Bait and Switch (5 page)

third. The only question that gives me pause is "list five things you are tolerating or putting up with in your life at present (examples: might be. If it's a desire to inflict grievous bodily harm on some disorganized office, disrespectful relationships, poor person currently in my presence—well, no. When I go communication, etc.)." That's it: disorganized office. Stacks of somewhere for the day, would I rather plan what I will do and paper mount and subside around in me in waves; the floor when, or "just go"? Again, it's somewhat different for a court moonlights as a filing space; empty cups and glasses crowd the appearance than for a trip to the mall. I race through the test desk, along with unpaid bills, unanswered letters, manuscripts I with the mad determination of a monkey that's been given a am supposed to review. Talk about a "distorted passion," as Morton typewriter and assigned to generate Shakespeare's oeuvre, would put it; to judge from my home office, I have the hoping that some passably coherent individual emerges.

administrative talents of a twelve-year-old boy. Kimberly had promised in our initial talk that I would come out of our co-

active process not only with a job but with "a whole new view of CAREER COACHES CAN perhaps be forgiven for using baseless myself." With luck, the new view will be far less cluttered.

personality tests to add a veneer of scientific respectability to the The other Kimberly assignment is to take yet another per-coaching process. But the tests enjoy wide credibility, not just sonality test, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is mar-among coaches but among corporate decision makers. In 1993, ginally craftier than the WEPSS, in that I am not asked simply the Myers-Briggs test was administered to three million Americans; to choose the attributes that fit me, but am given somewhat eighty-nine of the Fortune top 100 companies use it to help slot more roundabout questions, such as "Do you usually get along their white-collar employees into the appropriate places in the better with (A) imaginative people, or (B) realistic people?"

hierarchy.
15
On its web site, the Enneagram Institute lists, Once again, the only sensible approach is a random one. Do I among the companies supposedly using the Enneagram test to usually show my feelings freely or keep my feelings to myself?

15

Hmm, depends on how socially acceptable those feelings Annie Murphy Paul,
The Cult of Personality: How Personality Tests Are Leading
Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand
Ourselves
(New York: Free Press, 2004), p. 125.

sort out their employees, Amoco, AT&T, Avon, Boeing, DuPont, some mystic unity underlying the disorder of human experience.

eBay, General Mills, General Motors, Alitalia Airlines, KLM

Even the more superficially rational of these tests, the Myers-Airlines, Hewlett-Packard, Toyota, Procter & Gamble, Briggs Type Indicator, possesses not a shred of scientific International Weight Watchers, Reebok Health Clubs, respectability according to Annie Murphy Paul's 2004 book, Motorola, Prudential Insurance, and Sony. Amazon offers a
The Cult of Personality.
It was devised, in the early forties, by a score of books on the Enneagram, none of them apparently layperson—a homemaker in fact—who had become fascinated by critical, including
The Enneagram in Love and Work, The Spiritual
her son-in-law's practical, detailed-oriented personality,
Dimension of the Enneagram,
and
The Enneagram for Managers.

which was so different from her own, more intuitive, apIt is true that I encountered the Enneagram in the particularly proach. Inspired by the psychoanalyst Carl Jung's notion of wacky company of
The Wizard of
Oz. But the test I took was the

"types"—which were by no means meant to be innate or real thing, which, a web search reveals, is variously said to be immutable—Katharine Briggs devised a test to sort humanity derived from Sufism, Buddhism, Jesuit philosophy, and Celtic into sixteen distinct types, all of them fortunately benign.

lore—with a generous undergirding of numerology. The early (There were no psychopaths, of the kind who might show up at twentieth-century Russian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff seems to have work one day with an automatic weapon, in Briggs's universe.) To been a fount of inspiration, but the actual development of the her eternal frustration, the test never won respect from the Enneagram theory is usually credited to two men—Oscar academic psychology profession, and not only because of her Ichazo, a Bolivian-born mystic, and Claudio Naranjo, a outsider status. Serious psychologists have never been con-psychiatrist who made his mark in the nineteen sixties by vinced that people can be so readily sorted into "types."

employing hallucinogenic drugs in psychotherapy. Whatever Leaving aside the validity of "types," the Myers-Briggs Type

"ancient learning" the Enneagram test purports to represent, it Indicator has zero predictive value even in its own terms. In one is nothing more than a pastiche of wispy New Age yearnings for study, undertaken by proponents of Myers-Briggs, only 47 percent of people tested fell into the same category on a second only a bad fit between the two.
17

administration of the test. Another study found 39 to 76

Of course, if the function of the tests is really ideological—to percent of those tested assigned to a different "type" upon promote the peg-in-hole theory of employment—they do not retesting weeks or years later. Some people's "types" have been have to be in any way accurate as predictors of performance or found to vary according to the time of day. Paul concludes that satisfaction. They serve more as underpinnings of corporate

"there is no evidence that [Briggs's] sixteen distinct types have etiquette, allowing employers to rationalize rejection or dis-any more validity than the twelve signs of the zodiac."
16

missal in terms of an inadequate "fit." We believe that there is a So why is the corporate world, which we think of as so fix-unique slot for each person, the tests announce—even ated on empirical, in fact, quantifiable, measures of achieve-though we may fail to find it in your particular case.

ment like the "bottom line," so attached to these meaningless My job, though, is to find a "fit," however wobbly, in any in-personality tests? One attraction must be that the tests lend a stitutional structure that will have me. And with this simple superficial rationality to the matching of people with jobs. No task in mind, the personality tests seem even more mysterious. If I one, after all, wants a sadistic personnel director or a morbidly am a public relations person by training and experience, what shy publicist; and if you failed at one job, it is probably com-good will it do me to discover that my personality is better suited forting to be told that it was simply not a good "fit" for your into a career as an embalmer? Presumably there are extroverted ner nature. As Paul writes:

engineers and introverted realtors, who nevertheless manage to The administration of personality tests is frequently presented as a gesture get the job done. The peculiar emphasis on "personality," as opposed of corporate goodwill, a generous acknowledgement of employees'

to experience and skills, looms like a red flag, but I have no way of uniqueness. Under this banner of respect for individuality, organizations knowing yet what the warning's about.

are able to shift responsibility for employee satisfaction onto that MY LONG-THREATENED one-hour make-up session with Kim-obligatory culprit, "fit." There's no bad worker and no bad workplace, 16 Paul,
Cult of Personality,
pp. 133-34.

17 Ibid., p. 130.

berly finally arrives, and the reason for this ghastly intrusion In this case, definitely drained, but I am loath to disown the good into my time is that I blew off a prior scheduled session out of news of my E-ness. She proceeds through the letters, pausing sheer sullenness and inability to simulate the cheerfulness that a in between to let me acknowledge the truth of them.
"N
is for successful Kimberly interaction requires. We start with the
intuitive,
as opposed to
S,
which is a kind of detail person. The results of the Myers-Briggs test. "You're an ENTJ," she an-challenge, for an
N,
is that they are kind of disorganized." Ah yes, nounces. "I was so excited when I saw it!"

that's me. T is for "thinker as opposed to feeling," which is very

"Remember the two overlapping circles?" she quizzes good although she herself tests on the feeling side, and J means I like me. I acknowledge that I do. One was the world, one was me.

"closure on things." The danger there is that I might come to

"Well," she explains, "the personality is part of
you."
"As opposed to

"premature closure," and she can help me slow down a little. I the world?"

suspect this is a veiled reference to my recent insistence on a time

"Yes! Each letter signifies something, and together you get a frame for our coaching process, or at least some estimate of when I kind of fruit salad! The E—that's for
extrovert.
You know that would be released into the world as a viable candidate—a demand word?"

she had weaseled out of.

"Mmm."

"Now for the really good news," she tells me. "ENTJ is also called

"It means that you get your energy external to yourself."

the
commandant.
They usually rise to the highest level in She too is an E, and being
E
is "good news for the job search, organizations. You are a natural leader!"

because introverts have a lot of trouble getting out there."

"So I should apply for CEO jobs?"

I cannot think of how to respond, which seems to occasion a

"Well no, but you can tell people you have really strong rare moment of self-doubt in Kimberly. "Do you agree about the leadership qualities. Would you be comfortable with that?"

E
part?" she asks. "Do you feel drained by spending time with I tell her I'm not sure and, ever so tactfully, that I don't really people? Or energized?"

see the point of this. Never mind that the ENTJ version of me bears no resemblance to the emotional, artistic, melancholy, ing only with a mocking "Helloo-oo-oo?"

and envious neurotic revealed by Morton's WEPSS test, which of Unless I can fake a bomb attack on my home, we have twenty-five course goes unmentioned here.

minutes to go, which I would rather not spend being bullied into

"The point is," she interjects, "that it gives you
language!"

"owning," as she puts it, my inner commandant. I have a She directs me to open the booklet that she had sent me along question prepared. Over our several sessions so far, I have intuited with the test,
Introduction to Type in Organizations,
second that she wants me to be more like her: upbeat, cheery, "in the edition. After some scuffling with the detritus on my desk, I moment," and excruciatingly overreactive. In my web searches, I find it and turn to page 31, as instructed. There I find a list of have come across several enjoinders to, in fact, become more the organizational qualities of ENTJs, including "take charge Kimberly-like if I intend to land a job. One such site, called quickly," "develop well-thought-out plans," and "run as much of Professionals in Transition, features an article on developing a the organization as possible." "So?" I ask.

"winning attitude," which advises that

"You can say it in your resume!" she responds, and I begin to your personal attitude will determine the ultimate success of your job campaign. If you are angry with your former em-detect just the slightest impatience with me.

ployer, or have a negative attitude, it will show. Studies have shown I tell her I can't say I develop well-thought-out plans just that the hiring process is over 90% emotional. In other words, if I because this test says I do, and we toss that one around for a like you, I may hire you. If you are perceived as being hostile, few minutes, with her insisting it's who I
am.
"Well, I don't negative or carrying significant emotional baggage, it will send a mixed message that can significantly hinder your job campaign think I can walk into some new situation and announce that I efforts.

can take charge or that I'm a natural leader."

The idea that hiring decisions are "90% emotional" is deeply

"Why not?"

discouraging. What happened to skills and achievements? But if a

"Because it sounds boastful."

winning attitude is what I need, I am determined to develop And now she can no longer suppress the irritation, answer-one, so I ask Kimberly how to go about this.

Maybe it's hard for her to imagine not having one, because This takes my breath away. She might as well have in-she immediately wants to know what stands in my way. "Like what structed me to amputate my legs at the knees. I mourn for Barbara are you worried about?"

Alexander, who had been fluffing up so nicely and now must be

"My age, for one thing."

contracted into a thirty-seven-year-old midget. It has to be done,

"So the trick is to make your age a nonissue. What age though; all references to a life prior to 1989 must be expunged would you like to be?"

from my resume.

I tell her I'm fine with my current age, but clearly it doesn't Even more staggering is my other major "takeaway" from this meet her standards. She goes off into an explanation of the dif-session (I'm at least picking up some jargon): that I am not the only ference between "biological" and "chronological" age, and phony in the job-searching business. What I've been learning will not be budged by my insistence that I am happy to be who from Kimberly and to a certain extent also from the stolid I am, thank you. "Wouldn't you say you
feel
like thirty-seven?"

Joanne is how to lie—how to plump up an undistinguished Actually, I feel much better than I did at thirty-seven, but, what resume, how to project a kind of confidence I neither feel nor the hell, I agree to go along with her idée fixe that thirty-seven is deserve to feel. Deception is part of the game. Even getting along my "biological age."