Performance DNA: The 23 and Me of Predicting Career Success

In the age of the quantified self, technology is helping deliver insights on what we are doing and how well we are doing it. Fitbits and health and fitness apps help motivate us and track our progress. And there are even DNA kits like 23 and Me that report on what makes us uniquely who we are…and enticingly, offer a peek not only at the genealogy of our past but into the future of how our chromosomal pairings may impact our future health and lifestyle options.

It surfaces a powerful philosophical question:

If you could see into the future, would you change the course of what you are doing today?

When it comes to careers, Gallup research points to a resounding “yes.”

• seven out of ten working adults believe they are in the wrong job
• One out of those dissatisfied seven thinks that they are in career hell.

What if, like your chromosomal DNA can predict your future health, you could analyze your unique performance make-up and career interests (let’s call it your performance DNA) to predict your potential success across 500 of the most sought-after job roles?

That is a vision Dr. Larry Cash pursued vigorously for most of his career. And the short answer is: yes,  we can predict your career success. And it can be done with up to 85% accuracy.

Human behaviour is as unique as fingerprints

In graduate school, Cash was struck by the vast imbalance between what we knew about chemical behaviours via the periodic table of 115 natural elements and the paltry little we knew about human behaviours, captured with just five personality factors: openness to experience, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism.

Indeed, much business has been made from looking at the inter-relations of those five human factors, including well-known personality assessments like Hogan and Myers-Briggs that can aid in team awareness and collaboration by grouping people into personality types.

But for nearly 100 years, behavioural psychologists and business people alike have pondered how such human factors could be used to predict job success or failure. Indeed, if we could crack the DNA code for predicting career success and passion for work, it would have a broad impact on not just individuals or businesses, but, over time, could radically change the global Gross Domestic Product.

Here’s the challenge: like chemical elements, people’s behaviours are complex, diverse and individualized. With just five characteristics, we only have 120 different variations of personality types. An accurate gauge of human behaviour requires much more granularity, teasing out fundamental distinctions. If no one else in the world has the same thumbprint as you, what are the odds that there only 120 types of personalities in the world?