Interview with Julie Gibbons, VP Marketing of PeopleMaps Ltd.
PartnerMaps.com’s motto says ‘Professional Personality Testing for Relationships’. This UK-based project looks quite promising, especially if take into account all their science and experience behind this simple name. We asked Julie Gibbons, Vice President of Marketing in PeopleMaps Ltd. about the details of the project and its relationship with online dating world.
Q: Personality profiling by PartnerMaps – is it about matching people by personality?
A: Ah well, the simple answer to that question is no! PartnerMaps is a psychometric application designed by PeopleMaps and it produces a range of personality reports for singles and individuals in relationships. The principle is that the understanding of human behavior is the bedrock of successful relationships; the relationship you have with others and the relationship you have with yourself. PartnerMaps profiling is a method by which you can gain an understanding of your self – and it’s easy, instant and online.
For a relationship to work people need to share similar goals and values and without this, no matter what personality mix the relationship is likely to flounder. You cannot change another person’s behavior but you have complete control over how you respond to any situation. As Carl Jung (on whose psychology PartnerMaps is based) said, “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people”.
Simply put, any personality type can work with any other personality type, when it comes to personal relationships. You will have seen this from your own experience. You will know couples that are poles apart in terms of personality – and you will know couples that are two peas in the pod. People’s life experience is full of examples of this and you would be hard pushed to convince them otherwise.
So can personality profiling help you with your relationships? Absolutely, but the profiles have to be aimed in the right direction and they have to be helping you ask the right questions. The question isn’t “Is this person’s personality type compatible with mine?” Instead the question should be, “How will this person and I make it work, knowing what we do of our personalities?”. It’s not a case of “Can this work?” – It’s a case of “How will this work?”
PartnerMaps is primarily a tool of introspection, not suspicion. The real power of personality profiling is revealed when it is used to develop a deeper understanding of self. Of course if other people share their profile with you then it is helpful – but it is nothing compared to the empowerment that comes from developing a deeper understanding of self.
Q: Ok, so PartnerMaps is only one of the psychometric applications based on PeopleMaps.com? What are the others?
A: PeopleMaps has been producing online psychometric applications for over 5 years, although initially concentrating on a range of personality reports for jobseekers, we soon realized our customers wanted more than a simple personality report, so amongst a whole range of reports we also released our personalized career coaching application Dream Job.
Create a Google or Twitter alert for “personality test” and you’ll be provided with plenty of evidence that the general populace are crazy for them – from Star Wars tests to the Simpsons, so we also developed applications for social media platforms like the Twitter personality report – your personality in fewer than 140 characters – and our Facebook application. We’ll be developing these more as the sites and the users change.
Amongst a range of solutions for employers and HR professionals (we have personality reports for short–listing, interviewing and developing many job roles from PAs and admin staff through to senior managers), we now provide a wide range of apps for the corporate market, some with serious output like Driving Psychometrics – helping to reduce road accidents involving young drivers and professionals.
But it doesn’t have to be serious output – where people are involved, there’s generally an opportunity to build personality in. And that’s what PeopleMaps does. We satisfy people’s curiosity about their self – and others – and build applications around that. Over the years, we’ve developed a huge vault of many hundreds of personality topics – written in plain English – and wrapping those up in an application reduces the requirements to hire a consultant, or undertake training to figure out what it all means!
I like to think we’re bringing professional personality profiling to the people. We even have some personality topics delivered by video – and that’s something we want to do loads more of – it’s the YouTube factor!
Q: How many people have tried your questionnaires? Do you have any science behind it?
A: The personality questionnaire is unique – and took nearly 2 years to develop. It consists of only 10 questions and can be answered in only a few minutes – this is unlike most other “personality tests” that consist of hundreds of questions and can take over 30 minutes to complete! This actually provides a more accurate result – fewer questions online help avoid something called “candidate fatigue”, where the respondent begins to lose interest because they just want to finish answering the tests and get to the result!
Designed exclusively for the internet (there’s never been a written version) it works by measuring the bipolar scales based on the psychology of Carl G Jung, the Swiss psychologist. With well over 1.2 million registered users, the most common feedback we receive is that the reports are “spookily accurate”! In fact, personality is quite mobile and affected greatly by the environment, so we would expect someone to agree with 80 per cent or more of their report. It’s very unusual to find someone that doesn’t agree with most of the content. One time, there was a woman who insisted the report wasn’t accurate – it turned out that her husband had completed the questionnaire for her!
Interestingly, we only use one questionnaire, no matter the application – so the PartnerMaps ‘test’ asks the very same questions as the ‘test’ for Driving Psychometrics. It’s also available in other languages, including Slovak and Thai! We’d love to develop more.
Q: So, how exactly can dating sites benefit from PartnerMaps?
A: PartnerMaps is a complementary product for dating sites to use in a number of ways – for the benefit of the dating site owner and the members! After consulting the industry, we decided to create a report specifically for singles – it covers eleven essential personality topics including Commitment and Intimacy – and your perfect date! And there will be another version for individuals already in relationships.
More importantly, PartnerMaps allows you to offer your visitors professional personality profiling – without having to develop your own system – and offering free personality reports is a great way to attract new visitors! By publicizing your ‘free personality reports’ you can also begin to compete with some of the bigger sites that lead on their personality tests.
PartnerMaps is a flexible application and you can choose to resell reports for a generous share of revenue, or you can add value to your existing offer by buying reports at a discount and giving them away to VIP members at no cost. There is a free report available for every visitor, whichever model you decide to follow.
The affiliate system carries your logo, url and personalized message throughout the visitor experience – so your visitor isn’t carried away from your site, never to return! You don’t need to use a banner link, but can instead insert the questionnaire widget directly onto your web page. Our team are developing a report widget, so in the very near future you will also be able to deliver the personality report direct to your visitor, without them ever having to leave your site.
Q: Do you have any other partnership of affiliate opportunities?
A: Thanks for asking that! We’re actually looking for partners who may wish to contribute Bonus material to the PartnerMaps sales cycle. Pre-launch data shows a conversion rate of around 2% from readers of the free report to buyers of the more detailed report – and we’d like to keep improving on that figure.
We know that quite often consumers will purchase a product based on bonus offers alone, and we’d like to add some genuinely useful, good quality bonus material. We’re experts in the personality of relationships, but would like to call upon dating industry experts who might wish to contribute a complementary bonus product to the mix. But in fact, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a dating-related product – just something of the right quality and value.
Lastly, one of the most exciting opportunities is that we can build you your own personality application – customizing the existing PartnerMaps report set, or creating your own. If you’ve a special request such as a different language option, then we’re happy to deal with that too. Just blast me off an email (julie [at] peoplemaps [dot] com) and I’ll be happy to look at it with you. PeopleMaps is moving away from the traditional affiliate model to the SAAS model – and custom app development plays a big part in that. We’re excited about the possibilities – and think PartnerMaps can help play a big role in that!