This was discussed in a previous thread but it’s more than a year old so I didn’t want to activate it again.
Anyway, I recently posted my resume on monster.com. A little while ago I got a response about a very attractive position with a major government contractor. They require, among other things, that I take the “Thomas-Jung Type Indicator” and fax them the results.
If you go to the URL and click on that link you’ll see that it’s what seems to be a handwriting analysis test. Does anyone put stock in these things? Especially a “major government contractor”? I googled “Thomas-Jung Type Indicator” and there seems to be a lot of skepticism about it. Some people even think it may be an attempt at identity theft since they do request 4 samples of your signature. So what’s the dope on this? Obviously graphology is bogus, but could it be a legitimate offer from a legitimate company who’s HR department mistakenly believes that this is a valuable tool?
I just noticed that the Reply-To address on the email is an earthlink.net address. I guess that’s one more strike against the chance that this is a legitimate offer. :mad:
This site may be of interest. OK, it’s for Canada, but provides ammunition against companies using graphology as a section technique. You might also be interested in this jobfairy weblog entry, which talks about a very similar e-mail re a monster.com entry, suggesting that you’ve got some generic spam. A reputable company would tell you who they are and have a real e-mail address at their own domain.
raygirvan,
Thanks for the links. The letter at jobfairy.com is very similar to the one I received, especially the last couple of paragraphs. But the first part of the letter was specific about the skills they wanted and they are a close (but not perfect) match to some of the skills I list in my resume, so it isn’t completely generic spam. But what is it? I can see only a couple of possibilities. One would be that it’s a legitimate job with a company who’s HR department has unfortunately bought into this graphology nonsense. The similarity between letters could be because they copied and pasted the last part from an example provided to them by tjti.com. I’ve pretty much decided that this isn’t the case. For one thing, it seems odd that the HR department of a major contractor would use an earthlink email address. But if it’s not real then what it it? Why would someone be collecting faxes of people’s handwriting samples and resumes? The only conceivable reason I can think of is that it’s some sort of identity theft scam using the signature samples and the personal info on the resume. I’m torn between simply deleting it and forgetting about it, or reporting it to monster.com as an abuse of their system. I’d hate to be wrong and end up looking like a paranoid jerk, but I’m concerned that they might actually succeed in taking advantage of some people.
Does anyone put stock in these things? Especially a “major government contractor”? I googled “Thomas-Jung Type Indicator” and there seems to be a lot of skepticism about it. Some people even think it may be an attempt at identity theft since they do request 4 samples of your signature. So what’s the dope on this? Obviously graphology is bogus, but could it be a legitimate offer from a legitimate company who’s HR department mistakenly believes that this is a valuable tool?