From the author: Published in the magazine "HR Service and Personnel". Man has always tried to organize and structure the world around him. To do this, he used various tools and standards: a ruler, scales, hours, meters, minutes, kilograms... Having successfully mastered the units of measurement of physical quantities, scientists began to quantitatively measure individual personal qualities and capabilities of a person. The slogan of the founder of biometrics, Francis Galton, is “Measure everything you can!” firmly entered into our lives. Modern society is absolutely natural and tolerant of various types of testing, since we are accustomed to undergoing them from early childhood. Scientifically validated and tested by qualified experts, the tests promise to measure everything from IQ to anxiety levels. Typically, the test consists of a number of tasks that serve to identify the severity of certain mental characteristics in a person. The results of the test are translated into standardized values ​​and are indicators of the properties and states of the individual. No one can determine for sure how true the data obtained are. As psychological knowledge accumulates, doubts grow both about the reliability of even internationally recognized methods (let alone “home-grown” or developed “for show”), and about the advisability of their use in practice. And how can one relate height, weight, blood type, reaction speed, communication skills, IQ, etc. with a person’s successes and failures in life or as an employee of an organization? Life shows that there is no direct connection between the value of IQ and a person’s real achievements. Everyone can recall a reliable fact when one of his former classmates, an “impenetrable C student,” achieved significant social success, but the diligence and diligence of an excellent student – ​​“the pride of the school” – did not find application and demand. This also applies to other human abilities: a talented musician forever remains a promising one, and one who has dubious abilities for music through persistent practice becomes internationally recognized. The examples can be continued and confirmed with famous names. A logical conclusion arises: people are the weak link in the system of total measurement of parameters. Multiplicity, which defines the range of psychological ideas about a person, calls into question the very possibility of measuring and comparing people with each other. Thus, some psychologists define three types of thinking: visual-figurative, verbal-logical, abstract; others postulate at least five: visual-effective, visual-figurative, verbal-logical, verbal-abstract, abstract-creative. A reasonable question arises: who is right and how many types can be distinguished? If they are so different, is there anything they have in common so that we can measure them with a common unit? After all, we don’t measure kilograms in volts, but kilometers in seconds. Some modern psychologists argue that psychodiagnostics as a field of knowledge does not exist at all. The accumulated practical experience shows that it is impossible, on the basis of the individual result of performing one or another psychometric technique, to proceed to a psychological diagnosis or prognosis of the behavior of a particular person in the future. Any quantitative measurement is debatable. A bucket of water holds the same number of liters as ten liter jars, but this does not show which is purer. A person with an IQ-140 solves a problem that two people with an IQ-70 will never solve, but he, who is introverted by nature, will find it more difficult to fit into a team of brilliant programmers, compared to two sociable jokesters who, having practiced, will solve similar problems within hours. The situation is almost the same with personality tests, which allow us to characterize various human traits. Some psychologists identify 16 personality types, others – 3, and still others consider a set of individual psychological indicators. Various schools scientifically substantiate their theories. Who is closer to the truth:cognitivists, analysts, dynamics, etc.? Perhaps no one or everyone, as in the parable of the peasant who used a kind of test to determine the professional suitability of his son. He gave his son an apple, a book and a coin, deciding for himself that if his son took the apple, he would engage in farming; if he reads a book, he will become a scientist; if he is interested in a coin, he should be a merchant. However, in reality, the son began to eat the apple while playing with a coin and reading a book. The peasant, on reflection, sent his son to learn the art of diplomacy. Rather, the use of psychodiagnostic methods is justified when there is a massive recruitment of personnel. The small probability of an error pays off in saving time and resources: an employee who was hired by mistake can be fired during the probationary period, and no one will know about the one who was eliminated in vain. But when forming a personnel reserve and promoting a person to a higher position, the cost of a mistake can be too costly for the organization. Therefore, while trusting internationally recognized methods, it is necessary to remember that the test result is always of an average statistical nature and is not capable of assessing a unique exception. Any testing is preliminary information that a specialist can use as a starting point when starting to work with another person: a client, a candidate, etc. This is more a way to get a general idea of ​​a person in order to start a more meaningful conversation in the future. No cutting-edge technique can replace the experience of personal communication. Still, I would like to avoid the false impression that tests do not provide particularly useful information. This is as far from the truth as the belief in their omnipotence. “The beginning of all wisdom is the recognition of facts,” says Chinese wisdom. Psychodiagnostics exists for the sake of diagnosis and prognosis, that is, it determines, by a number of signs, the mental property that is the cause of this or that behavior. It is the prerogative of a specialist psychologist to extract real data and draw final conclusions from the collected information. A true professional is able to conduct a synthetic analysis of the external manifestations of behavior, a person’s actions, his average statistical results and make a conclusion based on a final psychological diagnosis. An interesting historical fact is that the word “diagnosis” came from the military environment. In ancient times, diagnosticians were called warriors who carried the dead and wounded from the battlefield. And only then it entered medicine and through it into psychology. Literally, a psychological diagnosis determines the differences between the individual personal characteristics of a particular person from the currently set standard. Today, a psychodiagnostician selects the most suitable employees, putting into practice the principle: the success of an organization is the right people in the right place. Problems arise not at the time of psycho-dignistic selection, but when the employer wants to combine incompatible things. For example, trying to create a team of people who are even less suited to each other than a cat is a partner to a mouse, or implies, for obvious reasons, in the employee a universal creature capable of “milking, and breeding, and laying eggs” when required circumstances. There is a strong belief among employers that for decent money an employee can work with anyone or learn any skill the organization needs. If this does not happen, then the reason is seen in the unwillingness or inability of the employee. In this case, psychodiagnostics comes to the rescue, giving an idea of ​​how compatible the people in the group are, what a particular person can do, and what is not worth asking. Wherever understanding oneself and another person significantly influences the result, psychodiagnostics is able to suggest effective solutions, on the one hand, providing the manager with the necessary information on working with personnel, on the other hand, helping in the distribution of work and responsibilities. The description of psychological types has been known to humanity since 1920 , but for some reason the simple idea that officials)