These kinds of things that are basically substitutes for an IQ test (versus tests that purport to measure a specific type of specific technical aptitude) should be banned for employment screening, IMO. Where do we draw the line?
I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
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Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an IQ test but does it help evaluate NFL players? Ryan Fitzpatrick went to Harvard and was said to have gotten a perfect socre of 50. It turns out he might have only got 48 which is still really high. He bounced around 9 teams and threw tons of interceptions. He would go from amazing to horrible "Fitz-Magic" to "Fitz-Tragic" In contrast Lamar Jackson is said to have scored a 6 which is laughably bad. He just won…
Yeah, a lot of it is snake oil. Like how does a mental test access how someone does on a physical task like sports?
Surely some part of sports is in your head. Not saying those tests measure it.
Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
#223Before Covid I went for an interview at a remote-only company, which was a huge plus. We had the first interview over zoom (or zoom equivalent at the time) and everything went well - Then I get a follow-up email about github access and they send me a huge github repo where they want me to complete an example web application that can do x,y and z based on some of the example models included, and want it done in a week…
I find it so rare for a company's leadership to actually listen to feedback and be willing to improve based on it... I'd absolutely talk again to someone who had the wisdom and humility to correct the errors of their ways.
Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
#224Earlier 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.
I interviewed at Burger King in college, the manager told me I was the only applicant in their system to get above 80% on the personality test. It was incredibly easy things like, "How many minutes are acceptable to show up late for your shift? 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, being late is unacceptable". Or "If you knew there were no cameras able to see you, and no other employees around, how much money is okay to…
I took one once (at iZod, I think), which included some tripwire questions. The manager said afterwards that e.g. if you saw "a customer left $0.02 in change on the counter when they left the store, what do you do?" and you picked "I chase them down the block to give it back", that's a sign that you're bullshitting the questions too hard.
Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
#225Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
#226I had one company spring this health screener on my with zero warning, which included such questions as whether I had ever been pregnant or made anyone pregnant, and whether I had ever been depressed and how so. Very weird stuff, so I challenged it and HR responded that it was a required test for health and safety at work. It wasn't, it was some corporate type doing massive overreach into areas where they had no righ…
That sounds pretty bad as you present it. I have seen a state uni do a similar sounding kind of employee survey -- the point of which was not to violate individual privacy but to produce an aggregated survey to present to health insurance companies bidding on providing employees that benefit. I imagine there's a pretty huge incumbent bias there; the current provider has exact data on claims and they aren't sharing with the competition. And especially in the insurance industry, there's a concern about adverse selection and asymmetric information that I imagine could be cured or at least reduced with additional data.
Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
#227It's legal for companies to make hiring decisions based on the results of personality tests. It's legal for them to make other personal decisions, such as promoting, firing, giving raises etc. It's legal to make these kinds of decisions based on personality tests that have poor scientific evidence in their efficiency. It's legal to ignore the tests and not make decisions based on them. Largely companies use this as a…
Ok so you’re partly right and partly wrong. In California it’s flat-out illegal (Tit. 2, § 11071) and attempts to perform more diluted assessments have been found to infringe upon California’s right to privacy.
As for other states, the ADA is likely the biggest threat to these practices and it’s not hard to imagine that a lawsuit will eventually find aspects of many of the current practices to already be illegal. But you’re right that for the “average” person there are generally no protections.
> the IQ test was once given as part of the immigration process for the United States.
This is a myth. There were some attempts at IQ testing in the 1920s but they failed due to language barriers. What was adopted was a trivial wooden puzzle to screen for severe cognitive impairment. That said, the purpose of this test was eugenicist, aligning with the politics of its day.
Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
#228I had one company spring this health screener on my with zero warning, which included such questions as whether I had ever been pregnant or made anyone pregnant, and whether I had ever been depressed and how so. Very weird stuff, so I challenged it and HR responded that it was a required test for health and safety at work. It wasn't, it was some corporate type doing massive overreach into areas where they had no righ…
That seems insane to me. Making somebody else pregnant doesn't affect my health, so it doesn't make sense that way either. I would be tempted to look for a wedding ring, and answer with "your mother/wife one time, you should ask her about it" accordingly. I probably wouldn't take the job anyway.
> Making somebody else pregnant doesn't affect my health, so it doesn't make sense that way either
But it might affect health insurance claims, and I'm guessing cheaper underwriting is the reason HR went along with it.
Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
In imagination-land, it could've been a higher echelon of test. Despite the dynamic in which you were the one being tag-teamed in an interview, would your catalyst presence bring the interview back on track, with subtle grace? At the end of a series of "bad interview loop" tests, you learn that they secretly weren't interviewing you to be a coder, and now you are the next chosen-one CEO of Lego.
In my experience, tag-team or tribunal-style interviews are themselves a red flag. Usually it's a sign that the company doesn't know how to interview or whose opinions to trust, so they're just throwing everyone into the meeting. And any company being so openly dishonest as to set up fake arguments for candidates react to . . . if discovered, that's the mother of all red flags. This is not the case with new interview…
I've been part of a three-person panel for interviews at multiple companies. I think the idea of panels is first, to train people to be good interviewers. Second, to get the opinion of multiple people regarding the viability of candidate. Third, I bet there's a liability thing at a company level where they don't want a candidate who fails to be able to claim bias of one person.
Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Canonical made me do a personality test. From what I understand, Canonical culture isn't great, either. The whole process sounds a lot like what you are talking about -- just hoops to winnow out people for the sake of winnowing.
Having seen Canonical's personality test, while it's impossible to verify without their marking methodology, it feels explicitly classist (which in the US probably means it produces racist outcomes too)
> it feels explicitly classist (which in the US probably means it produces racist outcomes too)
Please elaborate...