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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

#371

Post by tylerchurch »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #362
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personality tests are stupid but I don't know if I'd be willing to join a company that didn't do any-kind of whiteboarding/live coding exercise. I've interviewed way too many people who can't write a for loop. Fizzbuzz is supposed to be a joke not something people legitimately fail but it happens all the time.

It's still such a weird contrast where I hear of talented, very experienced engineers who will still be ghosted by 90% of jobs, but then there's also experiences like this. Like, how is this sub-fizzbuzz programmer getting interviews but someone with 10+ years experience gets trapped in the HR filter?

When I encountered sub-fizzbuzz programmers I think the job postings were all for junior developers. So the bar was already low-ish, you just had to have the right keywords on your resume and get past HR.

So probably a different pool than the 10+ year people.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#372

Post by kqr »

nitwit005 wrote: post #368
nerdbert wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed that's the point - can you see things like a "normal" person does?

These tests usually don't have a "normal" outcome, as they are intended to group people into categories.

Normal was a bad choice of words. "How well are you able to empathise with the organisation" might be a better phrasing.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#373

Post by dylan604 »

namlem wrote: post #369
dylan604 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a high school literature teacher that asked me what I thought about the assigned reading, and then told I was wrong. After arguing that the question was not "what did it mean" vs what I thought. I think think whatever the hell I want to think. This was pretty much the death knell of my desire to participate in literature, and freed me up to spend my time in math/sciences. yes, it was just an excuse for somethin…

You can just read literature. Academic literary analysis has always been a grift imo. Just completely useless nonsense. Doesn't mean that literature isn't enjoyable. I recently read a book that would count as literary fiction (as opposed to genre fiction) for the first time in over a decade and I enjoyed it quite a lot.

> Just completely useless nonsense.

Explain that to all of those suffering through the reading just to make a grade because it is part of the required list. If I read Scarlet Letter today, I would not enjoy it any more than I did then. I'm just not entertained by some love triangle in a religious uptight society. I get enough of that in my every day life, minus the love triangle. It's the same reason I don't want to watch Rosanne or King of the Hill--it's just too close to home

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#374

Post by CogitoCogito »

recursive wrote: post #42
CogitoCogito wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weeding out poor candidates is not possible with 10-15 minutes informal chats. You do realize you’re replying to a comment showing it _is_ possible right?

I don't realize that. We know that there was a short chat, and that it resulted in filling a position. We don't know whether it's an effective way to filter out poor candidates. Have you done it? What's your success rate?

Yes I have done it. My success rate has been fine. I can’t remember poor hires coming in this way.

That said I’m getting the feeling you’re more interested in confirming your world view than anything else here. Continue hiring however you wish. Continue believing it’s the only effective way of you wish.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#375

Post by CogitoCogito »

plugin-baby wrote: post #29
CogitoCogito wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weeding out poor candidates is not possible with 10-15 minutes informal chats. You do realize you’re replying to a comment showing it _is_ possible right?

The previous comment doesn’t show that - it just shows that there are companies without arduous interview processes.

It _does_ show that. It’s obvious that /u/intelVISA is presenting this as a success story. If /u/intelVISA decides the candidates were good enough then they were good enough. Who else is there to judge but the one making the hiring decisions? Who are you to second guess someone else’s hiring decisions knowing nothing of the role, the pay, the performance, or really _anything_ at all?

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#376

Post by caskstrength »

Macha wrote: post #277
Alupis wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it feels explicitly classist (which in the US probably means it produces racist outcomes too) Please elaborate...

Way too much emphasis on if you went to the "right" high school or college for something given to people with ten year's experience, interest in those that took a hyper competitive view to niche hobbies in their high school years, why they picked the third level institution they did (economic necessity did not seem likely to be an acceptable answer).

> Way too much emphasis on if you went to the "right" high school or college for something given to people with ten year's experience, interest in those that took a hyper competitive view to niche hobbies in their high school years, why they picked the third level institution they did (economic necessity did not seem likely to be an acceptable answer).

Do rich golf-playing Harvard graduates really apply for a remote 100k per-year positions at Canonical? Or what is the idea of such interview?

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#377

Post by numpad0 »

nitwit005 wrote: post #368
nerdbert wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed that's the point - can you see things like a "normal" person does?

These tests usually don't have a "normal" outcome, as they are intended to group people into categories.

chaotic evil is a category.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#378

Post by WoodenChair »

robocat wrote: post #187
jabroni_salad wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took such a test at my first ever job, and it was only two topics repeated 15 times: 1. what is the value of these coins 2. is it ok to steal If you can't count money or think it is ok to steal then you cannot work in retail.

Money is becoming uncommon in New Zealand for payment. Some shops don't accept cash or otherwise make it more difficult to use. Employees can steal other things, but the opportunity to steal money has been significantly reduced.

That's kind of irrelevant. The vast majority of retail theft is not cash.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#379

Post by fardo »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #104
vundercind wrote: post #48

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.

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 know some employees are going to try to steal from the register, but why would they admit that in an interview?“

A lot of the time, it’s an unfamiliarity with “test taking as being a test of determining theory of mind of the test-giver”.

Rather than answering however they think the test-giver would want the answers to look like, they approach the test with alternative less useful approaches, ones like “holistic reframed hypotheticals” where they’re thinking of the situation in a modified hypothetical with a real world context introduced and with information that might dramatically change one’s answer, such as

“assume you’ve learned a coworker has taken some money out of the cash-drawer, how much money would be your threshold to snitch on them to management versus E.G. just asking them to put the money back?”, for which many people’s answer will not be “even one dollar”.

It is a trained skill to know this is a flawed approach and that broadly, “most tests don’t want you to make outside assumptions or reframe situations, and you should default to using strict and as-literal-as-possible interpretations of questions”.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#380

Post by strken »

Brananarchy wrote: post #323
strken wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covertly flirting with your female colleague in ambiguous ways after she asked you not to and then pretending you didn't do anything, asking your black colleague if he "knows any rappers", and wearing a dress to a company dress-up party when you are in no way trans then claiming to be "trans until tomorrow" and laughing loudly are also all unprofessional.

How is any of that related to the issues I raised? I never argued that any of that was acceptable. I'm not arguing that anyone should be able to do anything in the workplace, and that is a bad-faith reading of what I said. People are assholes. And assholes need to be dealt with. But the term "professional" is consistently abused as a tool to oppress people. I am arguing that the general (American) expectations of "pr…

My point was that general expectations are exactly what professionalism is and they reflect the broader society you're in, and there's nothing wrong with professionalism as a concept that isn't also wrong with everything else. We shouldn't question professionalism in isolation because there's no point to doing so: it's just a convenient mirror of broader society used to beat on workplaces for doing what everyone else is also doing.
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