This isn’t anything new. Thirty years ago, I answered an ad in the newspaper for a job as an engineering tech at a government agency. When I went to the office, the secretary told me that there were no jobs.They had paid for the ad in the newspaper because they were required to keep a file folder filled with applications. She took my resume, inserted it into the file, and told me that nobody would ever look at it-- unless somebody on the staff dies and has to be replaced
A year later, after I found a real job with a major international engineering company–the same shit.
The department boss had zero job openings.But he kept a constant stream of interviewees–(students finishing their degrees at some of the the best engineering campuses in America). On interview days, the engineering staff, who usually wore casual clothes, dressed in suits and joined the interviewees for lunch with the senior bosses. The interviewees were always excited and optimistic. But we staff knew it was all a sham–there were no job openings. The only reason they held the interviews was to keep the corporation’s name prominent on the campuses.
I have some articles at work that I’ll have to look up so I can better cite what I was saying.
Briefly, though, there are some individuals with learning difficulties who are very concrete thinkers, so having to interpret what the question is really asking would be problematic for them. An accommodation where someone reads the question to them helps, but the person doing the reading is supposed to just read and record responses, not do any explanations.
An example of this is a class of teenagers with leaning disabilities who attended a workshop I led at a career center. The quiz that was part of the curriculum had some questions that someone without LD might better interpret. One was “You don’t have to dress up for a job interview” or something like that. The LD kids in all sincerity said things like, “You don’t have to. It’s not like you’ll get arrested if you don’t.” I thought they were giving me a hard time, but a Speech and Language Pathologist who had accompanied them to the workshop let me know that questions which demanded subtle distinctions like that, or which were phrased using negative language (don’t have to rather than should) would be problematic for them.
Now, someone may come along and make the case that people applying for jobs should be required to make these distinctions, but I have seen these same tests required of someone looking to do bagging and cart retrieval or stocking shelves, and that seems ridiculous to me.
Interesting information in your post. From what I understand about test design (not a ton, but I’ve had some relevant classes) these tests are trying to be straightforward. It is not always easy to do, but you raise good points. I don’t think employers are using these psychological screenings to subtly test reading comprehension, at least not to any great extent. For many jobs, especially like you describe, if they could scan your retina and know that you show up, smile, don’t goof off, and won’t steal, they’d be fine with that. It’s hard to come up with questions that everyone will understand the same way. Also, there are some test-design reasons to use negative language for some questions (to help detect guessing and lying, for example). In some cases those reasons might not outweigh the disadvantages, though.
I have seen some corporate cost benefit analyses in my time. Things like this where it is very hard to come up with the benefit of doing this and the cost of not doing it mostly end up justifying the point of view of the most senior person that has an interest.
That happens in broadcasting. Every time it’s license renewal season, the local Clear Channel station runs spots looking for a DJ for an afternoon slot. The purpose is to collect as many resumes from the local community so it can show the FCC that it’s looking to hire from the local community. Except that there is no such job open, and if there were, they wouldn’t advertise it like that; they’d be more likely to bring someone in from a smaller market.
But as long as their EEO file is full of resumes, everyone is happy.
Since I am one of these people, no, I wouldn’t want a company to discriminate against me or people like me.
It’s retail. Some amount of dealing with people is required, but not much beyond the ability to say “Hi, how are you?” “Did you find everything you needed?” “Your total is $24.59.” and “Thanks, have a good one.” It’s not too hard, and most cashiers I come across don’t even go that far. Like I said earlier, anyone who saw me working retail would assume I was the happiest people-person around. Despite the depression and anxiety, I still do my job.
Just like the millions of other Americans with mental illness still manage to do their jobs. I doubt there’s some sort of concerted effort to discriminate based on mental illness (just some poorly-worded survey questions), but it worries me that you find it acceptable to do so.
I’m sure that there are certain jobs where depression or social anxiety would make it difficult to do a good job. But I’d also imagine that there would be a certain amount of self-selection among those whose depression or anxiety profoundly affected their day-to-day life. In other words, the painfully shy woman isn’t often going to apply for a job as a cocktail waitress.
As someone else pointed out, a lot of places require these surveys even if you’re applying for a job with minimal customer interaction. The overnight stocker at CVS might get a question once in a while about the location of Children’s Tylenol, but the majority of their time at work they don’t deal with people.
I understand the questions about theft and work ethic, it’s just that the personality questions seem unnecessary. YMMV.
Apologies if someone has already said most of what’s in this post. I’m having a devil of a time posting.
One reason for making applicants jump through hoops is simply to weed out some of them. If you put up a small barrier, some people will decide it isn’t worth their time, but you won’t be keeping out people who are serious about applying. Applicants tend to want the application process streamlined. Employers tend to want the application process chunky to keep people from applying on a lark.
If you make it so people can push one button and have their application go to a million employers, they will do that. And then a million employers have yet another application. Anything that lowers the bar for you to apply lowers the bar for everyone else as well, increasing your competition for the job.
From what I understand part of the purpose of this test is to “catch” people with inconsistencies. The people who don’t think it is okay to steal but wouldn’t think anything of it if they saw Joe pour the take-a-penny/leave-a-penny jar into his pocket at the end of the night or if they knew Susan purposely damaged merchandise so she can get it at a discount the next day. That is why the test is 15 pages of the same 4 questions with slightly different wording. They can’t ask you for your definition of stealing or drug use but they can ask you the same question with different scenarios 25 times to see if you feel differently about things in different situations.
I did dig up one article that gives some advice to business owners about the legalities and potential for discrimination here. I’ve been pretty swamped at work and haven’t looked through much.
Thanks for your insights, though, Harriet The Spry (LOVE your username, too!).