I seriously believe that in order to be considered eligible to work in a government position that is non-election based, the hiring department must be REQUIRED to administer a personality test. Why? To assert that the potential employees purpose for working at such a position or even within the government in not "power" related. In other words, to ensure that the candidate is not search to feel as royalty, to feel as though they themselves are in charge of governing and empowering themselves over the citizens.
In the United States, the government is not an institution set in place to govern the citizens, the government is an institution set in place to administer the programs that the citizens have voluntarily agreed to set in place in their own self government efforts. The government is made to facilitate self governance. Those who are appointed, elected, chosen for such positions aren't given the position to govern over citizens but rather to allow and enhance citizen capability for self governance.
Any employee that enacts "Your not the queen" or "Your not the king" mentality should not be a part of the government. In fact, all citizens of the US are considered the Kings and Queens of the US set in place by the constitution.
The desire for power should be a personality isolated to civilian sector business and corporations that are governed by citizens.
Those are my thoughts, what are yours???
If I were to give someone a personality test for a job it would be to tell if they were mentally capable to handle the job or not. It would be to see if they were mentally healthy.
To add to that, I'm not sure personality tests are always entirely accurate. In order to place a personality test as a requirement for a job, there'd have to be years and years of testing and refining, and even after you think it works, there still needs to be more testing done. It'd be impractical to require a personality test of any kind for any kind of work.
... Although, people like potential police officers and people applying for homeland security have to take a sort-of-personality-test... are you [the writer of the blog] suggesting that we use a test like that for our government officials?
----
Procrastination isn't the problem, it's the solution. So procrastinate now, don't put it off. [Ellen Degeneres]
For a long time personality tests were in what is called an experimental stage in which it was not clear as to whether or not they were active Over many many years of integrating and refining the tests, they have actually been perfected to a level that allows them for use in evaluating basic psychological conditions and in even providing a method of discounting possible psychological diagnosis. College courses have ben erected to provide degree seekers specialization in an area of psychology known as industrial psychology, used to asses employees and potential employees in matters of employment. There are many firms that now utilize these psychologists, their tests, and their methods to make major ad minor company decisions.
In allowing someone to enter into a governmental field, especially a field in which they have the ability to implement and administer governmental policies, it is important that these employees cannot be easily swayed towards a bias, won't bring personal opinions and matters into their workplace decisions and projects, and won't be vulnerable to the "power conundrum". By power conundrum I am speaking of one's basic emotion of deciding that, because they are the ones with access to the forms, resources, decision making processes, etc, they will use their positions to harm those they personally do or do not like, discriminate against those they don't know, or otherwise harm the general population in one from or another expecting that they can cover their behaviors behind the general definitions of their duties. A basic industrial level personality test can assess for such weaknesses and eliminate potential candidates that possess them.
There is a federal law in place in the United States of America that acts against the ability to not hire an individual based upon their mental health conditions. If a potential employee has a legitimately adverse mental health condition it is expected that the employer provide accommodations as long as the condition coupled with humaine accommodations does not adversely affect the employees job performance. However, a personality test eliminates employees for reasons not related to mental health. They are capable of selecting different qualities in a potential employees personality that may create weaknesses in them that could be harmful in that position. Please read the comment that I made to the other person whom applied to your comment for a more in depth look at what a personality tests can accomplish and how it could be useful in evaluating potential governmental employees.