A Quick, Easy And Crazily Accurate Way To Detect Personality

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Here’s a Website to check out if you don’t have the time or interest to use the old school way of getting to know someone. In fact, even those I meet in real life are usually vetted later by me against what Crystal knows. After all, I'm just a human, my impression is based on just one interaction.

Crystal, on the other hand, is a tool that uses a “proprietary personality detection technology. [It] analyzes public data to tell you how you can expect any given person to behave, how he or she wants to be spoken to, and perhaps more importantly, what you can expect your relationship to be like.”

A submission of a name on the free Crystal site initiates a query of thousands of publicly available online data sources to find information written by or about the person. Another potential input is from people who directly contribute, although given the age of the site and its relative obscurity, my guess is that’s not much of a factor yet. Crystal then runs what it finds against a personality detection analysis to match with one of 64 different personalities.

The “accuracy confidence" index returned with each result indicates 1) how much relevant data was found and 2) how much of it was able to be used to determine the personality.

Toward More Effective Sales Interactions

This is worthy of our attention not just because I want to lighten things up for you after what has been a rough several weeks. Crystal is yet another service that demonstrates what can be learned about clients and prospects online.

If part of your digital marketing work involves helping drive business—which includes helping Sales professionals sharpen their effectiveness—you might want to show them Crystal. Just be aware that near-term productivity will take a hit because this tool is addictive. I found it in April and have only now been able to tear myself away to mention it to you.

Below are a few of the “predicted personality profiles” of the zillions of profiles that I have run. I selected these individuals because:

  • They’re prominent in the investment space and you might know them.
  • They’re active online and there should be plenty of data to base a profile on.
  • These snapshots seem pretty consistent with what I’ve observed on my own. Then again, it’s been mostly online. I should say, I’ve met only one person in real life (hey, April).           
  • They strike me as good sports who won’t mind my showing their publicly available personality profiles here. 

Shown are just the tops of the profiles. On the Crystal site, you’ll also see insights for use when emailing, talking and working with the personality, as well as what does and doesn’t come naturally to him or her. And, depending on whether you’re a free or paid user, you’ll see some predictions on how the personality works with you and your team, including some insights on conflict. 

Insights Into The Personality's Coworkers, Too

A click on other people in the same company reveals a LinkedIn-esque feature displaying the availability of personality profiles of others who work there. For example, after I checked out the profile of LPL Financial's Mark Casady, I was offered a View all to see Casady's coworkers. Hmm, this could get interesting...

Don’t read too much into what’s said here about LPL, by the way—variations of success "at the expense of freedom or creativity” and “could discourage creative risk-takers” appeared for just about every investment-type company I searched.

Finally (and least helpful in my opinion), Crystal will help write a personality-appropriate email.

I know I should conclude by mentioning the risks in relying on technology. To be sure, there are some. For example, no matter how big the data gets, online services always tend to misidentify Pat Allen as a him. (On the off-chance that you look me up, my profile is 90% exactly correct except that it’s not true that I’m disorganized!)

In general, though, there are risks in not taking advantage of what technology can offer and how the insights provided can help warm up an encounter.

Go, explore, detect for yourself!