This article was inspired by a recent conversation with an IT prodigy who specializes in building virtual games used for recruitment purposes.
Online assessments, aptitude tests, and gamified problem-solving tasks have become ubiquitous in the recruitment processes of top companies, with consulting firms being some of the earliest adopters.
However, the scope of these tests now encapsulates much more than merely measuring people’s competence levels. Instead of merely trying to assess a candidate’s numerical, verbal, or problem solving ability, these software programs now also aim to track personality and preferences. Although measuring competence remains integral to recruitment games, the personality-match can make or break a successful application.
In personality-focused tasks, there are often no objectively correct answers, or clear goals. They are not focused at how successful you are at the designated task, but rather trying to find out about your personality traits while you play the game. Often, what truly matters is something that the player would never even expect.
For instance, I recently completed a game where I had to sell virtual balloons. The bigger I blew these balloons, the more money I received for them. However, if the balloon popped, I received no money at all. The balloons popped at a completely random rate, some right at the second blow, others lasting as long as 12. I broke a sweat trying to figure out a logical pattern for the game, yet, as I later found out, there was none. The purpose of the recruiters was simply to see my personal inclination for risk aversion. Another game tested my reflexes. After each try, I received a score, and could decide to keep that score or scrap it and try again. Despite the fact that I have quick reflexes, and obtained an extremely high score in the end, this game showed a less desirable trait of mine. It turns out that what truly mattered was my ability to correctly recognize the limits to my performance. I decided to scrap higher scores than what I finally ended up with because I always hoped for better performance.
What makes these types of games nerve-wracking for some is that you cannot prepare for them. Unlike a case interview or a numerical test, practice doesn’t help much because you are not aware of the applied metrics or the real purpose of the game. Thus, if you find yourself repeatedly stuck at the assessment-centre stage of the recruitment process, despite demonstrably outstanding academic results, it might be that your personality simply does not match that given role. If that is the case, no amount of practice will really help. Instead, you should consider selecting different positions to apply for.
It is crucial to gather knowledge about yourself, and then look for careers which suit your personality traits. There are many ways to developing your self-understanding, and online personality tests are a good first step.
I would like to share my experience with one of the most well-known platforms, the Meyers-Briggs 16 Personalities test.
When I first completed the test, I was hardly surprised that my character was that of a debater (ENTP). This implies a highly contrarian personality, who likes playing the devil’s advocate, and never hesitates to offer (unwarranted) scepticism on any topic.
Debaters are notorious for being difficult to work with in groups, even if they can make highly useful contributions at times. This analysis was congruent with my past experience as well. Therefore, I decided to turn my back on classic management consultancy, and explore other subsets of business advisory services.
In the end, I settled for tax advisory, which was nearly perfect fit for my contrarian inclinations. Tax consultants often need to disprove the obvious, offer alternative interpretations to long-standing regulations, and build up arguments based on potentially minor incongruencies in legislation. Being heavily focused on law, tax advisory requires less intense teamwork than management consulting, while still offering a lot of exposure to rewarding work with clients.
The bottom line
My experience has revealed that you do not need to be fixated on a single, narrowly defined goal, if you are not fully convinced that it suits you best. It can be much more lucrative to branch out and explore horizons beyond the most popular professions like management consulting and investment banking.
The business ecosystem fosters an incredible range of nuance, where vastly different people can find their personal niche.
Bence Borbély is a Hungarian first-year History and Politics student at the University of Cambridge whose professional fields of interest are management consultancy, public policy-making, politics and international relations.
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