I'll start with TheGrey's 2nd question. Some education in these personality / psychometric surveys is in order.

Two technical terms are key to the effectiveness of these kinds of surveys: Reliability and Validity.
Reliability is a measure of ... repeatability. If "Joe" scores the same in six weeks, or six months, the tool is probably Reliable. To be scientifically considered to be so, its Reliability score should be at least .70. If a survey is not Reliable, it cannot be Valid.

Validity is an expression of whether or not the measured characteristics actually do measure what the tool claims. (Is a score on Sociability actually measuring that characteristic? Or is it measuring Gregariousness? Extroversion? Something else?)

The Myers-Briggs (MBTI) folks are cagey about reporting on their Reliability. When pressed they will say something like, "In 3/4 of our scales we are Reliable 75% of the time." So what we do is multiply .75 x .75 = .5625 to determine the MBTI's actual Reliability is .56 ... which is barely better than a coin flip.

The strange part is the origin of the MBTI. I cannot remember who was who, but Mom (Let's call her Briggs.) and Daughter (Myers) wanted to figure out why the daughter's husband was so strange an animal to the two of them. So they developed this tool called Myers-Briggs. The trouble is, neither of them knew what they were doing.

Somehow the MBTI did in the 1970s what today we'd call "going viral." Some corporate types liked being able to put employees in boxes. They started using it. Some companies even had the name plates on managers' offices read "Joe Brown, ENTJ."


DiSC
Many of you have heard of DiSC. I'll bet some of you have actually done them.

Have you done the survey at church with Golden Retriever, Beaver, Otter, Lion labels? That's just DiSC, relabeled. Red, Yellow, Green Blue? Yup. Many of the 4-factor personality surveys you've heard of are really DiSC tools.

William Marston (Yes, the creator of Wonder Woman.) is credited with "inventing" or "developing" DiSC in the late 1920s. But the truth is, he borrowed it from an assistant to Hippocrates. Yes. DiSC is that old! Hippocrates' assistant labeled people as Choleric, Melancholy, Phlegmatic or Sanguine. Marston simply reformatted something which was centuries old. Since nobody *used* terms like Choleric, Melancholy, Phlegmatic or Sanguine anymore Marston changed them to
Dominance (D), Inducement (I), Submission (S), and Compliance (C). After a few decades of tweaking most DiSC tools use terms like Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance.

There are over 3,500 different versions of DiSC surveys on the market. They range from FREE -- to about $85 a piece. Many of them are actually good; most are in the "You get what you pay for" category.

DiSC surveys are great for getting a sense of how someone ... responds to stress ... likes to be motivated ... and gets along with co-workers. DiSC should never be used for hiring. In fact, any good DiSC Technical Manual states NOT to use it for hiring. That doesn't stop a lot of employers from using DiSC for hiring. (Too bad. Interviewing increases stress, which will give employers false readings of how an applicant really does handle normal stress....)

More later ... if you want.