The Dark Side of Personality Testing

A few years ago I attended a short course in coaching. The trainer was  a certified practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming and had included some of these techniques within the course. However, he imparted this knowledge with a warning – that these “powers” could potentially be used for evil.

A Tale of Two Recruitments

When I tell people I’m leaving my current job, the question they tend to ask (normally following a sharp intake of breath) is, “how long have you been here?”. The straightforward answer is that “here” is the only place I’ve ever worked. That sounds very old fashioned. Like I’ve been stuck in a rut for nearly half my life. But that’s very far from the truth. I believe I’ve spent my time fruitfully, undertaking several different roles and grabbing every development opportunity that came my way.

Why Some Candidates Lie

I’m a big fan of Mad Men, the American tv series about the New York advertising business in the 1960s. The central character, Don Draper, has stolen his identity from a man killed in the Vietnam war, yet uses his talent (and persistence) to honestly gain a position and work his way up in the company, eventually making partner.

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover

As humans we love classifying things. Our brains are immensely sophisticated organs, but even they have not evolved sufficiently enough to allow us to take in and process the extreme complexity and chaos of the World around us.

Imagine walking into the British library in London. As one of the two largest libraries in the World it has over 14 million books alone, as well as over 100 million manuscripts, drawings, recordings and other artifacts. As you walk in you might take in the majesty of the building, the colour of the wood, the hushed quiet, and that’s before you’ve even looked at any books.

Of course it would be impossible to read every book. So instead we pick and choose what we want to read. Our decision might be based on something we like the look of, or something that’s been recommended to us by someone else. And that is a bit how we deal with all the information being constantly hurled at our senses.