difference in colleague collaboration or even understanding. Big Bad Boss has told her but she will not change her plan. Testing is taking place. Full stop.
I am guessing the psychometric testing company is run by a buddy. Certainly, the CEO is a first-level contact on LinkedIn and they have been tagged together at a conference. Say no more. Follow the money if you want to make sense of random decisions made by Higher Beings in C-suite.
Personality summary
If you have been in corporate life for a few years, you will have taken a psychometric test at some point. These ask random questions like ’would you rather go out for pizza or ride a bicycle in the park?’ From these insights, the results will neatly summarise your entire being into a four-letter abbreviation. I dislike the idea that my personality can be packaged in such a way; I am unique, indescribable in fact, but no, I am INTJ.
The ‘I’ stands for introversion, and luckily, I am only borderline ‘I’. Full-on introverts fail to make eye-contact and converse using only the numbers zero or one. I am not that bad; I just don’t really like people. To be honest, I do not really get the ‘N’ part, but it intuitively makes more sense than ‘F’ for feeling; I guess that’s what makes me an ‘N’. The ‘T’ is for thinking, so yes, I will own that. Indeed, I could be ‘O’ for overthinking if there was such a thing. The ‘J’ is for judging, so the less said about that the better. Overall, I have read that INTJs are best in expert, consultative jobs, ideally in standalone roles. I guess I am in the right place.
I hear the CPO’s new test has an altogether different scoring, so I am vaguely interested, even though I would still have rather spent the money on bigger pay budgets. In this test we will be scored on five traits, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Gulp.
Trait scoring
I am big on openness. The label is confusing, as it means openness to new ideas and nothing at all to do with privacy. We are told that openness is something we value as a company, but only when that does not lead us to take unnecessary risks in which case we value caution. That is clear then. Big Bad Boss scores even more open to new ideas than me, which in my view rather invalidates the scoring.
The second trait is conscientiousness. Not surprisingly my colleague Lazy Susan is off-the-scale low on that. When is anyone ever going to notice that she does not do any work? I mean ever. Big Bad Boss is also low in conscientiousness, and I am somewhere in the middle which explains why it feels like a standalone role. Sigh.
Extroversion is pretty much the same as the old test, except now we are told the company favours people with high extroversion. That is a bit of a blow for the loners among us. It does rather feel like the world is geared to people who can barge around, sounding off on their ideas to everyone.
The next trait is agreeableness which sounds like a good thing but could be a bad thing if it means you are not prepared to challenge the status quo. I am told the company values people who are less agreeable, which rather explains the Higher Beings in C-suite. Luckily, it turns out that I am not that agreeable either. Who knew?
Finally, we come to neuroticism, which describes as nervous versus confident. I would say I am quite confident, maybe not overconfident like our Higher Beings, but I am certainly not nervous. Yet, in the test I have come out as neurotic, not just borderline nervous but full-on paranoid. I am told the company favours those who are low on the neurotic scale. Oh no, what if they start secretly selecting people for redundancy based on the five traits? The new CPO has already stated that we will be using the test to select new talent. It really is not looking good. And I do not think the scoring can be correct, I mean how can I score as neurotic? It must be rigged.
Privately, I have my own way to categorise people at work. They are either thinkers, talkers, or doers. Most people in HR are talkers. Big Bad Boss is a talker. He can go into meetings with the Higher Beings and sound like he knows what he is talking about when really, he does not. Sometimes, he can even win them over to our side, so while I do not have a lot of time for talkers, Big Bad Boss has his uses. My colleague, Lazy Susan, does not actually do anything, and in my experience, thinking is not her strong point either, so I would have to put her down to a talker. That said, she does not say much except when chatting rather loudly on the phone to her mates.
Thinkers are the only ones I respect, but due to the prevalence of talkers around here, I find myself more of a doer. I will have to give that some serious thought.
Next time… Candid grapples with AI.
