DISC, MBTI, and other four-letter words
How I ended up as a hotel security guard instead of an executive at a tech company
In his newsletter, Granted, Wharton professor and best-selling author, Adam Grant recently wrote a follow-up to a break-up letter he sent ten years ago.
He broke up with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a kind of personality test often used by companies during hiring and appraisal processes.
In the early 80’s, I was a student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in Trondheim, Norway. I was studying organisational and developmental psychology while personality tests were really starting to catch on in the corporate world.
Part of the research we were doing was to do a deeper dive into some of the more popular tests of the time to try to find bias, accuracy and interpretation issues, or other weaknesses they may have had.
Of course as a twenty-something student researcher, it didn’t take long before I felt I was something of a world-class expert in all the flaws and failings the tests had, and the risks companies took if they relied upon them when hiring people.
We must have been making waves somehow because when a large, rapidly-expanding digital electronic corporation came to Norway, some of us students were invited to interview for jobs at the company.
My interview went extremely well. They even asked what I felt about the trend towards use of personality tests in the hiring process.
I explained that it was refreshing to sit face to face with a very personable human, and then went on a long rant about why companies that used these simple tests that were full of potential pitfalls were basically asking for trouble.
I just knew I was acing it and my racing heart was beating with pride!
Until…
“I really like you, but I’ve got some bad news for you.”, the interviewer said.
“We use one of those tests. Here’s yours. Complete it and I’ll be back in thirty minutes to collect it.”
After leaving university, and obviously not because I’d been hired as corporate tech executive, I started my hospitality career as a hotel security guard.
The first team building workshop I was invited to started with a personality test. I did my best to answer honestly without trying to game it to get a popular profile.
Once the facilitator had reviewed everyone’s answers, I was asked not to continue as a participant. Apparently, my personality was that of a “cold, insensitive fish” and it was feared I might be disruptive to the team building process.
Full disclosure, I was also asked to leave at least two other team building courses before completion during my time at the company. Once because when we were asked what belongings we would take from a sinking ship to survive on an island, my results were better as an individual than the group’s collective choices, and once for reasons I can no longer remember.
Lucky for me, I managed to keep my job at the company for over 30 years. The company grew from a small Scandinavian hotel chain to become a major part of one of the world’s leading hotel companies and I grew along with it.
During my time, I was given the company’s highest individual honour for leadership, loyalty, results, and exemplifying the company credo.
In 2018, I was selected the #1 global influencer in my field by a jury of peers.
I consider myself fortunate that the company didn’t use a personality test back when I was hired. Oh, they didn’t want to hire me then, but only because the security manager in the hotel thought I was “too old, too educated, and had too many opinions”.
But that’s a story for another week!
Today’s post is from 87 Stories - Lessons from the University of Life!
I like to say that my post-high school gap year in Europe, turned into a 4-decade-long education at the “University of Life” and included a 30-year, basement-to-boardroom career at a company that didn’t want to hire me.
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory and countless creative liberties, 87 Stories is a journal of how that journey made me an emigrant, an immigrant and a gave me a life I never dreamed of.
Stay safe, Always Care