I used to work for a company that used psych testing as part of it's hiring process. Everyone had to go through it. It was called the PI and it was spectacularly accurate. Basically it took your answers and created a profile of you along 4 areas. I got reasonably good at reading them, because I did a fair bit of hiring. And I was hiring accountants, and it was amazing the number of candidates who did not have a personality profile that was at all suited to being an accountant. When I questioned around why they had become an accountant it ususally turned out that it had been a parent's idea of a good job.

In my own case I was hired to do one job, and while I was ok at it, I wasn't great at it,. and I wasn't particularly happy doing it. When I applied for another job within the company they looked at my PI and said, no wonder you're not great at what you're doing - you're the wrong profile for the job, you've had to modify your personality to do it. My profile was much more suited to a job in finance which I got, and totally loved and was very successful at.

So I think psych testing can be a useful tool in determining whether a candidate is the right fit for the job.

--splitimage