Personality tests started to be used in the US army during the First World War. Today, they are commonly used in recruitment and for testing employees in order to improve teamwork or in identifying their next career direction.
It is an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars every year, growing at a rate of 10-15% per year. At the same time, however, it is also quite a controversial industry.
There has been, for example, litigation where courts have already confirmed that some personality tests are discriminatory against certain groups of employees.
HR professionals are often criticized for using scientifically unsupported tests, and businesses are criticized that they give disproportionate importance to the results of personality tests in the context of workplace conflict resolution and overall optimization of the workforce.