Employment personality tests decoded for nutritionists & culinary professionals: why you're screened

Do you need to take a personality test to enter the culinary or nutrition occupations? What do employers use to screen you out that are not obvious such as tests of integrity?

Nutritionists, for example, are faced with having to make quick decisions in an environment of reduced time. The goal is to balance the need to wait for important information to arrive with the employer's requirement for making good decisions that pose least financial risk to the company or institution.

The idea is not to be blindsided by faulty decision-making skills early on in a career. And employers surmise that taking valid or not so valid employment assessments can possibly predict how you'll fit into the career, or a particular job.

The purpose and unique contribution of writing the book, Employment Personality Tests Decoded, as a special diets nutritionist, but writing not only for the culinary worker, but for anyone to understand why employers use tests to screen you, is to guide readers towards the goal of understanding that workplace decisions may be made about you by your employer. Here's why and how those decisions are made.

The decisions are based on abilities tests or personality assessments that may or may not be always valid. You need to ask for feedback on any assessments you take. And ask your employer to keep your results confidential. The purpose of the tests to supposedly to help you make better decisions as part of a team so that you won't be blindsided early on in your career by making snap decisions before all the information comes to you.

What the assessment is supposed to measure and what your employer thinks it measures may be different. Your employer might be looking for depth or breadth when the test is measuring a voice of resilience and self-confidence. And in an employment personality test, you’re looking for a valued ‘beast’ that enjoys tunneling into that well of sanity called a long-time career.

A test might use the word, dovetail as a verb to mean “work well with” existing markets. You might want a test that uses plain language to say what it’s supposed to mean. Many tests of personality, cognitive, or job skills turn out to be timed tests of reading comprehension. Employers may ask other team members whether a new applicant connects well with the team instead of whether the team member is well connected.

Personality or abilities tests need to be handled like confidential medical records. Find out whether or not test results are given to your health insurance company along with medical information. Psychological testing, like medical exams should be confidential and not stored in open-ended databases in your employer’s human resources department.

Users of psychological tests include employers, teachers, school guidance and career counselors, outsourced consultants, clergy, and workshop leaders who are independent contractors. Is the person administering the tests trained in the pitfalls to avoid—hindsight? Has your boss researched alternative types of assessments and given you a choice as to which you prefer?

What decisions are being made about you based on taking corporate tests? Are assessments part of the hiring process, or given mainly to executives to build better teams? The second reason I wrote Employment Personality Tests Decoded, is to look at the root of where the definitions, origins, or coding of a variety of personality tests actually come from.

Part of my day is spent reading books on population genetics that looks at prehistoric migrations and origins, historical linguistics that looks at origins of words, and reading about the roots of behavior and personality choices—how and why people make specific decisions under reduced time pressures. That’s bad in a work place—to have to make more decisions under continuing reduced time. You have to make good decisions. But whether decisions are good or bad often are validated by peers at work.


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