In this past year of unemployment, I have been through the gauntlet of HR screenings by various and tawdry companies. My least favorite of these tactics is what they call the survey or personality profile. My distaste for this form of punishment stems from when I first came across it in the nineties when I was offered employment by Greyhound Bus Lines. I had the job. I just had to take their "personality profile". I was told to answer the questions as honestly as possible. After I was done and my answers were faxed to some psychologist somewhere, I was told that I did not fit in the "parameters" of their stupid test and, therefore, they could not hire me. I tried to find out what it was that I answered wrong, but I was just given the "parameters" answer. I have come across this thing often in the years since and I have never gotten a job from any company that has used this psychological trickery. What annoyes me most is the questions on these things seem to try and deduce what your level of honesty and work ethic are. I believe I am an honest person and I work hard for my paycheck, so what is it that a personality profile or survey or whatever you call it tells them about me?
Flash forward to the present. I have just finished another one of these "character defect detecters" and I would be offended by the questions if they weren't so patently stupid. The survey consists of 128 questions which ask me such probing things as whether I agree that it's okay to take some things from the office. Let's think about this; I'm going to tell a prospective employer that I think it's okay to steal from him. Hmm....Yeah, that's smart. Question 32, 46, and 88 ask if I agree or disagree with the statement, worded in different ways, that you only work to the level that you think is adaquate for your pay and no harder. Uh, what boss wouldn't want you if you answered to the affirmative. The question that got to me was number 124. Do you agree or dissagree that you read well enough to do the survey. I might understand it if this was question 5 or 6 but question 124? I dont get it. Of course, I could not resist and answered that I disagreed. Hey, it's not like I was going to be hired anyway.
One hundred twenty-eight questions that could be boiled down to about ten that I can't imagine would trip up any individual into revealing anything they wouldn't want revealed. I'm at a loss as to how these tests separate the chaff from the wheat and how is it that I am always the chaff.
