When taking the IPIP test I got average scores in extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. I then scored low in both openness and agreeableness. To break it down, I’m right down the middle between wanting to be social or not, people can see me as uncompromising, I’m reasonably reliable and self-controlled, I’m averagely emotionally balanced, and I’m quite down-to-earth. I agree with these results for the most part, but I will admit there were a lot of times where I was sitting there saying “well it depends on the context”, which doesn’t really work well when you’re only given a sliding scale of agree-disagree.
I think employers nowadays are going to really be looking at 2 of these 5 dimensions really, mainly consciousness and neuroticism. While all of these dimensions are important, I tink if you are able to be a reliable worker that can’t keep their emotions in check and have semi-predicateble reactions to change and new stressors that might show up in the workplace that’s going to be good enough. Extraversion, to a point, can be trained, and agreeableness can be circumnavigated if you make a point to frame yourself to the company’s way of doing things. For me, I think having low openness can be a strength in the workplace given specific contexts. If there is a strict deadline that needs to be stuck to then strength of mine would be to get to the point and try and keep everyone on track instead of getting lost in the details and losing sight of the bigger picture. A weakness that can be seen from my results however would probably have to be agreeableness. If there’s a cooperative group that wants to go one way but I think things should be done another way, admittedly it is sometimes difficult for me to truly believe in doing things that someone else might want. I think understanding weaknesses like these are key to being able to work around them and mitigate their impacts, but I would for the most part say that’s a major issue that could come up in the modern-day where it seems every job wants to have teams solving issues and classes have a lot of group work.
Hey Andrew,
Thank you so much for the great blog post this week. There are so many great parts in the post that really caught my attention. One part in particular that caught my eye was that you mentioned that having low openness can be really good in the workplace as well. Those types of people are called skeptics. They are important in making some decisions because they are the ones that are able to point out the problems when something new is being introduced.
Again, thank you so much for the great post and have a great day.