Thursday 2 January 2014

Understanding Your Own Personality Better: The DOPE Test

Source: www.richardstep.com

You can be an aspiring trader, banker or even an entrepreneur, but it definitely will not hurt to understand your own personality better, and hence able to better build on your own strengths and avoid your weaknesses.

I was introduced to the DOPE test last year while applying for a contract consulting position during my school break. The job is highly sales-driven, and hence, there is a relatively stringent test in order to sieve out the better candidates. I eventually sealed the job and later developed into a consistently top performer during my stint at the firm, but in this blog post, I am going to discuss about the DOPE test which I did during the interview, as it really allowed me to understand myself better.

The DOPE test is by no means an absolute test, and the test results may deviate from reality, but I still believe in this test, mainly due to the fact that it is highly accurate in terms of describing my colleagues at work as well as myself.

The DOPE test is a self-assessment test, and uses 4 main bird types to describe your personality. The four birds are Dove, Owl, Peacock and Eagle, with each bird having unique characteristics. The Dove is known to be peaceful and friendly; the owl is known to be wise and logical; the peacock showy and optimistic; and the eagle bold and decisive.

During my time at the firm, I realized that eagles and peacocks significantly outperformed doves and owls, and although the sample size is relatively small to make a conclusive statement, I personally feel that in order to thrive well in a sales-driven environment, one needs to possess the personality of either the eagle or the peacock, but of course, there will be exceptions, and to top it off, the test is also not an error-proof one.

My primary type is eagle (Results seeker with high assertiveness and low emotionality), with peacock being by secondary type. As I was in a sales-driven environment, getting to know my own personality better certainly helped me during the term of my employment and allowed me to achieve relative success. Most importantly though, knowing my own personality helped me to better understand myself and have a clearer perspective on what I want to do in future! 

You can try out the test yourself by clicking on the link below. This is not the full test, but the result that I got using the simplified version was relatively similar to the full version that I did during the interview. Doesn’t hurt to give it a shot! You can also learn more about the test at the same website.

1 comment:

  1. Haha I'm the same as you terry! A mixture of both (:
    What do you believe are our weaknesses and how do we overcome it?

    ReplyDelete