71–80 of 448 posts
It wasn't, it was some corporate type doing massive overreach into areas where they had no right to even ask.
You can take it here: https://fedexdataworksprod.traitify.com/assessment/31449c4a-... Each one has a title like "Starter Not a Finisher", "Frequently Change My Mind", "Always Wonder Why", "Easily Offended", "Art Isn't My Thing", "Unstoppable", "Make Friends Everywhere", "Good Enough", "Not My Job", "Tend to Feel Sad", "Volunteering", "Believe the Best of People", "Hard to Start a New Task", "Loves the Social Scene",…
With titles, some people will be dim or troubled enough to give the wrong answer on obvious ones, like "Starter Not a Finisher".
The right answer on other questions are trickier. Like maybe the company wants a handler of packages to be willing to toss the packages around "Good Enough", and some manager thought some people are a natural at that, and asked for a test to tell them. (Like when a non-technical executive was suggesting that I should give coding exams to senior software engineer candidates, and the strongest point in the argument was "This will tell us whether they do unit tests!")
Could titles be tricky, like if "Loves the Social Scene" is paired with image of someone partying hard, so the company might think they'll have hangover absenteeism, OUI, or other risks?
Or risk of insubordination, or disruption to the hierarchy? A self-image of "Natural Leader" in a worker-bee role could be seen as problematic by a simple-minded company.
Maybe Fedex is gathering data on which combinations of answers predict a unionizing troublemaker. Or, in the scenario that a shop floor employee is injured, which employees are going to be murmuring about it with others, speaking with investigator, etc.
If a company wants to be especially evil about it, some of these questions might be good for weeding out candidates with depression. Or for arguing pre-existing condition, if an employee later claims that working conditions caused mental anguish.
Then there's the meta of filtering out people who are alienated by this test, or who are not captive. Especially with the odd images in this test, I think many candidates with self-respect and other options will simply walk away. It's not like Leetcode hazings, where they've been conditioned since school that this is just the ritual you do to get that very-well-paying FAANG job. This is some different thing, to which you're submitting for a chance to work at FedEx.
What other possibilities?
Some of that could be useful to a company, if not very ethically. Also, maybe this was sold to the company as more than it is, based on flawed or fabricated psychological research.
You can take it here: https://fedexdataworksprod.traitify.com/assessment/31449c4a-... Each one has a title like "Starter Not a Finisher", "Frequently Change My Mind", "Always Wonder Why", "Easily Offended", "Art Isn't My Thing", "Unstoppable", "Make Friends Everywhere", "Good Enough", "Not My Job", "Tend to Feel Sad", "Volunteering", "Believe the Best of People", "Hard to Start a New Task", "Loves the Social Scene",…
You can take it here: https://fedexdataworksprod.traitify.com/assessment/31449c4a-... Each one has a title like "Starter Not a Finisher", "Frequently Change My Mind", "Always Wonder Why", "Easily Offended", "Art Isn't My Thing", "Unstoppable", "Make Friends Everywhere", "Good Enough", "Not My Job", "Tend to Feel Sad", "Volunteering", "Believe the Best of People", "Hard to Start a New Task", "Loves the Social Scene",…
Those titles help a lot. I wonder whether the Reddit poster saw titles. With titles, some people will be dim or troubled enough to give the wrong answer on obvious ones, like "Starter Not a Finisher". The right answer on other questions are trickier. Like maybe the company wants a handler of packages to be willing to toss the packages around "Good Enough", and some manager thought some people are a natural at that, a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The test is pretty easy to game just by giving answers you think make you a good prospect - traits you would aspire to but don't necessarily achieve. I too got a Mentor rating whereas in reality I am retired and much closer to a lazy shy procrastinating individual contributor who never gets anything done!
This is a well-known problem with self-assessments in psychology in general. It isn't that hard for most people to choose to use a persona to provide answers to some quiz, even one quite divergent from their "real" personality (skipping the discussion on what that even is), and for some people with certain conditions it's almost impossible for them not to do this (e.g., the "Cluster B" disorders). Getting past this p…
“Gee, I wonder if ‘C. Let your friend have the goods for free, since they’re really struggling financially’ is the answer this retail store is looking for?”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m convinced most use of these is actually testing for: 1) bright enough to answer to achieve just about any desired outcome (usually not a high bar), 2) socially/politically aware enough to realize which outcomes will be good, and which will be bad; and, 3) agreeable/compliant enough to go ahead and game the quiz to achieve a good outcome without raising a fuss.
It seems to me that what you are getting is people who are both decently clever and fairly dishonest. Which is an awful combination to select for, imo
Hmm, but maybe they have that baked into the test!? If you slightly fail one of the bad metrics and none of the others they rate you super honest and hire you immediately! Science says we should definitely try to figure this out.
You can take it here: https://fedexdataworksprod.traitify.com/assessment/31449c4a-... Each one has a title like "Starter Not a Finisher", "Frequently Change My Mind", "Always Wonder Why", "Easily Offended", "Art Isn't My Thing", "Unstoppable", "Make Friends Everywhere", "Good Enough", "Not My Job", "Tend to Feel Sad", "Volunteering", "Believe the Best of People", "Hard to Start a New Task", "Loves the Social Scene",…
The OP of the Reddit thread didn't see the titles, and was instructed to "look at the images and go with your gut".
For the record, I don't have blue skin and hair, so I'd be inclined to answer "not me" for all of them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m convinced most use of these is actually testing for: 1) bright enough to answer to achieve just about any desired outcome (usually not a high bar), 2) socially/politically aware enough to realize which outcomes will be good, and which will be bad; and, 3) agreeable/compliant enough to go ahead and game the quiz to achieve a good outcome without raising a fuss.
It seems to me that what you are getting is people who are both decently clever and fairly dishonest. Which is an awful combination to select for, imo
The tests are usually so obvious, too. Like three awful traits and one good one. Coincidentally(or not?) I was rejected for that job for scoring too high overall - they said there's no way I'd stick around long, and they were absolutely right.
You can take it here: https://fedexdataworksprod.traitify.com/assessment/31449c4a-... Each one has a title like "Starter Not a Finisher", "Frequently Change My Mind", "Always Wonder Why", "Easily Offended", "Art Isn't My Thing", "Unstoppable", "Make Friends Everywhere", "Good Enough", "Not My Job", "Tend to Feel Sad", "Volunteering", "Believe the Best of People", "Hard to Start a New Task", "Loves the Social Scene",…
I’m convinced most use of these is actually testing for: 1) bright enough to answer to achieve just about any desired outcome (usually not a high bar), 2) socially/politically aware enough to realize which outcomes will be good, and which will be bad; and, 3) agreeable/compliant enough to go ahead and game the quiz to achieve a good outcome without raising a fuss.
Like 20 years ago, a company was taken to the cleaners because they used a test used by psychologists to evaluate mental health as a personality test in hiring. Now, people who make/use these tests are careful to only use them in ways that healthcare professionals don't. A side effect of that is that any test that would be useful for reliably measuring a candidate's personality/mental fitness would also be illegal. So a lot of these tests are bunk to begin with.