Personality tests provide nothing more than a general guideline in analyzing a potential employee. Be aware that there's no hard evidence that personality tests are accurate measures of an individual's personality. People are a combination of character traits - some stronger, some weaker - and which traits show up the strongest can vary with the situation. Trying to categorize a person according to a given set of personality indicators may or may not give a true picture of the individual. Plus you might get considerably different results giving a prospect the same test a second time.Dependence on personality tests can be so misleading that some firms that develop tests (such as Myers-Briggs) advise that using the their test for hiring purposes may even be unethical. People of varying personalities may all do well at a given job for different reasons. Personality may not accurately reflect or correspond to the ability to successfully fill a specific job opening.

For example the late Steve Jobs exhibited a tendency toward introversion, not the best characteristic for a salesperson. But he was extremely successful presenting his ideas to the public.Even the term "personality test" is misleading. A better term is "personality assessment", since "test" implies that there are right or wrong answers. When you're dealing with people's personalities there aren't right or wrong answers, just tendencies of one type or another. However, when a personality assessment is used to evaluate job applicants there may well be certain answers that give you a better chance at being hired. When you're being tested for a specific position your potential employer may be looking for people whose profile tends to fit those particular job requirements and the company culture.So should you be worried about the prospect of taking a personality assessment as part of applying for a job? Worried may be too strong a term, but it could be to your advantage to know a little bit about personality testing ahead of time.