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Personality Testing For Employment
Thelasko writes "While I was in college, I had the opportunity to take an elective course in Industrial Psychology. One section of the course covered hiring practices and the validity of 'personality testing' to screen applicants (Google link for non-subscribers). The Wall Street Journal has a long article discoursing on how such tests are used in today's economy. While personality tests may be designed to uncover underlying personality traits such as honesty, critics claim that the tests instead reward cheaters." The article talks mostly about the tests' use in winnowing candidates for retail positions — deciding whom to interview. Anybody encountered them in an IT or more technical context?
Google makes you take a looooooong and in depth personality test just to apply for an IT position. It's really insulting.
P.S. Fuck you, Google. Didn't want to work for you anyway. Put that in your personality test.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Here's something I thought was an exellent example of HR people tend to think (copied from here):
1. Put 400 bricks in a closed room.
2. Put your new hires in the room and close the door.
3. Leave them alone and come back after six hours.
4. Then analyze the situation.
a. If they are counting the bricks, put them in the Accounting Department.
b. If they are recounting them, put them in Auditing.
c. If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks, put them in Engineering.
d. If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order, put them in Planning.
e. If they are throwing the bricks at each other, put them in Operations.
f. If they are sleeping, put them in Security.
g. If they have broken the bricks into pieces, put them in Information Technology.
h. If they are sitting idle, put them in Human Resources.
i. If they say they have tried different combinations and they are looking for more, yet not a brick has been moved, put them in Sales.
j. If they have already left for the day, put them in Management.
k. If they are staring out of the window, put them in Strategic Planning.
l. If they are talking to each other, and not a single brick has been moved, congratulate them and put them in Top Management.
m. Finally, if they have surrounded themselves with bricks in such a way that they can neither be seen nor heard from, put them in Congress.
A Man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties -- Albert Einstein
Because he wouldn't help a flipped tortoise in the desert!
I first saw this in the early 90's or so. Text included, to avoid melting the server (which I don't believe is canonical anyway)
http://kuoi.com/~kamikaze/Hacker/interview.php
* "How do you work in a team situation when all the other team members are fools and idiots?" /var/spool/mail only) can a Sun 600MP server serve simultaneously, and what relation does this have to angels and pinheads?"
* "How well do you program under the influence of hard drugs?"
* "Have you ever beaten or killed a co-worker?"
* "Give me a rough estimate of the maximum dollar amount that you've stolen from each of your previous employers."
* "Do you object to bullwhips in the workplace?"
* "Emacs or vi?"
* "You have a large network of Suns being used by secretaries for word processing in FrameMaker. Which GNU packages would you install for your own entertainment, and how would you justify them later?"
* "You see a wounded puppy bleeding and whimpering on the side of the road while you're running to work to fix a downed computer that tens of users are waiting for. Do you let the puppy die?" "Why not?"
* "How much of your workday would you waste by reading news?"
* "Recite the GNU Manifesto."
* "How many clients (30% diskless, 60% dataless, 10%
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
So, judging from your post, you are for the personality tests, because they saved you from Geek Squad.
I always hired who ever I thought looked best in a tight sweater - without regard to race, creed, or color.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Congratulations, you passed the test and have a great personality.
Disregard that, you failed, you irredeemable sociopath. A shame, you got so close :(. A little bit of extra effort and you can ace it the next time !
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.