Why does my profile matter?

Because spies are like us: ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Real spies like Oleg Penkovsky or fictional ones like James Bond use skills we all possess—such as agility, empathy, risk tolerance, analysis, observation, and composure. Your profile is a genuine reflection of your personality, skills, and attributes. Intelligence agencies train their operatives in the same spy skills we measure. To develop our unique profiling system, we collaborated with top psychologists and a former Head of Training at British Intelligence, ensuring an effective methodology to uncover your potential.

How does the profiling work?

First, we assess your behaviors and preferences through immersive challenges that test a dozen key spy skills. Next, we compare your results to millions of others. Using a proprietary algorithm, we map your personality, skills and attributes against the ideal benchmarks for the top ten spy roles to determine which one best suits you. Finally, we combine your results with your assigned spy role to produce a confidential and comprehensive profile to inspire you.

What’s with the spy role?

The spy role you're assigned showcases your strongest attributes. It introduces you to real and fictional spies with profiles similar to yours and explains the types of missions they typically undertake. This information also helps us suggest which career paths (beyond the world of espionage) may be a good fit for you.

Why should I trust the results?

Your profile is based on scientific research and methods that psychologists commonly use to evaluate cognitive, emotional, and social traits. Our experts, with years of experience assessing, training, and developing intelligence recruits, have ensured the accuracy and authenticity of the profiling process.

*The science behind the results

If you're interested in learning more about the attributes we measure and the scientific research behind them, you'll find a list of key academic papers that shaped our profiling system at the bottom of this page.

FAQs

1. Would taking more challenges change my results?

Possibly. Each test you complete adds greater accuracy to your profile, and your ideal spy role could evolve as you improve. For instance, if you skipped the Special Ops laser tunnels on your first attempt but mastered them on your second, our algorithm might recommend a more physically demanding spy role for you.

2. My profile has changed; why?

We periodically update our algorithm to enhance its accuracy. As a result, your profile may adjust slightly to better reflect your scores in comparison to others.

3. What are the major spy roles I could be assigned?

Spymaster: A leader of an intelligence organization

Intelligence Analyst: An expert who gleans crucial insights from intelligence

Spycatcher: A specialist in counterintelligence; thwarting enemy spies

Hacker: Someone who breaks into enemy computer systems or protects their own systems from cyber attack

Cryptologist: A mathematical master of making and breaking codes

Agent Handler: A manager of agents who provide secret intelligence or operational support

Surveillance Officer: Someone who follows and observes suspected enemies

Technical Operations Officer: A person who gathers intelligence by tapping phones, breaking into buildings, planting cameras, and other means

Special Operations Officer: Someone who gathers intelligence and destroys targets in hostile environments

Intelligence Operative: The heart of an intelligence organization, involved in an array of operations, from servicing dead drops to setting up safe houses

4. Will spy agencies contact me if I have an interesting profile?

No, they won’t. While we do receive inquiries from intelligence organizations, we prioritize data privacy and handle it with the utmost care. If you're interested in pursuing a career in intelligence, we recommend visiting the websites of your country’s agencies to explore available roles.

5. What do you do with my data?

We believe your data belongs to you. Your identity band is used to personalize your experience and track your scores. These scores are used to create your confidential profile and assign your spy role. We also use anonymous, aggregated data to continuously enhance the challenges. Your data is not used for any other purpose.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE PROFILES

Brainpower

Raven, J. (2000). The Raven's progressive matrices: change and stability over culture and time. Cognitive psychology, 41(1), 1-48.

Murray, A. L., Johnson, W., McGue, M., & Iacono, W. G. (2014). How are conscientiousness and cognitive ability related to one another? A re-examination of the intelligence compensation hypothesis. Personality and Individual Differences, 70, 17-22.

Reynolds, J., McClelland, A., & Furnham, A. (2014). An investigation of cognitive test performance across conditions of silence, background noise and music as a function of neuroticism. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 27(4), 410-421.

Ahmetoglu, G., Dobbs, S., Furnham, A., Crump, J., Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Bakhshalian, E. (2016). Dark side of personality, intelligence, creativity, and managerial level. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 31(2), 391-404.

Composure

Uppal, N. (2014). Moderation effects of job characteristics on the relationship between neuroticism and job performance. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 22(4), 411-421.

Huang, J. L., Ryan, A. M., Zabel, K. L., & Palmer, A. (2014). Personality and adaptive performance at work: A meta-analytic investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(1), 162.

Dima, D., Friston, K. J., Stephan, K. E., & Frangou, S. (2015). Neuroticism and conscientiousness respectively constrain and facilitate short‐term plasticity within the working memory neural network. Human brain mapping, 36(10), 4158-4163.

Inquisitiveness

Litman, J. A., & Spielberger, C. D. (2003). Measuring epistemic curiosity and its diversive and specific components. Journal of personality assessment, 80(1), 75-86.

Mussel, P. (2013). Introducing the construct curiosity for predicting job performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34(4), 453-472.

Minbashian, A., Earl, J., & Bright, J. E. (2013). Openness to experience as a predictor of job performance trajectories. Applied Psychology, 62(1), 1-12.

Hot Risk

Lauriola, M., Panno, A., Levin, I. P., & Lejuez, C. W. (2014). Individual differences in risky decision making: A meta‐analysis of sensation seeking and impulsivity with the balloon analogue risk task. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 27(1), 20-36.

Fukunaga, R., Brown, J. W., & Bogg, T. (2012). Decision making in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART): anterior cingulate cortex signals loss aversion but not the infrequency of risky choices. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 12(3), 479-490.

Cold Risk

Charness, G., & Jackson, M. O. (2009). The role of responsibility in strategic risk-taking. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 69(3), 241-247.

Rogers, J., Viding, E., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2013). Instrumental and disinhibited financial risk taking: Personality and behavioural correlates. Personality and Individual Differences, 55(6), 645-649.

Interpersonal Skills

Akhtar, R., Boustani, L., Tsivrikos, D., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2015). The engageable personality: Personality and trait EI as predictors of work engagement. Personality and Individual Differences, 73, 44-49.

Mittal, E. V., & Sindhu, E. (2012). Emotional intelligence and leadership. Global Journal of Management and Business Research, 12(16).

Sociability

Huang, J. L., Bramble, R. J., Liu, M., Aqwa, J. J., Ott‐Holland, C. J., Ryan, A. M., ... & Wadlington, P. L. (2016). Rethinking the association between extraversion and job satisfaction: The role of interpersonal job context. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(3), 683-691.

Lü, W., Wang, Z., Liu, Y., & Zhang, H. (2014). Resilience as a mediator between extraversion, neuroticism and happiness, PA and NA. Personality and Individual Differences, 63, 128-133.

Conscientiousness

Carter, N. T., Dalal, D. K., Boyce, A. S., O’connell, M. S., Kung, M. C., & Delgado, K. M. (2014). Uncovering curvilinear relationships between conscientiousness and job performance: How theoretically appropriate measurement makes an empirical difference. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(4), 564.

Credé, M., Tynan, M. C., & Harms, P. D. (2017). Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 492.

Duckworth, A., & Gross, J. J. (2014). Self-control and grit: Related but separable determinants of success. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(5), 319-325.

Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(6), 1087.

Ohme, M., & Zacher, H. (2015). Job performance ratings: The relative importance of mental ability, conscientiousness, and career adaptability. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 87, 161-170.

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