COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

via a an HR type headhunter. They're trying to assess and screen their candidates for what would be a very sales-oriented position in financial services (ain't they all?) Here's what it says about me:

In Terms of Enterprising vs Support Role Possibilities
You would be described as extremely competitive, enterprising, assertive, aggressive, tough minded, determined and goal oriented. You may display new and creative ways to reach your personal and work objectives and you will be self-evaluative and sometimes critical of your own performance. Given an aim, objective or requirement, you would be able to develop your own plan, manage your time and focus your effort on a daily basis to reach your goals. Being a self-manager should come very naturally to you and these skills should be refined through formal training and/or on-the-job experience.

In Terms of Your Style & Strength of Various Motivations
People would see you as being motivated to a very great extent by your sincere concern for the well-being of others. In addition, they may see you as a person who has the potential to achieve some very meaningful objectives which have the creation of a good level of personal income as a major factor. To achieve at the level of which you are capable and to obtain both personal and financial satisfaction, you should set your career goals towards obtaining a position in an organization whose purpose has real human and/or social merit and where you can occasionally take on challenging special tasks which are very demanding and which will reward you for their successful completion.

In Terms of Your Independence vs Your Need to Be in the 'Team'
You would be described as extremely strong minded, stubborn, demanding, firm independent and resolute. You would seek responsibility and dislike constant supervision. Your result indicates that you are an individual interested in developing his own skills, and innovative in developing his own procedures or methods of approaching business, perhaps even to the extent of conflicting with existing company procedures. In a team situation you would be most likely to move as quickly as possible into a team leadership role if you decided to participate in the team at all.

In Terms of Your Orientation Towards the 'People' Side of Business
You would be described as somewhat sociable, enthusiastic, cheerful, lively and entertaining. While valuing social interactions, you may be somewhat reserved in your initial contacts with new people. The achievement of goals would be through personal relationships developed over a very long period of time.

In Terms of Your Orientation Towards Technical & Practical Concerns
You would be described as quite logical, reflective, analytical, factual and practical. A job requiring the solving of intellectual or conceptual problems would stimulate a person such as yourself. You would have a flair for technically oriented and detailed work. Taking on challenges to learn and use new information in a field that interests you would be rewarding in itself.
©1993-2005 Selection Testing Consultants International Ltd.


Personal Orientation Profile 7.0 What To Seek/What To Avoid In Jobs

What Should You Look for In a Job/Career that Matches You Best?
+ Look for opportunities to create your own work structure and to develop your self-management skills by training in time management and activity planning. The opportunity to put solid effort into the job each day is a real plus for you as you know that effort invested consistently will produce the results you seek in both productivity and recognition.

+ Your best prospects for both personal satisfaction and personal productivity can be found in career directions which focus on challenging jobs in which you can see a real value in terms of rendering a valuable and valued service to people.

+ Look for employment that will provide you with a lot of freedom of action to be creative in developing your own ways to do business. You should seek a supervisor that likes his/her staff to think for themselves and work independently.

+ You should look for employment that calls for an average amount of people contact and a limited number of contacts with new people. However, some of your job satisfaction would be found in the interaction with people at work.

+ A job with some learning and technical requirements would be quite satisfying. The opportunity to be creative and to put your new found knowledge into action would also be appealing to you.



What Should You Avoid in Jobs/Careers that Don't Match You?
- Avoid tightly and rigidly structured work situations. If there is no room to put your personal touch to work in organizing and managing yourself, the job may become too constricting for you. Try to avoid jobs that may limit your self-management skills development which is a very strong need in you for your personal productivity and your sense of satisfaction with any job.

- Avoid jobs which you evaluate as having little service orientation. If the company tends to reward everyone the same regardless of their effort and results you are unlikely to find any 'productivity' satisfaction with them.

- Avoid work circumstances in which you would be expected to follow rigorous rules and be under close and continuing supervision for an extended period. However, you should be careful not to give people the impression that there is little anyone can teach you.

- You should avoid a position where you are expected to perform an exclusively public relations role.

- You should avoid jobs that are not intellectually challenging, creative and those that do not offer a chance for personal growth in a technical or practical sense.

Yep. It's me. It's kind of a distorted charicature of me - it kind of plays up aggressiveness and energy a bit. And I would be quite comfortable in a PR setting, I think, so long as the client wasn't a total embarrassment. On the other hand, I sort of enjoy crises, once in a blue moon, too.

Contrary to the test results, I also enjoy meeting new people. Actually, it's one of the things I miss most about outside sales.

The thing I don't miss about outside sales is "Oh. Fullfillment forgot to ship your order. For weeks. The customer's unhappy and cancelled. Therefore we're docking your commission."

Splash, out

Jason


But overall it's not too bad.