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When the Hiring Boss Is an Algorithm
Hugh Pickens writes "Joseph Walker writes at the WSJ that although personality tests have a long history in hiring, sophisticated software has now made it possible to evaluate more candidates, amass more data and peer more deeply into applicants' personal lives and interests. This allows employers to predict specific outcomes, such as whether a prospective hire will quit too soon, file disability claims, or steal. For example after a half-year trial that cut attrition by a fifth, Xerox now leaves all hiring for its 48,700 call-center jobs to software. Xerox used to pay lots of attention to applicants who had done the job before. Then, an algorithm told the company that experience doesn't matter. It determined what does matter in a good call-center worker — one who won't quit before the company recoups its $5,000 investment in training. By putting applicants through a battery of tests and then tracking their job performance, Evolv has developed a model for the ideal call-center worker (PDF). The data recommend a person who lives near the job, has reliable transportation and uses one or more social networks, but not more than four. He or she tends not to be overly inquisitive or empathetic, but is creative. 'Some of the assumptions we had weren't valid,' says Connie Harvey, Xerox's chief operating officer of commercial services. However, data-based hiring can expose companies to legal risk. Practices that even unintentionally filter out older or minority applicants can be illegal under federal equal opportunity laws. If a hiring practice is challenged in court as discriminatory, a company must show the criteria it is using are proven to predict success in the job."
I had a hell of a time landing a federal position in the department that I had been working for years as a contractor because the automated system at OPM kept kicking my resume out of the candidate pool. If you fail to get past that, then local hiring managers aren't even aware you have applied, and have no recourse. A co-worker finally gave me pointers on "faking out" the word filters, and I went from "unqualified" to "highly qualified" overnight.
Funny how our education ranking has dropped considerably once the 'No Child Left Behind' bill went into service.
Enforcing everyone passes education at the detriment of our more intelligent children does us no good.
I was once asked (on a formal test, the last hoop) in a job interview for a big box store whether I would turn my mother in if I caught her stealing.
I was entirely unsure of what answer they were looking for. On one hand you would think they would want employees to be that dedicated to protecting their assets. But lets be real, is ruining your family worth your part time job, over a petty theft? Bitch at them and return the item to the store, yes...
I can't imagine anyone (who is 100% sane) would. This would indicate that anyone who answers yes is either a damned liar or not mentally stable. But by saying "no" means you may be immoral (yet, honest?).... so... which was correct? I answered "no" for the sake of honesty. And did not get the job. Not sure if that is why or not, but still wonder.
Japanese workers are extremely hard working and incredibly unproductive. I hope they serve as a warning on the importance of work/life balance.
I can't claim to be an industrial psychologist, but I have worked with them and written much of the software that does some of the predictive analysis that was mentioned. I can claim to have a lot of experience with how these tests work.
I have to disagree with you right off the bat here: Employment screening tests are not a sham, and there are many good things about them.
- Has value, but primarily to the employer
Some of the predictive factors that show immediate value are used to best utilize an employee: whether they prefer working solo or in a group, whether money or recognition motivates them, if they are highly detail oriented, or whether or not they'll rock the boat (which could be a good thing! - like suggesting a more efficient process to replace an old, tried, and true one). This helps a manager provide a working environment that best allows an individual to excel, or to position people in groups so any perceived faults are covered with an overlap.
What also ends up being really important in these tests - to employers at least - is whether or not these people tend to lie, steal, or cheat, to abuse drugs or alchol, or may simply be reliable or not. Yes, if you crunch the numbers, you can take a good guess and produce a weighted prediction about this just from a personality profile.
When you're hiring for Walmart or Home Depot or some other vast chain with a large population of unskilled workers, weeding out the likely-to-be-bad ones shows a real financial impact, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year, statistically proven. Though the damages may not reach into the millions, smaller business owners are even more impacted by this.
- Must be applied properly
Some businesses, like Keller Williams Reality, do not apply their personality profiling properly. They use a Jungian based personality matrix - simplified slightly - to pigeonhole an applicant. If you do not fit the hole specified for the job, you don't get the job. They even make a big deal about how everyone applying for every position is required to do this, even if it's the next CEO (which was probably a lie, but c'mon, these folks are salepeople at heart). However, they decide in advance which single personality a given job requires, and if you don't match it exactly, you're out. So if you apply for a programmer position, and you're an extrovert, you won't get the job. If you're creative - you don't get the job. You have to correspond to THEIR sterotype.
Obviously this is wrong.
As the parent poster can probably tell you, the proper way to do it is to have your current employees take a test, sort by role, and attempt to find people who are close to the personality traits that your star individuals have in common. You'll also have to update this over time as market or work environments change.
This works because we're producing sample data, isolating trends, and using it to predict success based on commonalities. It's simple statistics. This is how we can 'catch' drug abusers and thieves before the fact: using the personality profiling tests data from criminals, we can find people who match their common traits. It may sound harsh, but the false positive outliers are exactly that - outliers. The vast majority is predictable to a reasonable degree.
Application of this information is a standard practice in risk analysis. If you're hiring for a casino dealer, and your applicant shows up as being 80-90 out of 100 match with career criminals, maybe consider a bit more carefully or do a full background check, or maybe just don't hire them - find a less risky applicant.
- Can be gamed
Most of these tests are straightforward. There's rarely any tricks or clever 'gotchas'. This isn't like a police interrogation where they're trying to trap you. They're personality profiles, and they don't have 'correct answers'.
However, if you can successfully role take, you can determine the outcome without much guile. This is hard for many people to do, grante
I have worked in Japan, this is VERY true. During much of the work day, and especially the late afternoon/early evening was almost official goof-off time. Then everyone buckled down and got to work in the overtime hours. And if you left before 9pm you were supposed to apologize to everyone. It was weird.
Also, many Japanese Engineers are still paid hourly instead of being salaried, so it is to their advantage to work long hours. Plus, white collar workers wore "uniforms" of some sort everywhere. Often it was just the same color pants and shirt for everyone. And it was a different color for females.
And then there was always the morning "chant" meeting where everyone gathered and did the weird company chant. Of course when I asked my co-workers about any of these things I was always told "It's a Japanese thing."