I’m thinking long and hard about what I want to do. Possibly that’s too big a question.

I’m in the process of getting a job in wealth management and last week I had a personality test and interview. The test was ridiculous — the kind of thing administered by people who don’t understand science. Ryley and I had a good laugh, and when during the interview I was told what my “science” score was, based on the test, a wicked twinkle sparked my eye.

I answered the questions on the test honestly, because I had the inside hint. The test contains several landmines, questions designed to catch people who are trying to multi-level-outthink it. Instant fails if you don’t own up to being human, that kind of thing.

Effort guarantees success? Strongly disagree.
Success is mostly luck? Strongly disagree.

I scored exceptionally, blah blah blah. Perfect scores on all the good bits, a surprising lack of negative traits, etc. My weakest score, which was still very acceptable, was in selling skills — the one category that they can train you up on. So they called me in for an interview.

I like to focus in when going for interviews, so I had a nap in the gallery. I dreamt that I was standing atop a sun-baked yellow-brown shale slope in the Interior. A dead dog with a broken neck was rolling down the hill away from me in the dust. Then I woke up: Shit! Alarm failure — 15 minutes late. I ran out the door.

It turned out I was 20 minutes early, I’m not used to Victoria’s travel times yet, and I crushed the second interview. The hardest question was: “tell me about a time you made a borderline-unethical decision?” I drew a blank.

“Fuck you,” I thought. “I’m goddamned ethical! Besides, anything I might or might not have done is the stuff of therapy — top secret!” I have more than a touch of the narcissism, so it might actually have been psychologically impossible for me to answer that question. I muddled through obliquely.

We spent a good deal of time talking about the personality test results. I was polite, not mentioning the sample size problems, general fallibility, and scientific lack of consensus on such tests. I didn’t think that full intellectual honesty would be conducive to my employment situation, and besides this guy was just some low-level functionary. The mucky-mucks say use the science-test, so use the science-test he does. You get no points for being smarter than your boss’ bosses. This, at least, I have learned.

Just for fun Desperate for career advice this morning I ran the Myers-Briggs, keeping those testing caveats in mind. I got a result I didn’t expect and have never bothered to read the description of: ENFP, Extraversion, iNtuition, Feeling, Perception. Hmm, go figure. ENFPs are the kind of people who let others run bogus “science” tests on them because there’s no advantage in disagreeing with the testing logic.

Recently I’ve been thinking of the OKCupid Dating Type Test that some of us did a while back. Ryley and I just re-took it and both got the same result after years and years. For me that’s The Last Man on Earth:

Sorry, but most women would rather see the human species wither to an end—and therefore deny the most fundamental instinct that living creatures have—than sleep with you.

[snip]

[Y]our friends find your shit hilarious. There’s nothing cooler than a dude reducing himself to human rubble.

I have the same Myers-Briggs type as Mark Twain, Robin Williams, Joeseph Campbell, Charles Dickens, and Bill Cosby, and women hate that shit: the “Goat Boy” result. I didn’t really get Sheep go to Heaven until recently, just dug the tune, but now it makes more sense:

Yup, story checks out.

The trick with ENFP careers is that they’re so fucking hard to find. ENFPs are ~3% of the population, so no one’s bothered to create a mentoring framework or any kind of career guidance system. I guess ENFPs wouldn’t use such a beast though — you’re supposed to be able to intuit, feel, and perceive your way through, I guess.