Zero Personality

I think job hunting is getting weirder and weirderer.

Today I had a second interview with a CPA firm which will remain unnamed. When I arrived they had me fill out a questionnaire. On one side of a piece of paper it asked me to "Please read the words in the list below and check those that you feel describe the way you are expected to act by others." On the back side it asked me to "Continue by reading the words in the list below, now checking those that you yourself believe really describe you." After each question it listed about 80 attributes like patient, loyal, hard working, ...

So I quickly filled it out assuming it was some sort of survey to help them figure out how to recruit better or something.

A little later, during my interview, they pull out some papers and tell me that this is the results from my questionnaire. Apparently the questionnaire was a personality assessment. They then proceeded to go over my results and read parts of it to me. Here it is:

"Wendy is a very conscientious, disciplined person, particularly careful, thorough, and accurate in her work. She's exacting and strives to produce results that precisely meet the established goals. She works best where there are clear standards, expectations, reporting relationships and measurements for her work. Wendy will depend upon professional training, her own experience, or management leadership, to provide those standards and the structure that she needs for her work.

Given sufficient experience, Wendy will produce work of high quality, giving close attention to the accuracy of details. Stable and dependable, she is consistent in her actions, and if necessary, she has sufficient patience to do work of a repetitive nature. She believes in having, and following, well-defined processes and procedures.

Wendy is an unselfish person, motivated by a strong sense of duty. She derives satisfaction from doing good work for the company or the team, and she values recognition of her dedication and specialized skill. Wendy is a cautious person who takes her work responsibilities very seriously. She does things the established or conventional way, and will make changes only when convinced, with hard evidence, that the new way will be better. In rolling out new changes, she will be very tactical, thinking through exactly how it should be done, creating a complete plan, and having solutions to possible pitfalls. Her decisions will be equally well thought-out.

In social terms, Wendy is rather unobtrusive and quiet, friendly and pleasant with people she knows well, reserved and polite in meeting new people. Her general social behavior is governed by a strong sense of propriety and a concern for doing and saying the right thing. In familiar social and work situations in which she feels comfortable, she is agreeable, helpful, respectful, and very conscious of her responsibilities."

As you can imagine this was extremely uncomfortable and somewhat embarrassing. Kind of like those dreams where you're running down the street naked.

All I can see is that apparently I'm a very boring person who needs to be told exactly what to do and how to do it, and who has no imagination or creativity. Or, as Marjorie puts it, an accountant.