Personality Tests for Employment

[NIXSONISBACK]

I've been, "on the beach" for quite awhile now, but from time to time I still send out tapes and resumes mostly for squirts and giggles.

Lately, when I've gotten a reply from some station it comes with a personality assessment test as a condition of being interviewed.

Is this not a true sign of the times? A personality test for disc jockeys, really, are you kidding me?

Fortunately, I have no real intention of moving halfway across the country for a 22 thousand dollar a year radio job, so I guess in that respect it does weed out the non-hackers.

 

[Silkie]

This is something that has been going on for several months, as I recall reading about it in the news.

Back when I sat for exams in my profession at the time, the seating arrangement was based upon signatures submitted with the application, exam fee and and evidence of education and experience qualifications to sit for the exam. Rather than check to see if I fit in for the business I was in, the testing company fit the exam seating to my personality. I passed.

That said, I got some pretty good advice from a client years ago: If they are that consumed with prying into who and what you are, with whom you associate, where you go, when you go and what you do, these are definitely not people you want in your life.

 

[whit979]

This reminds me of the recent headlines of employers asking for potential and current employee Facebook passwords, and the legislation now being pushed to bar that from happening.

I don't get it -- the whole point of the interview is to gauge someone's personality and readiness to work at your place of business. You can't really find out much about someone by having them fill out a questionnaire or test. That's a symptom of laziness among hiring managers.

 

[tomservo]

Don't feel too bad, I've come across these sorts of tests in both industrial and retail applications.

 

[nocomradio]

As a business owner who has been doing it for 20 years now, I've learned a thing or two about potential job applicants. Personality is becoming more of an issue, because of the changing times. With social media being what it is now, and the intrusion of things like smart phones, PDA, smaller laptops, and other little devices, people are very distracted all the time and can't seem to distance themselves from that connectedness constantly. I think its led to a different type of person for whom reality and the virtual world are one and the same. It bleeds into the workplace in a bad way these days. Being old enough to remember life before cell phones and computers,I can say things were much different then. People came to work, to work.

There also seems to be a larger and larger resistance to any sort of structure or authority in the workplace too, and as such, telling an employee to do their job can result in some nasty posting on any of the number of social media sites in retaliation. Knowing who you are hiring in advance isn't a bad thing. Prying excessively can be however and I don't advocate peeking into their sites or anything that invasive, but you still need to know you are hiring someone responsible enough to handle what you put in front of them.

Top all this off with so many applicants having special needs now, and it makes for a lot of supervisory and hiring headaches. Hiring an employee isn't just as simple as saying "you're hired" It involves plenty of paperwork, taxes, payroll, insurance paperwork, management, training, etc. When I hire I like to be as informed and prepared for a new employee as possible.

 

[Silkie]

Large enough organizations have people who can memorize the test and eventually pass the personality type a company is seeking.

It just reminds me of something kind of creepy, but then again I have been with my employer for a number of years, and before that I had my own business for a number of years.

So, I still say that if they are that consumed with knowing about you without speaking with you, but following you around, showing how skilled and talented they think they are, they remind me of someone I went to the police about when enough people decided he was too creepy crawly - whether he could be arrested or did anything or not. If something happens to me they have it well chronicled, and a daily journal is available of everything for the past several months.

We see this going on around us daily, and sometimes people don't even notice it as anything strange anymore.

Not a good thing.

 

[cspotrun]

Whatever happend to hiring somebody who just "Sounds Good"? think about it... do you CARE what your Doctor is posting on Facebook? or do you want a Doctor who is GOOD at what they do?