I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
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The manager interviewing me (who admit he basically just started managing a month prior) told me he just read a 'great book on management' and wanted to 'try this out'. I passed the first interview, but the second was going to be a 5-hour remote codeshare/whiteboard interview with the team. I declined the second interview.
I ended up choosing the job that had no whiteboard interview or personality test. It was just a simple conversation with the tech lead about my previous experience and if I had the experience to work on their current system.
It was the best job I ever had and they are still my client almost 5 years later.
Almost like the unnecessarily complex hiring processes are built that way on purpose.
The ones at a fraction of the cost aren't very good. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
I've worked with great offshore teams and terrible ones, I think the great ones were more expensive but still less than a local salary.
But the theoretical hiring manager here doesn't care anyways. All they want is to come under budget so they can max their bonus for being so cleverly frugal.
Intelligence / Competence more or less has the same distribution curve. With the access of knowledge now widely available, A country with 1.5B people will always have more competent people than countries that have 50 Million in population.
And these countries have cheap labor. US has always poo-pooed Japanese, Chinese and Indian workers as low quality. That's only because you didn't filter well
No, it's an experienced one.
>Intelligence / Competence more or less has the same distribution curve. With the access of knowledge now widely available, A country with 1.5B people will always have more competent people than countries that have 50 Million in population.
That is only a fraction of what it takes to produce good software developers. You have to include quality of the educational systems, living conditions and all that. Any offshore developer worth their salt gets paid market rates or near market rates.
>And these countries have cheap labor. US has always poo-pooed Japanese, Chinese and Indian workers as low quality. That's only because you didn't filter well
It's not their nationality, it's the price they are charging for. I bet you can't find a quality US worker for $30K a year either.
I don't really see the value in going through hiring gauntlets and opt out of any process that looks like it might waste time like that.
You do realize you’re replying to a comment showing it _is_ possible right?
Great tech guys are able to explain to you complex systems quite easily; not by making them overly complex, but quite the opposite, to keep them simple, and regarding the bug you can understand the depth of troubleshooting the person went through.
I'm sure for a small and even medium sized company looking for a technical role it's fine to look at resumes, have a quick chat, and get them in. Not as safe to use when sorting through thousands of candidates at a FAANG.
That said I’m getting the feeling you’re more interested in confirming your world view than anything else here. Continue hiring however you wish. Continue believing it’s the only effective way of you wish.
That's the whole point of resumes and LinkedIn...especially in technical fields. You self-select for the hiring criteria you're looking for. You then speak to the candidate to understand a bit more about their experience as it relates to the job you're seeking a candidate for. That's why it often makes sense for such roles, for technical people to interview other technical people.
"Oh, you have experience with XYZ technology stack, and you worked with it for a few years, awesome. That's what we use here, but could you please talk about some of the projects you worked on with said technology?"
But no, tell me how that's not possible to do quickly.
I'm not saying you need a gauntlet of tests. I liked the approach mentioned elsewhere of a technical discussion about what they did. But it takes, like, an hour or two to make sure they're not BSing and that they're actually as much of an expert as they claim to be.
I mean, of course it would be better to find the most qualified candidates every time with perfect accuracy. Does having a longer interview process help with that goal, or does it deter the exact candidates you want? Is it okay to end up with the guy who wrote the FrobNizzle compactor instead of the woman who wrote the FrobNizzle extractor?
I mean your low ball easy to answer question gives you exactly zero information other then yes they in fact worked on a team that did stuff. They just talk about what their peers did you've got such a short interview your not going to figure out they didn't actually do that shit.
There’s something lacking with your interviewing skills if you can’t detect them in a conversation.
If on the off chance you do get some sociopath that somehow escapes all efforts of detection, well, it’s easy to fire people, in the US anyway.
They can make a thing that would take a day of work sound like some sort of fantastical world changing undertaking.
The candidate may embellish and fuzz thing (both on the CV and verbally), mixing what they did with what the team did, color things to make themselves look better, etc. In certain parts of the world, that's just the normal behaviour in interview loops, and the loop takes it into account. Sometimes you remove the extra "marketing layer" and still have a good candidate --- sometimes not.
If you're Google or similar, you can afford to throw such candidates out even at the recruiter screening stage. But in other companies, probably even in the 3rd quartile, you may need to fish in these waters.
Example: does "shipped" mean it went into production and users were using it, or, does it mean you gave the source code to the client and then you have no clue what happened to it? Does "Airflow" on the CV mean you once played with it for a blog post, or you used it in production for 5 years? Does "Manager" mean you were managing the people and accountable for delivery, or you were in a lot of meetings?
You can weed out _some_ of the poor candidates in 15 minutes, but not _all_ of them, not even close. But the point of the interview loop is to weed out _most_ of poor candidates.
The fact that a somebody once got a job after a 15 minute interview is completely irrelevant.
What you can't do is weed them all out, and you usually can't tell if someone is a good fit yet.
My last gig was great in that aspect. My client found my LinkedIn, we had a quick 15 minute call to discuss the project and I was working for them the next day.
Might not work in all cases, but really, if you're trying to sniff out a pretender vs someone who can write software, would not having a heavily technical conversation about details, challenges and other things not make it clearly evident after 15-30-45 minutes if this person is who you need? Rest of the time can be spent napkin designing something or peer programming to check off those to be sure.
I had a interview in 2021 where I had to do a 1.5 hour timed exercise, that apparently isn't sufficient, so their interview pipeline has 3x1hour additional live coding sessions with engineers. Over 4 hours of coding just to prove I can write code up to their standards. Then another 3+ hours of behavioral interviews, meeting the team. Multiply that by the ~5 candidates you interview per position multiplied by each position you hire for in a given year.
In the intervening time, a candidate not quite ticking all the boxes but with motivation and energy could have learned what they needed to and moved whatever the project is forward.
And for me it's clearly a people one.
It can be that the manager don't want to actually hire someone because they have personal interest of using consultants to do the job. Or the manager lack confidence and is looking for a unicorn to avoid making any mistake (probably the most common). Or the manager expectations are disconnected with the job proposal (they want a senior but the salary is for a junior or like said in another comment, they want someone with skills exactly aligned with the tech stack).
Here we have a trial period of at least three months so it's quite easy to get rid of someone if they don't fit but it's rarely used in IT and I don't understand why. And once the trial is over, it's quite hard to get rid of someone. But basically it seems that once your in, if the trial period is used as a quick exit it's mainly by the new employee and not by the company.
I agree. In Switzerland employment law is governed by the code des obligations, or for the parent poster who asked in the first place, Obligationenrecht. There are various notice periods, 1 week in the first 3 months, 1 month for the first year and so on. An employer isn't required to give a reason for dismissing someone either.
I think it is entirely a people issue.
Not all hiring managers and not even all engineers understand that every requirement winnows down the available candidates. Eventually you're left with only the people who are desperate enough to apply despite not meeting half your list of requirements. Those candidates are on average not as strong as the ones you'd get if you just asked for software engineers with any experience in consensus algorithms and listed your tech stack as an FYI.
Went on to join the highest performing team I've ever worked on. I miss the first few years of that job... before the acquisition!
When I was interviewing for both junior and senior positions, my typical tack was to look through their resume and look for something interesting that I have some kind of background knowledge of. Or, alternatively, just ask them "what's the coolest project you've worked on?" From there I'd just let it be a pretty organic conversation where I'd just keep asking for more details until we've either gotten to the bottom of the tech implementation or have gotten to the point where they can say "I don't know, someone else worked on that".
So far I haven't been disappointed with any of the outcomes from that process; there was one where my conclusion was "no hire" and then down the road they were hired anyway... and it turned out pretty much how I figured it would. Good surface technical knowledge with a super scattered implementation.
This is the first question I ask followed by, "What's the worst project you've worked on?" The answers are pretty insightful.
"They made developers write unit tests!!!" vs "There were some personality clashes which unfortunately impacted on the team's ability to collaborate effectively".
I'll happily trade for your rock.
But before that company I had a manager at a very small company who absolutely had no ability to do the work — and would have failed a personality test on top of that.
So I'm inclined to think your 15 minute intuition is nearly enough - the worst people reveal themselves very quickly. And so does the best people. Where a little bit more time might be needed is sometimes in the middle, but it's rare for more conversation to change the initial judgement.
Over nearly 30 years, there have been borderline cases where we might have overpaid someone, and a couple I'd have preferred not to have hired, but who still could deliver, but I don't think we've ended up with anyone who were bad enough to justify these kinds of extensive hiring processes.
I tend to see these complex hiring processes more as tests to determine which candidates are willing to jump through hoops and prove their eagerness and loyalty. E.g. when a FAANG sent me a reading list.... I declined, pointing out that if I needed to study for their interviews they weren't testing my skills, but how desperate I was to work for the. Their recruiters called me back a couple of times to try to convince me again.
I can understand them doing so, because they can, and getting people to who will see it as an achievement to get past these barriers might be worth it to them, but to me it just felt like I didn't want to work in an environment where people were so eager work there that they'd put up with that.
Just gouging their enthusiasm and knowledge of topics they may not necessarily need to be aware of for the job.
At least it seems to bear out so far, and if not, then it means all candidates are just decent and it doesn’t matter whom we hire.
... and then, after wasting thousands of dollars per candidate, many companies opt for RTO policies to "trim fat". Yeah, makes sense if you're an accountant / stock market analyst only focusing on capex vs opex and long-term liabilities (which employment contracts are everywhere but in the US with at-will), but from a holistic viewpoint it's all an utter waste.
Assume 30k of hiring costs related to filling any new position (and that's on the lower end), it makes zero sense to not grant existing employees even 2 grands a year in wage increase... but here we are. Financial games have ruined everything.
That is MUCH too low. Most recruiters are paid 20-30% of first year annual salary as a placement fee.
Last year I interviewed for MongoDB. They proudly boasted that their hiring process consisted of a 7 interview marathon. I asked if that wasn't too many interviews, and the interviewer boasted that they already managed to streamline their process down from 12 interviews.
They also proceeded to point out that all FANGs follow the same process, except they really don't.
I respectfully dropped from the hiring process there and then. The extremes to which they take their cargo cult mentality is out of this world.
Nah, just "webscale" like everything else Mongo.
Not a take-home writing assignment, which would be pretty standard, but a live writing interview via Zoom screen share. Very unusual, but I don't have too many other things on the horizon right now, so I'll see where it goes...
b) Not necessarily, some companies would care if their contract writer stole/copied/repurposed/reused content from a competitor/regurgitated copyrighted material. Think also GenAI hallucinations, fabricated citations, etc. But sure, most cost-conscious companies won't give a hoot, so they could probably get by with cutting corners.
I asked for feedback on the blurb or ways to improve it and got told, basically, "well you took so long" (~30 minutes?) "to implement this that we don't really have time for that", or something to that rough effect.
I got a relatively generic rejection email shortly thereafter, and frankly, only minded because I was unemployed at the time. I have no idea what whoever designed their hiring process thinks they're getting out of being overcomplex and generally cold, but I can't imagine it's anything good.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16833100/why-does-the-mo...
Despite the dynamic in which you were the one being tag-teamed in an interview, would your catalyst presence bring the interview back on track, with subtle grace?
At the end of a series of "bad interview loop" tests, you learn that they secretly weren't interviewing you to be a coder, and now you are the next chosen-one CEO of Lego.
Said no company ever....
And any company being so openly dishonest as to set up fake arguments for candidates react to . . . if discovered, that's the mother of all red flags.
This is not the case with new interviewers shadowing a single interviewer. That's actually a positive sign, that they know some of their people have skills and are actively trying to train their staff.
One time, for an unspecified job at a think-tank-ish place, after passing the first phone screen, the recruiter lightly prepped me for a call with the hiring manager. So I get on the call that's supposed to be with the hiring manager she described... and the format is like a thesis defense in front of a room of people I can't see, taking turns asking me incisive questions, on topics of their choosing, over a speakerphone. At one point, one of the random people talking at me admonished, a bit sternly, "That's not what I asked you." I at least half-bombed it. (I did get invited to do a job-talk after, like for an academic job, so apparently someone decided I'd passed well enough or to give me another chance. But I was really peeved with the recruiter giving me worse-than-zero intel on what I walked into, and there were other demands on my time, with no job talk ready to go, so I declined.) Much later, I wondered whether that interviewer barrage was intentionally a surprise, to try to filter for people who wouldn't wilt if they were a think-tank expert suddenly put on speakerphone to room of clients on some matter.
The best tag-team interviews I recall were for an R&D unit role at a traditional financial institution, where I'd be interfacing with teams throughout the org. Some of them videoconfs (during Covid) were 2 or 3 higher-up people, representing different parts of the org. That actually worked in that case, and gave both of us parties an impression of what the other might be like in some of the kinds of interfacing between teams we'd be doing. I came away with a positive impression of smart, humble, and amiable people, who'd done big things, and would be good to work with. (I was fortunate to get that offer, and in hindsight should've taken it, at the time.)
The most recent tag-team interview was for an early startup (where the plan was I'd be a key IC, and later lead engineering/technology, as the multi-talented founder moved to focus only on CEO duties). One of the interviews was a videoconf with all three non-CEO engineers at once, and I got a favorable initial impression of them, but I had a lot more questions and felt like maybe I was being dumped on them without them having enough info about me. Later, as the founder put together an offer and bounced it off me, one of the diligence things I asked for was to meet one-on-one with at least one of the engineers from the tag-team, when we might speak more candidly than in a group, develop a little rapport, etc. Founder declined, and said something like, that wouldn't be useful. (Then other things came up on my calendar, and I'm embarrassed to say I accidentally ghosted them, so I never asked him what he meant, nor clarified why I still thought it'd be very useful to talk with any one of them one-on-one before signing on.)
It sounds like an extremely effective question;)
Why would a teacher have "bedside manner"? Sounds pretty sus...
I think a possible alternative is they’re not a native/regular speaker?
WTF is up with your personal attack there? That's uncalled for. :(
And note, unlike your behaviour, I didn't call you names. I just pointed out your wording was weird. That's not a personal attack.
I've seen the phrase used with medical professionals before.
Never with teachers or other situations though. The results and definition from the duckduckgo search (above) also only show it in use by medical professionals, not with others, and doesn't support your stated meaning.
Sounds like the phrase is used more widely in your part of the world. Good for you I guess. :)
You're making personal attacks as well?
A common theme among many English idioms is that a phrase is found in one discipline (ie. the medical discipline), in this case "bedside manner." Some deeper meaning is extrapolated, in this case it is "showing kind, friendly, and understanding behavior for people in your care." And then the phrase is re-used in other disciplines and contexts where the deeper meaning is what is intended to get across to the recipient hearing that phrase, rather than the literal interpretation (ie. the bed isn't necessarily involved at all.)
As another example: "curiosity killed the cat." There's no cat, and it's not necessary that people will die when this phrase is used. It just means "sometimes following your curiosity leads to bad consequences." Hopefully this lesson has helped you the next time you come across an idiom and wonder why they used that choice of words.
I recently read a book that would count as literary fiction (as opposed to genre fiction) for the first time in over a decade and I enjoyed it quite a lot.
Explain that to all of those suffering through the reading just to make a grade because it is part of the required list. If I read Scarlet Letter today, I would not enjoy it any more than I did then. I'm just not entertained by some love triangle in a religious uptight society. I get enough of that in my every day life, minus the love triangle. It's the same reason I don't want to watch Rosanne or King of the Hill--it's just too close to home
From what I understand, Canonical culture isn't great, either. The whole process sounds a lot like what you are talking about -- just hoops to winnow out people for the sake of winnowing.
It was one of the more laughably ridiculous interviewing processes I've seen, and thankfully the only one I've seen recently that was so egregious.
Please elaborate...
You have identified a very specific type of economic class, which has nothing to do with "race" and/or ethnicity. I also doubt Canonical is only seeking people who "summer" in Martha's Vineyard, regardless of their skin color.
The op asserted classist == racist in the US. Something I requested elaboration on, and has yet to be offered.
In the U.S. class, income, and race are correlated for various historical reasons. Obviously "correlated" means "on average", not a rigid relationship. But discriminating based on class is very likely based on correlation to produce a disparate impact based on race.
How disparate, and how bad that is and even I suppose whether it's bad, are hotly contested ideological questions.
Please elaborate...
It meets the "disparate impact" criterion, which is the legal bar for racism.
Do rich golf-playing Harvard graduates really apply for a remote 100k per-year positions at Canonical? Or what is the idea of such interview?
I miss interviews like this. We need to compile a list of companies that still do this. In fact, getting on that list could really help a company's recruiting efforts - which in turn could influence other companies to adopt this interview style.
When I first started interviewing, this was the method I used. It turns out that most people have fanfic for resumes. "Designed a system" or "worked with a system" actually means "played an insignificant part in the design of a system" or "minimally modified some existing code". Getting to a point where this is obvious can take a significant portion of a 45 minute interview, and almost always comes from digging into the nitty gritty of the details, very close to code. Then, worried, you have them try to write some basic code as time runs out, and they completely flop, with that, and whatever small thing triggered your suspicion, being the only useful evidence you can point to for why you're saying no, even though others are saying yes.
So, I flipped it. I go for real evidence first, which gives me objective, repeatable, results, then any remaining time is left to talk and go into depth. I give them an easy work related problem, requiring realistic syntax. I've had people that were fantastic with communicating their ideas, and even pseudocode, but didn't know the syntax of a function or simple for loop, in the language of their choice. Take home code/screens can't be trusted, without basically goin through it line by line. Heck, video interviews can barely be trusted these days. I've many had people obviously, and not so obviously, copy paste the top google search result. I've even had people double team an interview, with the second person listening and typing the results on a second screen.
That said, I completely agree. My dream interview, either side, is just getting nerdy for an hour and a half with someone. But, especially for less senior roles, I can see why it's not popular, especially if you're stuck with short interviews, or are not the hiring manager, where you don't have to objectively justify things. Interviews are, unfortunately, a fairly adversarial interaction.
I mean, without the project being some huge OS thing it's hard to prove contribution it in any amount of time. I don't mind some simple system design questions to sus that out (and maybe relate it to a work experience to test some validity), but instead it turns into 4 rounds of Leetcode. A waste of time and STILL not making it obvious.
If you have four people on the panel, and they're all trying to piece together something perceived as objective, then you could definitely end up with 4 rounds of leetcode. In our group, we have different people focus on different things, so this doesn't happen.
But, I think we're in agreement. I don't think a "conversation only" approach is good, because at the end of the day you have to make sure someone can actually code. A code only approach isn't good, because it severely limits the context that the person can show competence.
I would love to hear opinions on how I could interview better. I've never heard anyone claim that interviewing is easy, or solved, and I'm definitely not doing that here.
I chose the startup, and it has been the best job decision I've ever made.
Personality tests can disclose a lot of personal information. It's unclear where this data might end up or who might have access to it. I detest this practice and consider it a major red flag.
(edit: typos)
I always remember the words of my Professor: "Don't you know that everything where you have to invest a lot (I assume effort, time, money, energy) nothing ever comes out?
So if your IT job requires a letter of recommendation from the pope and even if you are able to get the letter, you are unlikely to get the job. :-)
You don't make a profit on the sell price. You make a profit on the buy price.
That's something I lot of people seem to not understand about investment, it's not about how high something can go. That's random chance. It's about how deep a discount you can find on something valuable. If you can't estimate what something might be worth, you're not investing, you're making a bet on things you don't understand.
In my experience the only thing personality tests disclose is how good the testee is at guessing which answers will be viewed most favorably
i remember doing these like 20 years ago when i got out out of the military and just needed a bartending job.
corp chain, had you take a bunch like "if I see an employee slacking off I'm 1) very offended, 2) slightly offended, 3) indifferent, 4) okay with it, or 5) very okay with it
it was obvious what answer they wanted, and empathy had nothing to do with it
Folks on a spectrum are usually that way because they’re bad at already knowing that - or unwilling/unable to say it naturally. For various reasons.
Which is why the spectrum covers ‘disorders’ (aka things that make life suck sometimes/most of the time) instead of ‘awesomenesses’.
That said, there are advantages and utility where one can find niches and ways to adapt most of the time.
Being the same/reacting the same as everyone else, tends to get you the same results as everyone else. For better or worse.
Mixing in with the herd offers a lot of protection, as long as the whole herd isn’t being stampeded off a cliff by a smarter adversary.
You’re unlikely to starve either, but you’d better be good at eating grass other people have already crapped on/next to.
It’s a pain in the ass to lead disagreeable people.
Agreeable people are often terrible leaders, as they’ll as often lead a team off a cliff as say no. Or be unable to actually drive action among a group of disagreeing people.
leading often requires coming up with your own answer based on the circumstances you’re seeing - someone can’t ‘agree’ their way out of that.
That said, someone too disagreeable will just cause friction and internal issues all the time for no value add. Disagreeing with the right/proper thing to do is just being a pain in ass for the sake of being a pain in the ass.
Usually, the organization has settled on a middle ground somewhere for each level of it’s hierarchy.
Very top down organizations usually need very agreeable ‘bottom’ layers to do the grunt work. It has predictable consequences - good and bad.
There is a reason why militaries pride themselves on ‘breaking down’/‘rebuilding’ people in basic. And why officers almost always go through a separate process.
Only if you want it to. Answer in a way that suits your purpose.
Then it becomes a question not of whether you're 'worthy' of a job with these people, but whether you really want to walk into a place that is telegraphing this much paranoia.
I don't know how to gracefully bow out of the middle of an interview and I wish I did. What I do know is how to sandbag an interview, and I'm sure there are a few people out there who have poor opinions of me that are the direct result of my poor opinion of them.
Places with calm confidence during the interview process may be their own kind of delusional, but they may also be really great places to work, with a good sense of teamwork.
"Hey, thanks for taking the time to talk to me, guys, but I don't think this is a good fit. Let's cut our losses and give each other some time back. Bye."
Get up and walk out.
Trust is earned, not given.
part of the reason you feel as if you can trust them is because you don't have to trust them _fully_. You're protected by the system, life circumstances, etc. Put another way, it's easy for me to trust that someone I don't know will pay back the $20 they just borrowed because if they don't the damage to me is minimal, it's a hell of a lot harder for me to trust that someone will pay back $20k that they borrowed.
If someone isn't showing the level of trust you would expect it's generally two things.
1. That person is themselves untrustworthy and they view the world as if everyone is like them, or
2. That person doesn't feel as safe and protected by the systems in place as you do. Sometimes due to general anxiety, sometimes due to life experiences, etc.
Even someone in category 2 may show themselves to be untrustworthy because they're going to cross you due to a perceived slight or as a means of protecting themselves so 1 & 2 can often blend together.
But make no mistake, you don't trust them either, you just know they can't truly hurt you so it's safe to assume they're trustworthy. Trust is earned over time, not given.
For a personal anecdote, there's a developer here who had major problems with me, it got heated a few times to the point we both had to walk away from the conversation. He just took everything I said in such a negative light. We would talk it out and then it would happen again. And then it came out that he had medication for anxiety, my gf of 12 years has anxiety too so I understand it better than most I suspect.
Once I had that understanding I approached him differently and we have a great relationship now. Some if it was serious heart-to-heart conversations, some of it was my behavior changes. That combination and time has earned me his trust and earned him my trust. He'll very publicly challenge me and I never take it personally, I'll publicly challenge him and he doesn't take it personally either. Sometimes he'll contact me directly and tell me something I said looked bad to others and he helps me keep a lifeline into the team as a whole (I'm an architect).
I'm not saying it's all sunshine and roses but it's definitely a good working relationship now. I say this just to say be careful of dismissing people outright. Sometimes you have to but make sure you have to before you do.
> I say this just to say be careful of dismissing people outright.
I'll give them the minimum amount of respect, but if I have to walk on eggshells just to do every day work communication, I'm going to trust them very little. I'm glad you worked it out, but most of the time you will never know their story (and you'd be cast as the bad guy if you pried to find it).
What I do is say something along the lines of "I believe that I would be a poor fit for this position and am withdrawing my application. Thank you for your time and consideration."
Just random questions to test my personality.
— LeonI had a similar experience with Cisco. The recruiter, who seemed pretty inexperienced, said she wouldn't reveal the compensation range until after the 5-hour interview. I declined the 5-hour interview day and that was the last time I even considered a job that didn't post the compensation range up front.
I never made a technical error, but I think that I did hire a couple of folks, over the years, that didn't integrate into the team that well. Not sure the personality test would have made a difference.
Sometimes, the only way that you can tell how someone will do, is start working with them.
After complete astonishment at the focus on "performance coding" also known as obey my commands now.. by tech-bros from MSFT, the immediate thought was "this is a new style of engineering management that emphasizes the authority of the interviewer over talent and skill fitting"
Not anymore.
I've been shipping (as opposed to "writing") software, for my entire adult life. That means start-to-finish, and continuing support, afterwards. In the last dozen years, I've had over 20 apps in the Apple App Store (but I deprecate them, so it's probably only five or six, now), done alone.
I can do the stuff, and I can prove it. I have a gigantic library of code, out there, along with a great deal of blog posts, teaching courses, and whatnot.
If someone wants to find out about me, they could get a really good idea, in about fifteen minutes of searching. I make it a point, to be public about my work (if possible -the app I just released is not open-source).
But it surprises me, that they are more interested in 50-line academic exercises. I've actually been told that "I probably faked" my portfolio.
I've interviewed way too many people who can't write a for loop. Fizzbuzz is supposed to be a joke not something people legitimately fail but it happens all the time.
Like, how is this sub-fizzbuzz programmer getting interviews but someone with 10+ years experience gets trapped in the HR filter?
So probably a different pool than the 10+ year people.
It has gotten to the point where people straight up lie about tech experience on resumes, so the HR filter may be worse than random (it filters for liars, not legit related experience).
Something unique goes a long way with me, even if it is something I could not care less about.
I've never understood why large companies do such long gruelling interviews. I always assumed it's because big companies get lots of low quality applicants at high volume but thats just a huge investment for both sides.
From my limited experience hiring you can spot the talented ones pretty quickly and the real test comes a few months down the road when you're working together and you see their output and ability to learn and adapt quickly to the team.
Work background and experience is usually plenty of information. Not sure what some toy tests in a remote call is going to tell you other than their ability to manage nerves and operate under public pressure.
The thing I dislike, but not surprised about, is how so many dev teams will engage in this circus. The dev management guy is definitely okaying the 5th toy test thing. Which can probably be summarized by the stereotype of which devs seek management, if they are devs at all.
Anyway, I doubt FedEx is doing interesting programming work anyway. They'll get the quality and output they deserve.
First, the website gets a ton of traffic. Granted, it’s not google scale but it’s still significant enough to be interesting.
The more interesting bits are behind the scenes. The operations research challenges are enormous, routing millions of packages across thousands of trucks and airplanes. The sorting hubs are highly automated and frankly terrifying in their scale and speed.
I worked in fraud detection and infosec, and I can’t say much detailed about that. Suffice it to say that stealing packages is a sufficiently good motivation for criminals to develop some interesting strategies.
All that to say that it’s deeply disappointing that fedex is using dumb shit like this to screen talent.
I have created a bug fix for the issue they had. I saw the developer has committed my code into their repo.
Then there was a white board session when I had to present my take on the problem they have described and outline possible ways of resolving it.
I saw few team members had lightbulb moments.
In the end the whole exercise took whole day. I didn't get the job.
I've been thinking if I should have sent them an invoice for that day...
Do they really want to be asking this? People's reading habits are highly personal. There are lots of questions you can't legally / shouldn't ask during an interview, and this is pretty borderline.
"How To Become the CEO of the Company You Work For"
I once walked into an interview and they presented me with a wunderlich test (the test they give NFL quarterbacks). It's not technically an IQ test but you can back into IQ ranges using the results.
For the math part I made sure I got the wrong answer on everything then in the in-person interview that happened immediately after I made sure to tell them I was very bad at math (my degree is in CS & Math).
I don't want to work in a place where they think these sorts of tests tell them anything useful.
Did he happen to have pointy hair?
Each one has a title like "Starter Not a Finisher", "Frequently Change My Mind", "Always Wonder Why", "Easily Offended", "Art Isn't My Thing", "Unstoppable", "Make Friends Everywhere", "Good Enough", "Not My Job", "Tend to Feel Sad", "Volunteering", "Believe the Best of People", "Hard to Start a New Task", "Loves the Social Scene", "Chats in Elevators", "Natural Leader", "Sometimes Thoughtless"
1) bright enough to answer to achieve just about any desired outcome (usually not a high bar),
2) socially/politically aware enough to realize which outcomes will be good, and which will be bad; and,
3) agreeable/compliant enough to go ahead and game the quiz to achieve a good outcome without raising a fuss.
Which is an awful combination to select for, imo
Not clever dishonest people can do ok sometimes
Clever honest people can be moderately successful, but can always be out-maneuvered by the clever dishonest people, thereby limiting how high they can climb,
Clever dishonest people rule the world.
Once it’s just a game, and deception is part of it… why, you’re not even behaving unethically!
Your goal is to move up the ladder and move quick. Get friendly with boss, the hold it over them. then get to the next step. maybe you need to pretend to fit in, maybe lie about qualifications. That's part of the board. Get powerful people to like you, get powerful tools and resources, and keep moving up.
Many stop around middle management since you start to need more money to push further, but it's a similar game as you go farther up, you just end up fighting against more players that may or may not be cleverer than yourself (and likely much more dishonest).
> So true.... Become dishonest
Win the second, will loose the first
[1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
99% honest people rule the world because of the sneaky 1% of cases where they cheat and make it count.
I'd count that under "clever but dishonest". I do agree most people aren't clever, but enough are.
You'd rather clever enough but defiant employees?
Or not clever and some other combo?
Being honest is realizing your situation and making tradeoffs to prioritize what's important. Pretending that your ability to call out weaknesses in the interview process makes you the best candidate is dishonest. If you feel that's more important you are forgetting why you are part of this process in the first place. If the outcome is they get a better interview process because of your feedback but you don't get the role, you failed in your original purpose. You need to be honest with yourself why you even applied in the first place.
Answering in a way that is not consistent with what you truly feel or believe is dishonest. I don't think it's an amoral dishonesty, as you say, you've been forced to play this dumb game. There are many cases where being untruthful is not morally wrong.
> Being honest is realizing your situation and making tradeoffs to prioritize what's important.
I wouldn't say that's 'being honest', it's being pragmatic.
Thank you for this reply, I couldn't have said it better. It's important that people realize
1) Representing yourself falsely is dishonest
2) Dishonesty isn't an especially bad thing in many cases. In fact it's socially expected in many cases, such as in interviews.
That doesn't make it less dishonest. It means that a lot of our society is an engine that basically runs on dishonesty.
I mean maybe they are, but they’re gonna be very unhappy with the most-honest answer from 95+% of candidates for the vast majority of employers and jobs.
So of course, you’re supposed to be… quite a bit less honest. And I guess maybe there’s some value in filtering out people who don’t get that? Or who refuse to “play ball” on principle? IDK the reasons, I didn’t make the rules.
I was raised with and internalized honesty as very important, and adjusting to an adult world (mostly—almost entirely, actually—the business world) in which that needed to be judiciously tempered and certain kinds of dishonesty were expected and failure to play along punished, was quite a damn shock. I adjusted eventually but I’ve never really been happy about it.
There is not a right answer, but there are some wrong ones that indicate a disconnect that do come up sometimes.
"Is it ever ok to steal?" If you answer anything but "NEVER, and thieves should be publicly drawn and quartered", you won't get the job, even if you have no particular foibles with e.g. inmates in death camps stealing from their captors, etc.
Either you're too stupid to recognize the difficulty in expressing complete and coherent moral directives in 10 words or less, or you're sufficiently coerced by your economic circumstances to bend some of your own ethics.
Obviously, what they want is for you to infer "is it ever ok to steal from your employer?", but again, this is complicated, because every single company that I've taken one of these tests for had robust anti-union rhetoric as part of their onboarding "training, and "be completely ready to work when you clock in", "your whole checklist must be complete before leaving" and "you must clock in and out only at the designated time" in their stated expectations for all workers. In other words, making any attempt to receive all the wages you are entitled to under the law is considered "theft" by the company, and they'll frequently have such rhetoric in the same training packet as the anti-union rhetoric.
These personality tests are perverse-incentive city, and clearly nobody requiring them has a high enough opinion of the people expected to take them to recognize that.
If I can't see my mistakes and failures, I would say I have zero ability to be honest; maybe I'm not 'lying' as such; I'm so far gone I don't even know I'm lying
Hmm, but maybe they have that baked into the test!? If you slightly fail one of the bad metrics and none of the others they rate you super honest and hire you immediately! Science says we should definitely try to figure this out.
I feel like that's accurate. After all, I did describe it as "fairly" dishonest, not "very" or "extremely" dishonest.
Lying on personality tests is definitely an average, socially expected amount of dishonesty.
The tests are usually so obvious, too. Like three awful traits and one good one. Coincidentally(or not?) I was rejected for that job for scoring too high overall - they said there's no way I'd stick around long, and they were absolutely right.
This question itself might be a good interview question.
But there are other fun ways "professionalism" has been used to oppress people - from the way Women are expected to dress, to Black hair being treated as unacceptable.
All of those things have been called "unprofessional" as a way to oppress minorities.
I'm not arguing that anyone should be able to do anything in the workplace, and that is a bad-faith reading of what I said.
People are assholes. And assholes need to be dealt with. But the term "professional" is consistently abused as a tool to oppress people.
I am arguing that the general (American) expectations of "professionalism" are deeply influenced by hateful people, and we should question those standards.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/outrage-male-bank-dire...
You chose to respond with something that just didn't address the issues I raised.
For you now to claim that I'm going "off topic" when you just ignored the original prompt, is absurd.
"Does social filtering constitute dishonesty or professionalism?"
Your highest comment is the fifth in depth, and everyone seemed to be confused about what you were getting at, because we were all talking about selecting images in a personality test during an interview, not talking about people's personal identity.
Like 20 years ago, a company was taken to the cleaners because they used a test used by psychologists to evaluate mental health as a personality test in hiring. Now, people who make/use these tests are careful to only use them in ways that healthcare professionals don't. A side effect of that is that any test that would be useful for reliably measuring a candidate's personality/mental fitness would also be illegal. So a lot of these tests are bunk to begin with.
He said something along the lines of "I know some employees are going to try to steal from the register, but why would they admit that in an interview?
OP put unacceptable but the answer was 25%
To demonstrate their honesty. ;)
They never asked me to interview and I wonder if my "wrong" answers to the ambiguous questions disqualified me.
The manager sounds like they'd be happy to steal your wages, as long as it was "only a small amount". You dodged a bullet there.
I also think that going from that question to them stealing your wages can only be fairly analogized if it's a similarly insignificant amount. Is it wage theft if they underpay me by $0.02? Yes. Does it really matter? Not to me.
Personally, for me the amount is irrelevant; action and intent is what matters, so in some contexts $0.02 would absolutely matter to me.
The premise of the manager's hypothetical question was to determine whether someone is dishonest, which is flawed.
Rigid, extreme fundamentalists with over-simplified principles are not good employees.
>Is it wage theft if they underpay me by $0.02? Yes. Does it really matter? Not to me.
well: being pedantic, 2 cents an hour done constantly adds up to $40 a year. If we're talking minimum wage, every dollar counts.
That's part of the issue, a lot of wage theft happens to those who need it the most. But they also tend to be the most exploitable.
No one cares about a persons 'sense of karmic justice' or things people make up in their heads to be clever, they are answering questions on a test.
If their IQ can't adapt to a simple question, how could they flip a burger? Their 'sense of karmic justice' or being clever might get in the way, and since they have no idea of reality they won't know what the job requires.
The pride people take in getting IQ tests wrong is quite perplexing.
Off Topic since answering basic questions is too hard for HN, but the "tripwire questions" are also/only? to open the employee to the idea of taking money, the next question might be taking $1 from the till.
Have you "thought about suicide" is to desensitize you to the real questions. If you think it's a dumb question then they have fooled you.
A well-developed code of personal ethics might not matter in the context of burger-flipping, but jobs requiring a high IQ usually also require someone to have principles.
How would a high IQ candidate answer this question?
Such a great movie.
With the questions all being like that with different wording, "I find myself getting frustrated in high stress situations.", "I enjoy high stress situations because they are exciting.", "Being around a lot of people all the time can be annoying", etc.
Over and over and over again for about fifteen minutes.
A lot of the time, it’s an unfamiliarity with “test taking as being a test of determining theory of mind of the test-giver”.
Rather than answering however they think the test-giver would want the answers to look like, they approach the test with alternative less useful approaches, ones like “holistic reframed hypotheticals” where they’re thinking of the situation in a modified hypothetical with a real world context introduced and with information that might dramatically change one’s answer, such as
“assume you’ve learned a coworker has taken some money out of the cash-drawer, how much money would be your threshold to snitch on them to management versus E.G. just asking them to put the money back?”, for which many people’s answer will not be “even one dollar”.
It is a trained skill to know this is a flawed approach and that broadly, “most tests don’t want you to make outside assumptions or reframe situations, and you should default to using strict and as-literal-as-possible interpretations of questions”.
Apparently I'm a "mentor" at FedEx. It resonates. :)
My current client had me sit one of these after 2 years on the job. That one labeled me "Debater". I argued with them out of principle. I think that if their HR people used it to screen me before I started, I would not have gotten the gig at all. :D
I'd expect even in the case of this quiz if you told people to affect certain personas you'd find the results statistically-significantly shifted, even if the people involved couldn't tell you any rational reason why they changed their answers based on the persona they affected.
“Gee, I wonder if ‘C. Let your friend have the goods for free, since they’re really struggling financially’ is the answer this retail store is looking for?”
...until I saw my boss's THREE HUNDRED page manual on how to interpret the results of these tests. There is apparently some entire industry behind these "tools". I've learned to limit my criticism of what is very clearly, to me, a load of weak-signal hogwash. They may as well throw chicken bones or read tea leaves from where I sit, but then again, I sit from a place of certainly smaller net worth than whoever is peddling this stuff, so round and round we go? :)
I don't really see the value in these tests but, apart from the weird avatars, this one seems to be just Myers-Briggs with different words (for me, "thinker" instead of "INTP").
With titles, some people will be dim or troubled enough to give the wrong answer on obvious ones, like "Starter Not a Finisher".
The right answer on other questions are trickier. Like maybe the company wants a handler of packages to be willing to toss the packages around "Good Enough", and some manager thought some people are a natural at that, and asked for a test to tell them. (Like when a non-technical executive was suggesting that I should give coding exams to senior software engineer candidates, and the strongest point in the argument was "This will tell us whether they do unit tests!")
Could titles be tricky, like if "Loves the Social Scene" is paired with image of someone partying hard, so the company might think they'll have hangover absenteeism, OUI, or other risks?
Or risk of insubordination, or disruption to the hierarchy? A self-image of "Natural Leader" in a worker-bee role could be seen as problematic by a simple-minded company.
Maybe Fedex is gathering data on which combinations of answers predict a unionizing troublemaker. Or, in the scenario that a shop floor employee is injured, which employees are going to be murmuring about it with others, speaking with investigator, etc.
If a company wants to be especially evil about it, some of these questions might be good for weeding out candidates with depression. Or for arguing pre-existing condition, if an employee later claims that working conditions caused mental anguish.
Then there's the meta of filtering out people who are alienated by this test, or who are not captive. Especially with the odd images in this test, I think many candidates with self-respect and other options will simply walk away. It's not like Leetcode hazings, where they've been conditioned since school that this is just the ritual you do to get that very-well-paying FAANG job. This is some different thing, to which you're submitting for a chance to work at FedEx.
What other possibilities?
Some of that could be useful to a company, if not very ethically. Also, maybe this was sold to the company as more than it is, based on flawed or fabricated psychological research.
I wonder if that is a) actually true browser behaviour and not something the site itself is doing (or something I've managed to make up)
b) if a is true, the reason it hid the kinda-header-looking text representation of the images from OP
Unfortunately I'm at a loss for the keywords to search to confirm this behaviour, I'm only able to find unrelated scroll/header results
The OP of the Reddit thread didn't see the titles, and was instructed to "look at the images and go with your gut".
For the record, I don't have blue skin and hair, so I'd be inclined to answer "not me" for all of them.
Two Drinks - Frequently Change My Mind
Laptop Screen - "Hard to Start a New Task"
Painting - Easily Offended
Couch Happy/Sad - "Tend to Feel Sad"
Sculpture Yawn - Art Isnt My Thing
Four Stars - "Good Enough"
Puzzle - Starter Not a Finisher
Flower - Unstoppable
Clock - "Always Wonder Why"
Gift - "Make Friends Everywhere"
Superhero - Natural Leader
Talking during Party - Chats in Elevators
Tweezers - "attention to detail" type of thing
Couch Laundry Basket - "Not My Job"
Hands in the Air - "Loves the Social Scene"
Pizza Glutton - Sometimes Thoughtless
Hike/Cook/Skydive - ... probably "adventurous" or fearless or like that
Fruit vs Donut - "Volunteering"
Close park - "Believe the Best of People
Management and HR claims to want those, until they actually get one
on the other hand, there could be a reverse personality test for the company
"Sociopath", "Perfectionist", "All about me", "Unrealistic Expectations", "Rude to the waiter", "Excessive Bureaucracy", "Easily Offends"...
When I was first getting into tech, I interviewed at FedEx. The first interview went really well, but I totally bombed the second interview--some remote coding challenge.
After my poor performance, I didn't really pursue the position further because I knew I hadn't done well. You win some, you lose some.
8 months later I received an email with an offer letter.
This has happened to me at other companies too, and it boggles my mind. In sending out offers so late, you are literally filtering for people who either:
1. Weren't able to get a different job in 8 months
2. Will job hop in under 8 months.
Granted one of the two times this happened to me, the offer was for a $30k one year contract, so they were kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel anyways there.
For a senior SWE role. Even the body shop recruiter was agast.
Besides, jokes on them, childhood is repressed from trauma.
Just start making shit up cause there's no fucking way you're going to be there.
It wasn't, it was some corporate type doing massive overreach into areas where they had no right to even ask.
I would be tempted to look for a wedding ring, and answer with "your mother/wife one time, you should ask her about it" accordingly.
I probably wouldn't take the job anyway.
But it might affect health insurance claims, and I'm guessing cheaper underwriting is the reason HR went along with it.
Impregnating somebody doesn't mean I have a kid, or even that somebody else. Even being pregnant doesn't result in children 100% of the time.
Perhaps a history of fertility problems would jack up your insurance plan.
After the first task, we were asked "what do you think about the task?". I raised my hand: "it's humiliating", and left the room.
I didn't had any other offer at that time, and got a call from them a day later, telling me they'd like to talk with me. Replied that I don't think it'd be a good match.
I later learned that role was for the infamous "binary options", a gray market betting website.
There's really only one set of personality traits (The Big 5) that has a strong scientific backing. Of those only being high in conscientiousness is a signal for being a good employee. Employers screen for that all the time via proxy, such as having a college degree. They don't need to test for it directly. There are however many not-big-5 popular personality tests that are sold to companies. I don't want to call out any specific one, but you should be highly skeptical of their validity.
At best these tests are management by covering your ass. At worst these tests are actively filtering against populations that it is illegal to filter for. For example, the IQ test was once given as part of the immigration process for the United States. Considering that the tests were administered in English they were mostly used as legal justification to turn away non-English speakers.
Just sayin)
It wasn't until the last sentence of your 2nd paragraph where you make any negative remark about them. Up until that point, your comment reads like it is justifying the tests because they are legal. At least that's how I read it.
As for other states, the ADA is likely the biggest threat to these practices and it’s not hard to imagine that a lawsuit will eventually find aspects of many of the current practices to already be illegal. But you’re right that for the “average” person there are generally no protections.
> the IQ test was once given as part of the immigration process for the United States.
This is a myth. There were some attempts at IQ testing in the 1920s but they failed due to language barriers. What was adopted was a trivial wooden puzzle to screen for severe cognitive impairment. That said, the purpose of this test was eugenicist, aligning with the politics of its day.
[1] - https://www.traitify.com/ [2] - https://www.traitify.com/science
1. what is the value of these coins
2. is it ok to steal
If you can't count money or think it is ok to steal then you cannot work in retail.
I argued at the end that I had 100%, since 295 × 3 (or something) could not possibly be the answer given on the answer sheet, as the last digit wasn't 5.
They eventually found a calculator and found their answer sheet was wrong. Supposedly, no-one had noticed before, though now I wonder if it's possible it was a test of personality.
Probably not, as many people probably would find that question difficult on a test with questions like "Put Smith, Jones and Patel in alphabetical order".
Employees can steal other things, but the opportunity to steal money has been significantly reduced.
Hiring process often is a reflection of work culture. Shitty process will remove candidates that won't fit the culture.
I'm trying to phrase this neutrally but IMO this motive is just as bad.
There's that meme of "no one wants to work anymore" and meanwhile these entry level labor jobs act like they want to test for government clearance just to flip a burger or deliver mail.
I recall losing one of my most gifted colleagues once over such a test. they brought in an outside company specializing in "HR solutions" and for some reason the results demanded that there can't be another individual with the same indicator as the CEO. so they sacked him and another guy who also was a poor social fit to the rest.
the absolute damage these people do.
I'm sure the signal they get is pretty good, but I'm also sure they filter outany candidates that don't want to put up with BS like this.
I was so preoccupied in designing the test that I did not stop to think whether we should. In hindsight, it wasn't a good idea because of how open-ended it was: some candidates, we later learned, spent at least 20 hours on it.
Take the fourth image, of the person (or two people) with two emotions on the couch. How are you supposed to identify if that image as a whole is "me" or not? I would be baffled at how to respond to that. Some of the images I can kind of understand (watching TV while you have laundry to fold? LAZY!), but how am I supposed to respond to "generic image of puzzle"?
For real though, why does the cigarette look so...comforting?
You are instructed as to who you are and what you look like at the beginning of the test, and there is a title disambiguating (mostly) the scenario at the top of every image.
It seems like similar considerations might apply to a number of team based jobs, even if the team isn't locked in a pressurized tube miles above the earth.
[1] https://youarenotsosmart.com/2024/02/05/yanss-280-the-scienc...
(2) To settle on the most beneficial answer to any question, repeat to yourself:
a) I loved my father and my mother, but my father a little bit more
b) I like this pretty well the way they are
c) I never worry much about anything
d) I don't care for books or music much
e) I love my wife and children
f) I don't let them get in the way of company work
from William H. Whyte Jr.'s The Organization Man, Appendix: How To Cheat On Personality Tests
… I am pretty sure I’d be fine on that particular example, but there are surely others about as “easy” that I’d flub because I’ve not used that knowledge in 20+ years.
"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?"
Got a message back telling me the tests had been "imposed" by some VP in the US and to disregard it because everyone hated them.
In the end the company kept proving me right to be skeptical because while maybe the hiring manager was trying to change thing, he was surrounded by a dystopian accretion disk of the output of worthless management self-help books and 1970's-style management doctrine.
Which made me really appreciate how lucky I am to have consistently been in a position to be picky.
?
Ryan Fitzpatrick went to Harvard and was said to have gotten a perfect socre of 50. It turns out he might have only got 48 which is still really high. He bounced around 9 teams and threw tons of interceptions. He would go from amazing to horrible "Fitz-Magic" to "Fitz-Tragic"
In contrast Lamar Jackson is said to have scored a 6 which is laughably bad. He just won his second Most Valuable Player award last week.
I took a personality test at one company. I hated the interview process so I told them I would not move forward with future interview rounds. If a company thinks processes like this are a good idea, just imagine all the other bad processes and policy you'd have to endure after landing the job.
The tragedy is that the test giver's job is communication and handing complex and subtle interactions, and they're already failing at it.
https://www.traitify.com/animated-assessments
>The most science backed way to measure personality. The Big 5 assessment measures a person’s Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism in 60 questions. Normally taking nearly 10 minutes, our visual-based assessment takes less than 2 minutes.
>Improve and standardize interviews across your organization. Gain a deep understanding of your candidate’s personality and strengths before the scheduled interview. Leverage the candidate’s Big 5 score to shape questions specific to their results to make more informed hiring decisions.
>Meet candidates where they are — on their mobile devices. Decrease candidate drop-off and drive conversions with an intuitive, visual-based assessment. By selecting ‘me’ or ‘not me’, candidates quickly navigate through the assessment, and receive a copy of their results.
>Research backed, rigorously tested. Over a dozen studies were conducted with 5,000+ participants over 24 month. Convergent Validity and Test Retest Reliability studies conducted and showed significant improvement over Stock Photo assessment.
>The characters used throughout the assessment are constructed to be race, age, and gender neutral. More than 71% of test participants saw Ash, the main character throughout, as their own race.
>Customize assessment images with brand-specific color and texture changes as well as logo and product inclusion. Paradox will conduct a brief A/B test with candidates to ensure customizations have no impact on expected responses.
There was one test with 18 statements and I was asked to sort them from like to dislike or good to bad. It was obvious that the statements were paired up somehow like "Nuclear war is a good thing" and "world wide peace is a good thing" (yes, some of the statements were that extreme).
I answered reasonable as possible, with the extreme statements closer to 1 or 18, and the pairings equally distant from the middle. The mild statements also mirroring each other toward the middle.
There was another part to that round, but it was more along the lines of that 4 quadrant personality test (can't remember the name for it) -- nothing crazy, or at least it was more mainstream.
I did not make it to the next round. There was no way in hell I was going to work for them, but I was still disappointed to miss the chance to look over their brand of craziness a little.
Note that my random resume is easily resistant to all claims of discrimination - you didn't know anything about any candidate until you opened the random envelope, so you clearly didn't discriminate against anyone. When you say your system is better, is it enough better as to be worth the potential discrimination lawsuit if you don't interview or hire a minority? (some interview systems have scores that if you can prove are objective, but many of you are proposing something that doesn't seem to be)
I especially find the general intelligence tests confusing as my roles over the past decade have all been senior level - I have a hard time imagining someone could have my resume without demonstrating the same problem solving skills that were tested.
It makes me wonder what the motive for both types of tests are, and if they are quite different than what us non-HR people would think.
If I encountered this while interviewing; I would politely state that we can stop the interview process here and would gladly tell them why if they were to inquire about my reasoning.
To me the neglect here is on the developers of the test for only half supporting mobile, and on FedEx for using such terribly designed test.
This is setting aside whether or not someone thinks personality tests are good or valid tests in the first place.
A lot of the time stupid hiring requirements are due to the company having government (or other) contracts, and those contracts stipulating certain hiring requirements. For example, drug testing is basically mandatory if the company has government contracts.
When done right though, this can be quite helpful. As a hiring manager I had very good experience with a test that tried to identify behavioural patterns.
At that company, we used it to have a discussion with the candidates, not as a hiring criterion —- moderated by an experienced HR colleague who was trained in how to interpret the results.
Gave much more insightful discussions than the usual “describe a conflict” type of questions.
meanwhile IBM asked for a coding test for a data scientist role, while they got dedicated IT/data engineering roles in the same team.
This isn't even in the same realm as the job.
Talk about a blast from the past.
Where there were statistically significant correlations with job performance, they were so weak that they have no practical use.
i'm convinced 95% of the people giving dev tests (leetcode) wouldn't be able to solve it themselves
Personality tests in my opinion are what happens when companies want ever more certainty that they are hiring the right person.
I don’t think they’re helpful, and throw a spanner in the works of the hiring process.
What can HR do except add stuff like this to the hiring process? They're not allowed to actually fix teams with problems. Or "culture." Or bad execs.
Normally an interview is supposed to enable you to find out more about how the company operates, but honestly that alone was pretty telling.
Job interviews must go both ways. When I'm the applicant, I'm interviewing the company just as much as the company is interviewing me. If the communication is so one-way that I can't do that, then I have no basis on which I could decide to accept any offer, so going further with the process is just a waste of everyone's time.
Ahh, here's a great example of the mess it was: https://stackoverflow.com/a/40315400/137695
I contacted HR saying that this is not a test that could measure me reliablty considering I have no practice in very fast financial calculations (can do slowly, but they emphasized the importance of pace with accuracy) and that I am forced to give random answers in the personality part, depending on what is my mood at the moment (basicaly mad about these idiotic tests). They told I must complete it and this is 'the base of allocating responsibilities and determining advancements in the company'.
I chose to withdraw my application instead (despite being without job for some months and the position looked promising). I do not want to work somewhere where they make this kind of across the board uniform and abstract tests the base of my evaluation (even if they just claim they do, since it is very difficult to imagine they could reliably do so).
) trying to apply within the first hour the job was posted is usually too late. I find openings claiming, eg. "posted 21 minutes ago, 28 applicants" and within a few hours the number of applicants shoots up to 300 or more.
) The first email I recieve by HR is usually promising, like "we liked your profile, etc can we schedule a short intro call?". After my response it's crickets.
Is it just me or is the tech/IT jobmarket on a very bad downswing?
Personality test are completely bogus.
Marston's was a master con and even expressed it in later life.
The Appendix, "How to Cheat on Personality Tests", should also be required reading for anyone entering the career hunt. This is one of its opening paragraphs to see its usefulness:
>By and large, however, your safety lies in getting a score between the 40th and 60th percentiles, which is to say, you should try to answer as if you were like everyone else is supposed to be. This is not always too easy to figure out, of course, and this is one of the reasons why I will go into some detail in the following paragraphs on the principal types of questions. When in doubt, however, there are two general rules you can follow: (1) When asked about the world, give the most conventional, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian answer possible. (2) To settle on the most beneficial answer to any question, repeat to yourself: a) I loved my father and my mother, but my father a little more. b) I like things pretty well the way they are. c) I never worry much about anything. d) I don't care for books or music much. e) I love my wife and children. f) I don't let them get in the way of company work.
It could be updated a bit for the culture of 70 years later, but the general pattern is clear and easy to follow. Looking at the book and interview again, it's striking just how simultaneously insightful and down-to-earth Whyte was; the universal appeal comes from his investigation being both concretely practical "to the nth" and humanistically aspirational "to the nth". He didn't allow his important work to become either a watered-down compromise or an off-kilter harangue, and was too exacting to be unduly impressed either by the "death-rattle" sloganeering of his time's protestors ("Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate" to "The Ascent of Stan","Love is all you need", etc) or by the benevolent assurances of the time's testers ("The Pipe Line", "The Fight Against Genius", "Society as Hero"). His prose is also excellent. They just don't make social scientists like they used to, and the field is worse off for it. Physics envy and/or the paper mill may have distracted from an old societal good that could be a huge boon today.
This only started in the past 10 years or so, and I don't think I've ever actually seen it in real life. I don't live in SF though -- I assumed it was something Google did and all the SF types slavishly copied.
Yeah, the Society of Women Engineers is a pretty big deal. I'm not too familiar with their org, so I dunno what SWET would be.
People who regularly have to work with a mixture of these will abbreviate them. You'll see them everywhere now.
[1] firewall