I recently applied for a job and they sent me this test and another personality test. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but is there any way to politely decline wasting 30 minutes of my life to taking a test that I refuse to take on the ethical grounds that this is pure bunk? I guess it is a great way to filter out people I wouldn't want to work for, but I wonder if refusing to take the test is somehow a litmus.
When legitimate knowledge exams are found "discriminatory" by judges across America, shouldn't it be time to look at these so-called, non-scientific tests and ask if they aren't discriminatory against what, exactly? Wouldn't it be egregious if it were more likely that women or Latinos often fall into one of the "no hire, no promote" letters? That last is stupid hypothetical, but something has to get the madness to stop.
Working for someone else often involves jumping through arbitrary stupid pointless hoops.
Refusing to take the test, even if you have excellent reasons to do so, is probably a reason to not employ you. That early part of recruitment has little t do with getting the best person. It's mostly about trimming away hundreds of people applying for 2 positions.
You need your own assessment about where the benefits of cash, job security, job fun, etc outweigh the disbenefits of PHBs with idiot job demands.
> but something has to get the madness to stop.
Recruiting is hard job and is not a solved problem. I suggest a consulting company that i) works carefully to avoid discrimination and ii) just randomly places people with suitable experience and qualifications into a company. Market it as using advanced algorithms to place workers and it might take off.
I ended up taking the test and probably took that test, or variants of it, about 100 times over the past 10 years. I never once got a call back from an employer who required the test. I'm usually recognized as a very nice person and I'm pretty sure I am good at customer service.
I've been on the hiring end also, and it most certainly isn't easy. I will say though that it is very inefficient the way it is done now and these tests are making things far more difficult and confusing than it has to be. Case in point: just about every place you can apply to that has an opening for stocking shelves require an extensive personality test. Why are the people who work at these places so damn rude (at least where I live)?
FWIW, I have zero faith that employers would let a computer randomly drop people into their work environment, even if I was able to write a super AI that was 90% perfect. People simply don't trust statistics that much.
There are a hundred different ways to look at this
1) you could look at it as a nuisance that isn't worth wasting any career capital fighting (that's a perfectly valid way to look at it, you can only fight stupidity on so many fronts, this probably isn't worth the effort)
(seems relevent http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4448755)
2) you could say you don't want to take the test and see how much they care. You should have some wariness of how seriously a place takes their arbitrary hoops. If an organization can't deal with a nail sticking up over an arbitrary personality test, how are they going to deal with a nail sticking up over something that really matters?
Point 2) I tend to be the nail sticking up, but that is more a function of my job descriptions in the past where it was my responsibility to say "no" or question things. It takes a a certain amount of deftness to pull it off consistently combined with a fearlessness of not getting your head chopped off.
The results of the test I recently took said something on the order that I am a very blunt person that appreciates honesty. While this is true in many cases, the test dismissed the idea that I have situational awareness. There is a time for letting someone know that they could have done better and there is a time for congratulating people for doing their best, even if my expectations were disappointed. Empathy didn't seem to be an important measurement for this particular version of the test. People are complex and slippery, with their own motives, and sometimes you can't expect people to be what they aren't.
To say the least, it was upsetting to read a small part of my personality painted with such a thin brush. Ultimately, if I was a hiring manager and read such a description, I would probably think twice about speaking to this person again. This seems to suggest that whoever created the test, or whoever wrote the descriptions, had axes to grind vs certain personality "traits."
> but is there any way to politely decline wasting 30 minutes of my life to taking a test that I refuse to take on the ethical grounds that this is pure bunk?
Maybe a non-politically correct answer to what to do with the test is the way to ace the test, who knows.
When legitimate knowledge exams are found "discriminatory" by judges across America, shouldn't it be time to look at these so-called, non-scientific tests and ask if they aren't discriminatory against what, exactly? Wouldn't it be egregious if it were more likely that women or Latinos often fall into one of the "no hire, no promote" letters? That last is stupid hypothetical, but something has to get the madness to stop.