Company Adopts Stupid Applicant Screening Test, Employees Show How Ridiculous It Is By Taking It
Recently, Twitter user @TheWrongNoel posted a thread that highlights the importance of interdepartmental communication within an organization. They told a story about their friend struggling to find an employee for their team only to discover that HR had dismissed quite a few good candidates.
The reason was the applicants failed the new screening test. Since they had all the necessary expertise on paper, the employee of ten years decided to perform the HR task themselves. They didn’t do so well, to put it lightly.
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“When you boil it down, the bulk of work that falls into HR is aimed at keeping your current, former and prospective employees from suing the company. Said differently, HR is all about risk reduction,” wrote on HuffPost. “I’m not diminishing the importance of this work. A mature business must do all of these things well. Just like a mature business needs to maintain accurate and organized accounting records. But the skills and mindset of someone who thinks all day long about creating and following rules do not fit the mindset required to succeed in recruiting (or anything talent-related, really). Would you put an accountant in charge of customer acquisition? Probably not. So why put an HR person in charge of talent acquisition?”
alent Partner at Drive CapitalHatta said that the “H” in HR has been missing for some time. “Good recruiting is all about people. In fact, companies are nothing more than a collection of people organized around a shared set of strategies, principles, products, and customers. Not processes. When business leaders understand this, they not only become better recruiters, they create more successful businesses.”
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Share on FacebookShoutout to any HR person reading this: These types of tests are c**p. Here's why: When a person is harried and rushed with a single question, they will often make a decision that is not their best decision. Because they felt rushed. The more questions they have to answer in a hurry, the more and more likely they will make even more poor decisions, sometimes to the point of catastrophic. In real life work situations, there are very few NOW NOW NOW moments where one has to make a decision so vital that they can't take at least ten minutes to make a decision. To force candidates into that kind of situation is not right. And, when we talking about personality, no computer is going to measure that correctly. The candidate is going to answer what they THINK the HR people want to hear rather than what they really feel or think. Which will lead to "wrong" answers that fail them. Try hiring HR people who are good at researching their work histories. Better results that way.
HR person here. Personality test is recruitment is so wrong on so many levels. Yes personality matters but have anninterview for god's sake!
Load More Replies...This happened to my wife...she tried for a permanent position at a company she had been doing contract work at for 3 years. She'd be doing the exact same work, just a different pay source. There was a math test involved in the interview process, which she failed because it was all College stuff she hadn't done in years and never used in her job. Her boss wanted to know why she hadn't gotten the job. She told him about the math test, which he took and also failed. She now has a permanent posting and the Math test is gone. Wish more bosses were like that!
All I'm seeing is a bunch of HR employees that will soon be unemployed because they filled the company with useless candidates. A company can't survive without qualified skilled people. The personality test may be good AFTER the initial job process..like checking resumes, references, conducting interviews. When qualified candidates make it through, then you can find out if they're going to be a perfect fit for the company atmosphere. But I still think those personality quizzes are a bunch of bogus BS.
I think those quizes are only good if the ones in charge of you are actually interested in psychology and related matters. In this case, the quiz should serve as a guide to understand each other better, not to see whether one is suitable for the atmosphere or not.
Load More Replies...The tweet about not hiring a candidate who didn't send a "thank you" email after an interview faintly annoys me. Do these people not know what the labor market looks like? I'm not sending you a "thank you" for bestowing the gift of my time taking the interview. Employers need employees way more than employees need employers. I've weighed four job offers at once recently, and if one of those had wasted my time by expecting me to grovel for the work, I would take a moment to warn others away from that company - but otherwise it wouldn't impact me at all.
I would also like to tell the story about skilled technicians. A wealthy man in my area recently bought a business of which the major feature was a $800,000 printing press. He required all the employees to re-apply for the jobs they were doing, and would only re-hire at 10% less than what they had been paid. The pressman didn't reapply, and left. He was one of less than 300 people in the country who know how to operate that press - only a handful live within a day's drive of the company and already have good jobs. The new owner is now desperately trying to sell the business he just bought because he didn't respect the employees.
Load More Replies...Hahaha. They just fired our HR person because she procrastinated, never followed up on anything, didn't hire anyone and used those worthless tests instead of actually talking with potentials. Our company is small. This was a waste of a position and they smartly got rid of it.
Here's an idea. Talk to the person to see if they're obviously a psychopath, then fire them from HR when you find out they are. ;-)
When you fail to get an engineer position because you are Pisces and Pisces are known to be intuitive and not logical...
DO NOT PUT THE JOB DESCRIPTION IN WHITE TEXT ON YOUR RESUME!!!! It might ping keywords, but usually your resume will lose its formatting for things like fonts and text colors when going through submission software, so when a hiring manager actually looks at your resume THEY WILL ACTUALLY SEE THAT YOU PUT THE JOB DESCRIPTION, AND WILL PROBABLY DING YOU FOR TRYING TO USE A TRICK. The fantastic Alison over at Ask a Manager has pointed out why that trick is a bad idea time and time again. That would only work if you were only submitting your resume as like a PDF, where it wouldn't be visible, but also that means that software wouldn't pick up on your hidden job description keywords. So you are best off NOT DOING THAT.
So since I pass these tests, I guess I'm a total psycho or just a great liar! The key is consistency, apparently. These 'tests' reword the same 10-20 questions over and over. So remember, keep your Patrick Bateman face on and all will be well *giggle*
The solution to this is to tell the quiz what you know it wants to hear.
And exactly what is that, pray tell? I mean, there's the obvious "I'm 100% a people person!" questions, but what about the "When you are faced with challenging new situations, do you ask others what you should do, or do you jump in and just do your best?" 50% of the time, you will be judged indecisive and lacking self-confidence for the first answer, and a loose cannon uninterested in following established procedures for the second. And God help you if you answer ANYTHING other than Always/Never, because those Sometimes, Often, and Rarely people are psychopaths to be escorted off the property by security. I feel the best strategy is to answer honestly and if they don't want you because you'd rather read a book than play sports with your 1,000 closest friends, then screw them anyways. Your better off not working for a company that feels that type of evaluation is important. Can you imagine what your performance reviews where it's decided whether you might get a raise would be like?
Load More Replies...I've never had to do this when applying for a job, but luckily, my social anxiety more than makes up for that during interviews, which saves paper.
So first of all I work in Human Resources. 22 years in the job and yes, I have a Psychology Masters degree. I agree, reliance on personality profiles and online screening is not the best way to do recruitment. But bear in mind that I recently had over 1000 applications for 5 roles, and that was just one of the 16 different positions we had advertised at the time. Best will in the world we don’t have time to read through and personally evaluate 4 page CV’s from each candidate, and the managers certainly don’t either. I’ve developed a few tools of my own eg if you can’t spell the name of the company or the job you’re applying for, or (as in one recent case) can’t spell your own name right (3 different versions on his own cv!!) then you’re in the “no” pile. There is a place and a need for screening tools, but some are better than others.
But that's your job. HR develop ridiculous thing like hire based on grammar. Unless you're searching for grammar teacher, stop focusing on little things. Go through their experience and what they have done. Then you can filter based on their attention to detail if it's required. Doing it reverse that's what HR people looks like a joke. I am sorry, but most hr doesn't even bother to know what the job description is.
Load More Replies...OMG! I went through one of these for a job many years ago. It was quite a high powered job but the questionnaire was REALLY off the wall, random questions about art etc, weird when the job had nothing to do with that. I made it through but the problem for some was that they stopped and thought about what the 'right' answer was instead of just answering the question. I'm still not sure what the point of it was..
Make HR take the tests and sack those who fail. I bet the tests will disappear quickly after a few get laid off
Well, you might have crappy employees but at least they all have great personalities! :)
I'm not even slightest surprised. Joined a company a few months ago and it has a large arm of HR consultants, including employee compensation systems (something along that line, not my area). We, as a firm, have terrible HR system. I talked with other colleagues and they didn't know how the firm is able to sell those services, which bring in several hundreds of millions globally
I spent 11 years working for a prominent telecom company, having been twice promoted within the ranks. In late 2021, our branch closed and we were laid off. There were a few remote positions open which I failed to land because (you guessed it), I failed their ridiculous assessment—- for a job I’d already done successfully for over a decade! I’m still job hunting and spend much of my day taking these odd tests.
Some years back, the company I worked at stopped hiring folks outright as many didn't have the aptitude to do assembly line work or personality-wise not a good fit, went with a temp service. The people who worked out well were offered a job and happy endings all around.
I worked for a small software company (20-25 people) about 8 years ago. The owner of the company swore by the personality test he used. They were multiple choice workbooks (physical, maybe 6-8 pages) and he had to pay like $25/book. HR tried to talk him out of using them because they were so inaccurate but he insisted every potential hire get tested and the score would determine whether they got a second interview. This happened from around 2005-2012 at least (perhaps even earlier and later). (So it's not a new stupid idea)
I worked in HR for several years then i got a new boss and discovered I was not doing anything right! Human Resources isn't the correct name for this department. It's about Corporate, or in my case, .Org best interests. And never believe a company that claims "We're all just like family here"...or we are very pro-family. It's about the right face that's presented to the public. Too bad that a social service organization puts that kind of face out there just to treat it's own employee's like so much disposable dirt.
The best opportunities I have received in my career have come about because, for whatever reason, I was able to get face to face with the hiring manager early in the process. I have always had a better ability to sell myself in person rather than electronically...When I was a hiring manager, I never made a decision on a candidate until I was able to sit down with them in person. I rarely refused an interview based only on their resume unless the resume was a hot mess.
My friend was helping in one HR and they had interesting way how to lower amount of CVs. They shuffled them, randomly picked half of them and tossed them away. Because they do not want to hire somebody who is unlucky.
Such test always failed me. But then, I always landed at better working place.
Software can be useful but shouldn't be the only reason to eliminate a candidate. A fair number of people feel nervous and intimidated by screening software. Anyway, as an example, if a person is applying for an analyst position the answers can indicate if the person has the demeanor/temperament suitable for such a role. I took a software screening tool at a former employer; I was already hired, and the company instituted the software after I was an employee. I was very surprised at how accurate the results were.
I bet this test was on someone's list of goals or something for the company's b******t performance development/review program.
Shoutout to any HR person reading this: These types of tests are c**p. Here's why: When a person is harried and rushed with a single question, they will often make a decision that is not their best decision. Because they felt rushed. The more questions they have to answer in a hurry, the more and more likely they will make even more poor decisions, sometimes to the point of catastrophic. In real life work situations, there are very few NOW NOW NOW moments where one has to make a decision so vital that they can't take at least ten minutes to make a decision. To force candidates into that kind of situation is not right. And, when we talking about personality, no computer is going to measure that correctly. The candidate is going to answer what they THINK the HR people want to hear rather than what they really feel or think. Which will lead to "wrong" answers that fail them. Try hiring HR people who are good at researching their work histories. Better results that way.
HR person here. Personality test is recruitment is so wrong on so many levels. Yes personality matters but have anninterview for god's sake!
Load More Replies...This happened to my wife...she tried for a permanent position at a company she had been doing contract work at for 3 years. She'd be doing the exact same work, just a different pay source. There was a math test involved in the interview process, which she failed because it was all College stuff she hadn't done in years and never used in her job. Her boss wanted to know why she hadn't gotten the job. She told him about the math test, which he took and also failed. She now has a permanent posting and the Math test is gone. Wish more bosses were like that!
All I'm seeing is a bunch of HR employees that will soon be unemployed because they filled the company with useless candidates. A company can't survive without qualified skilled people. The personality test may be good AFTER the initial job process..like checking resumes, references, conducting interviews. When qualified candidates make it through, then you can find out if they're going to be a perfect fit for the company atmosphere. But I still think those personality quizzes are a bunch of bogus BS.
I think those quizes are only good if the ones in charge of you are actually interested in psychology and related matters. In this case, the quiz should serve as a guide to understand each other better, not to see whether one is suitable for the atmosphere or not.
Load More Replies...The tweet about not hiring a candidate who didn't send a "thank you" email after an interview faintly annoys me. Do these people not know what the labor market looks like? I'm not sending you a "thank you" for bestowing the gift of my time taking the interview. Employers need employees way more than employees need employers. I've weighed four job offers at once recently, and if one of those had wasted my time by expecting me to grovel for the work, I would take a moment to warn others away from that company - but otherwise it wouldn't impact me at all.
I would also like to tell the story about skilled technicians. A wealthy man in my area recently bought a business of which the major feature was a $800,000 printing press. He required all the employees to re-apply for the jobs they were doing, and would only re-hire at 10% less than what they had been paid. The pressman didn't reapply, and left. He was one of less than 300 people in the country who know how to operate that press - only a handful live within a day's drive of the company and already have good jobs. The new owner is now desperately trying to sell the business he just bought because he didn't respect the employees.
Load More Replies...Hahaha. They just fired our HR person because she procrastinated, never followed up on anything, didn't hire anyone and used those worthless tests instead of actually talking with potentials. Our company is small. This was a waste of a position and they smartly got rid of it.
Here's an idea. Talk to the person to see if they're obviously a psychopath, then fire them from HR when you find out they are. ;-)
When you fail to get an engineer position because you are Pisces and Pisces are known to be intuitive and not logical...
DO NOT PUT THE JOB DESCRIPTION IN WHITE TEXT ON YOUR RESUME!!!! It might ping keywords, but usually your resume will lose its formatting for things like fonts and text colors when going through submission software, so when a hiring manager actually looks at your resume THEY WILL ACTUALLY SEE THAT YOU PUT THE JOB DESCRIPTION, AND WILL PROBABLY DING YOU FOR TRYING TO USE A TRICK. The fantastic Alison over at Ask a Manager has pointed out why that trick is a bad idea time and time again. That would only work if you were only submitting your resume as like a PDF, where it wouldn't be visible, but also that means that software wouldn't pick up on your hidden job description keywords. So you are best off NOT DOING THAT.
So since I pass these tests, I guess I'm a total psycho or just a great liar! The key is consistency, apparently. These 'tests' reword the same 10-20 questions over and over. So remember, keep your Patrick Bateman face on and all will be well *giggle*
The solution to this is to tell the quiz what you know it wants to hear.
And exactly what is that, pray tell? I mean, there's the obvious "I'm 100% a people person!" questions, but what about the "When you are faced with challenging new situations, do you ask others what you should do, or do you jump in and just do your best?" 50% of the time, you will be judged indecisive and lacking self-confidence for the first answer, and a loose cannon uninterested in following established procedures for the second. And God help you if you answer ANYTHING other than Always/Never, because those Sometimes, Often, and Rarely people are psychopaths to be escorted off the property by security. I feel the best strategy is to answer honestly and if they don't want you because you'd rather read a book than play sports with your 1,000 closest friends, then screw them anyways. Your better off not working for a company that feels that type of evaluation is important. Can you imagine what your performance reviews where it's decided whether you might get a raise would be like?
Load More Replies...I've never had to do this when applying for a job, but luckily, my social anxiety more than makes up for that during interviews, which saves paper.
So first of all I work in Human Resources. 22 years in the job and yes, I have a Psychology Masters degree. I agree, reliance on personality profiles and online screening is not the best way to do recruitment. But bear in mind that I recently had over 1000 applications for 5 roles, and that was just one of the 16 different positions we had advertised at the time. Best will in the world we don’t have time to read through and personally evaluate 4 page CV’s from each candidate, and the managers certainly don’t either. I’ve developed a few tools of my own eg if you can’t spell the name of the company or the job you’re applying for, or (as in one recent case) can’t spell your own name right (3 different versions on his own cv!!) then you’re in the “no” pile. There is a place and a need for screening tools, but some are better than others.
But that's your job. HR develop ridiculous thing like hire based on grammar. Unless you're searching for grammar teacher, stop focusing on little things. Go through their experience and what they have done. Then you can filter based on their attention to detail if it's required. Doing it reverse that's what HR people looks like a joke. I am sorry, but most hr doesn't even bother to know what the job description is.
Load More Replies...OMG! I went through one of these for a job many years ago. It was quite a high powered job but the questionnaire was REALLY off the wall, random questions about art etc, weird when the job had nothing to do with that. I made it through but the problem for some was that they stopped and thought about what the 'right' answer was instead of just answering the question. I'm still not sure what the point of it was..
Make HR take the tests and sack those who fail. I bet the tests will disappear quickly after a few get laid off
Well, you might have crappy employees but at least they all have great personalities! :)
I'm not even slightest surprised. Joined a company a few months ago and it has a large arm of HR consultants, including employee compensation systems (something along that line, not my area). We, as a firm, have terrible HR system. I talked with other colleagues and they didn't know how the firm is able to sell those services, which bring in several hundreds of millions globally
I spent 11 years working for a prominent telecom company, having been twice promoted within the ranks. In late 2021, our branch closed and we were laid off. There were a few remote positions open which I failed to land because (you guessed it), I failed their ridiculous assessment—- for a job I’d already done successfully for over a decade! I’m still job hunting and spend much of my day taking these odd tests.
Some years back, the company I worked at stopped hiring folks outright as many didn't have the aptitude to do assembly line work or personality-wise not a good fit, went with a temp service. The people who worked out well were offered a job and happy endings all around.
I worked for a small software company (20-25 people) about 8 years ago. The owner of the company swore by the personality test he used. They were multiple choice workbooks (physical, maybe 6-8 pages) and he had to pay like $25/book. HR tried to talk him out of using them because they were so inaccurate but he insisted every potential hire get tested and the score would determine whether they got a second interview. This happened from around 2005-2012 at least (perhaps even earlier and later). (So it's not a new stupid idea)
I worked in HR for several years then i got a new boss and discovered I was not doing anything right! Human Resources isn't the correct name for this department. It's about Corporate, or in my case, .Org best interests. And never believe a company that claims "We're all just like family here"...or we are very pro-family. It's about the right face that's presented to the public. Too bad that a social service organization puts that kind of face out there just to treat it's own employee's like so much disposable dirt.
The best opportunities I have received in my career have come about because, for whatever reason, I was able to get face to face with the hiring manager early in the process. I have always had a better ability to sell myself in person rather than electronically...When I was a hiring manager, I never made a decision on a candidate until I was able to sit down with them in person. I rarely refused an interview based only on their resume unless the resume was a hot mess.
My friend was helping in one HR and they had interesting way how to lower amount of CVs. They shuffled them, randomly picked half of them and tossed them away. Because they do not want to hire somebody who is unlucky.
Such test always failed me. But then, I always landed at better working place.
Software can be useful but shouldn't be the only reason to eliminate a candidate. A fair number of people feel nervous and intimidated by screening software. Anyway, as an example, if a person is applying for an analyst position the answers can indicate if the person has the demeanor/temperament suitable for such a role. I took a software screening tool at a former employer; I was already hired, and the company instituted the software after I was an employee. I was very surprised at how accurate the results were.
I bet this test was on someone's list of goals or something for the company's b******t performance development/review program.
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