Remember those personality tests that you took in high school that told you what sort of job you should take? Actually, I may be dating myself with this one, but I remember those tests being on Scantrons (”Number 2 Pencil ONLY, please!”) and the results being, well, not particularly useful. How many of those tests spit out “ditch digger” as the best career? There are of course many more recent examples that give you scores based on some factors (usually four factors so they can map you nicely into a quadrant on a graph). When you are looking for a job I suppose it is useful to know that you are an extrovert or introvert, but does that really tell you whether a company/hiring manager is going to value your unique skills? Case and point is the Jasper system used over at Monster.com. You can take a survey (which is not as boring as it sounds and definitely a step from the Scantrons of old) and it will give you a full report on your personality. This is what it told me:

So what do I do with that information? The results are interesting for comparing yourself to others and might make good copy for your resume summary or cover letter. I do like some of the write-ups in various sections like comparing “questioning” vs. “trusting” among various age groups:

(I like how the questioning goes up until age 45 when people get nervous about job security, then back up again when we get crotchety and don’t care what anyone thinks).

All of this is useful for finding more about what I feel my own style is but it still does not tell me much about what sort of culture I should look for or where I might find that culture if I were looking.