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Pre-Interview Organization Analysis Design Tests?
miasok asks: "Recently I was deemed unfit for a job I was applying to, even before having an interview. A local software development company expressed an interest in my resume, but first wanted me to take an Organizational Analysis Design (OAD) test. The OAD test is a form with approximately 100 personality attributes and you are supposed to identify if they whether they apply to you, and if they are expected of you in your current job. I completed all fo the questions truthfully, and was surprised at the response: '...the results do not fall within our range of acceptance for the programming position'. Has anyone else had experience with such a test, especially as the sole means of determining a candidate suitable for a job? More information about this test can be found at here."
This test seems to be unfairly weighted towards people in the "lying scum who know exactly what the employer wants to hear" category. Of course, that's the way most interviews are, so get with the program!
Or just find out which companies are stupid enough to implement this test, buy some put options, and laugh all the way to the bank when the company collapses under the weight of its own managerial stupidity and/or corruptness (assuming you've timed it right).
Would you really want to work for a company where everyone fitted into the same precisely-defined psychological profile? That isn't a company, it's a cult!
> We usually end up rejecting all the candidates based on their interview, that the tests say we should reject anyway.
Have you ever thought of making your interview decision before looking at the test results? If you know going into the interview that they "failed", that knowledge is likely altering your perception of them during the interview.
From a scientific point of view, it would also be interesting to compare the performance of employees who were hired (regardless of test results), and see if those that failed actually do better.
I also wonder if there is a gender/racial bias in the test results. If so, you're likely setting yourself up for a discrimination lawsuit. At my place of work, they make us go to training before we are allowed to interview candidates. The emphasis in the training is on the fact that we can only ask candidates questions that relate to their job. I don't think the lawyers would like us asking candidates if they are "Appreciative in their current job," as that has NOTHING to do with whether or not they are qualified to perform the job that I am offering.
A fine example of an illegal question from King of the Hill:
Hank: We're all Christians around here. How 'bout you?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
> If a company knows that a certain personality ... works best on their team ...
What if a company knows that white men work better together. Can you blame them if they don't hire women or minorities?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
The whole selection process is all about filtering out as many people as you can, as early as possible.
I once had to hire around 20 developers in a 6 month period, while managing the team through a pretty hairy crisis situation. The only way I could do that is by increasing the likelihood of getting a hire for every interview I did. To do that, I developed some heuristics
This process basically gives you 3 piles : rejects, shortlist, and maybes. I'd see the shortlisted folk immediately, and put the maybes through some pre-screening exercise rather than see every single one of them.
I don't particularly believe in psychometric testing when recruiting for technical positions - in fact, I think having a diverse set of characteristics in the team helps - but I would definitely ask people to sit a technical test before getting to see a "real" interviewer. I wouldn't be surprised if many organisations use psychometric tests to thin out the interview list even though most psychometric experts point out that this is not a particularly sensible way to act.
I don't know what the job market is like where you are, but in the UK it's pretty tight. You may have been in someone's "maybe" pile, and they just wanted to slim it down - it's not a personal slight, the company may not even be clueless, and if I were you, I'd concentrate on improving my CV to hit the "definite" pile.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
This sounds like a great excuse for them not to hire somebody they have already decided they don't want. Applicant is too [ethnic|gay|fat|female|disabled|], toss them some "personality test", and "oops" I guess they didn't pass.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'd be surprised if most people could show you code. If they're working for another company its likely they don't have the /right/ to show you anything.
Its possible to set programming exercises at interview, but only very short ones. Since this was Delphi I guess you could let people use the IDE, but generally it'd just be pen and paper or a simple text editor, to avoid favouring people more familiar with a given IDE.
You might be interested in this article and its followup on how to interview programmers. Some of the panel do talk about asking to see code.
Asking someone to write a bit of code is more something I'd do to a junior programmer, to see if they can cut it at all, because of the small size of the exercise. For senior posts, I'd hope to hear them describe how to solve a problem, being specific about the technologies involved; a demonstration of the breadth of knowledge and problem-solving ability that they'd need to lead on a project.
I'm surprised that my original comment was marked as flaimbait. I think my analogy was perfectly apt and I'm very curious how one can justify discriminating on an employee because he doesn't fit the correct psychological profile.
Let me seperate my objection to this form a discrimination from the notion that this is anything but pseudo-science. For the sake of argument, I will pretend that their is some objective aspect to these tests.
Is a company justified and picking only a certain personality profile for employment (regardless of what that profile may be)?
I know where I work the Legal department has told us we can't ask women if they plan to get pregnant. An employer might well be justified in not wanting such candidates. After all, pregnant women are likely to take advantage of the Federal laws that allow them to take leave for a number of weeks without losing their jobs. As an employer, I might be justified in not wanting to waste my time training someone who isn't going to stay in the workforce. Women, statistically speaking, are more likely to abandon their careers for family.
> you are essentially allowed to do anything you want
This is not the way our Legal department understands things. We our only allowed to ask candidates questions relating to their qualifications to do the work.
I also wonder what will happen if someone does a study and finds that males and females or different minority categories tend to have different scores on these tests. I would be shocked if there was not some correlation between race/gender and various subjective personality profiles. We already know that there is a cultural bias in the SATs.
It might be nice if employees socialized more outside of work. That would likely lead to getting along better at work. Nevertheless, we can NOT hire an employee based on what he indicates he will do after hours, be it Church on Sunday or Civil Rights demonstrations on Saturday.
If you think it's ok to hire only nerds because they all think and act alike, how is this different than only hiring Republicans?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
No doubt you encountered the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Assesment test. These types of tests are fairly common and are becoming increasingly common. It isn't a pass/fail type test. Rather it is an assesment of a person's personality. It categorizes your personality into one of several group types. Are you anal and perhaps good for an accounting position? Or are you an artsy, people person that would be well suited for a marketing position?
The thing is that, these tests are amazingly accurate. If you answer honestly and then look at the results, you will see that it does accurately categorize your personality. Even if you don't want to admit that the results match you, you will certainly remember other people describing you as that type in the past. Remember that the test doesn't say anything bad about you. It just categorizes your type. If you were a detail oriented, structured, authoritarian(anal), you probably would not get along well in a job with a company filled with optimistic, free-style, unstructured, talkative, artsy types.
But, as much as it hurts, you shouldn't take it personally. The company has decided what type of personallity they like and feel is best for a position. This means that others in the department and company are likely of the same personality type. If you were of a different personality type and were awarded the position, you would likely have had problems. You would have likely had some friction with your co-workers or perhaps they would have driven you crazy. Such situations are not good for the company or YOU.
A fact of life is that this "profiling" happens in every interview. You, however are more accustommed to it in the more subtle and personal method, where the HR person is mentally profiling you throughout the interview. The thing is that some people/interviewers are good at assessing a person's personality and determining if they are a good fit or not, while other interviewers are no good at it. These tests provide the company with a more standard means of assessing an individual and reduce the likelyhood of a bad interviewer making the wrong assessment.
No, I'm proposting a world where the employer has the right to refuse me a job based on the fact that I can't do it properly.
I'm not qualified to do marketing. No matter how many courses I take, how much marketing theory I understand, I'm not qualified to do marketing. Why? Because I'm not a 'people person.' Therefore, I'm not qualified to do marketing. I might be 'technically' qualified, but I'm not qualified.
I'm sure you would. But would they rather hire the exuberant, extroverted people person, who doesn't need to force a smile and who really does care about the customer, or would they rather hire the engineer who is unfortunately caught in the tech implosion, and doesn't want to be there?
It's no more 'unfair' or 'discriminatory' to check for this, then it is to check for 'hard' skills. If you can't code, you can't be a programmer. If you can't sympathise/empathise with people, you can't be a counsellor.
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Well, later you throw in racisim, so I'll point out that Galileo was excommunicated from the church because of his 'nonsense.' I think that psychology and social interactions are a science, just one that we're only now starting to explore in a structured way.
No, in the original poster's case, he THINKS he wasn't considered at all because of his test score. We've no way of knowing that, do we?
Hell, at this point, I could say that 'when hiring for a programming job, giving them a problem to solve isn't 'fair' because it measures how well they take tests, not how well they'll code on a day to day basis.'
Should decisions be made solely on things like M-B type indicators? No, probably not. Can said things have a bearing? Yes.
At least, I think so.
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