No -- I Won't Take Three Pre-Employment Tests Before Speaking With A Live Person

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2018/04/05/no-i-wont-take-three-tests-before-speaking-with-a-live-person/#6d9eb1657cf6

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/m/cfce9e54-fc96-3bae-9cf2-268e9d9481a6/no-i-won%27t-take-three.html

School teachers in Maryland typically go through at least two types of interviews -- one with human resources at the target district, and then with school principals. At job fairs you might interview with a principal first, and then human resources.

I had experience interviewing with two school districts. What I told a young coworker -- "The principals want to hire you. It's HR that will put up the roadblocks."

Ridiculous!

This is crazy. What a lot of hoops to jump through. It's not necessary. It is a clue of what working for this organization would be like every day. Run!

A few years ago, the college where I got my undergraduate degree asked me to be on their academic advisory board. Since graduating there, I had gone on and got a Master's degree and had gained over ten years of experience in the industry they had trained me for, and was also in management in that field (a true success story for them). About a year later, they asked me if I might want to teach a few classes in the evenings. I thought it may be fun and they sent me links to a bunch of online registration forms and competency tests that had to all be completed before I would be elegible to be hired.

I am pretty sure I aced the math and Engineering tests. The personality tests were very difficult for me. They seemed to be geared at finding out how much shit you're willing to take from an employer, even in scenarios of clear unfairness by them. I answered honestly. They offered me ten dollars an hour to teach evening classes. The offer was verbal. I laughed and said "come on, you need to have your new graduates make more than that from the day they first graduate. I have a Master's degree and fifteen years of experience in a well known publicly traded company. Check my transcripts on file here. I graduated with a 3.85 GPA". They said that was all they could get approved and asked me to re-take the personality tests (hinting, without saying it, that maybe I answer some questions differently). So I did re-take the personality tests, and my answers weren't any different. They stuck with the ten dollars per hour. So I said "look, I thought it might be fun to teach and mentor others who are where I once was in a field that I love, for a few evenings per week. It's not the amount of money that I am having a hard time with. I can't accept ten dollars per hour. It's the number that I can't accept. How about I volunteer? I'll teach for free a few nights per week". Oh no they said, we would have to pay you something. I politely bowed out and resigned from their advisory board. A few months later, the ITT Technical Institute went out of business nation-wide after the government suddenly refused to back any new student loans there. They were no longer teaching the kids. Since I had graduated, the whole thing had degraded in to a scam.

When hiring for a new programmer spot, I read through the mass of resumes first, and pick out ones that seem a good fit.

Then I do phone interviews, typically 5-10 mins. I pick out the best of those.

Then I have them come in, and the first thing I do is give them a test.

It's an on-line programming test. I have a laptop set up with the browser open to that page, ask them to do the test, then walk out, giving them 15 minutes to do it.

But, see, I'm sneaky...the test isn't just a programming test, it's a "how resourceful are you" test and an honesty test. What I want to see is, if they don't know the answer, if they'll look it up (they have a web browser open right in front of them). So I expect them to get 100% right, and then to tell me which ones they looked up because they didn't know/couldn't remember. I want people who know how to find answers if they don't know them.

The results are always somewhat amusing. I get people who score around 85% (which is pretty good, it's a hard test), and then tell me they didn't think to look up answers they didn't know (those folks usually don't get hired). I get people who scored 100%, but deny they looked up any answers (when a quick look at the web history shows they did). Those dishonest people don't ever get hired.

The ones I hire get 100% or close to it, and when I come in, they tell me (without me asking) that they looked up some of the answers on the web (which is often accompanied by "I hope that's OK"), and which ones they did/didn't know.

Interestingly, those folks almost always say, when I tell them looking up answers was part of the "test," that they felt like solving the problem was the top priority. While the ones who looked them up and lied about it, when told, almost always say, "Well, I thought that was cheating!" Yes, and you just cheated and lied about it, did you think I was going to hire you? :)

"Excuse me? I have a life. Why would anyone assume that I have three hours to take tests in the next 24 hours?"

They assume you have 3 hours or will make time because they assume you want the job. Too busy to prove your qualified? Really?

I used to work for Hewlett-Packard. I filled out the application. I got a call from a screener to set up a time for a phone test. The phone test covered math, material science, manufacturing practices, measurement analysis, physics, and so much more. It was open book and took me a little over an hour. Then I went to the company to interview. I had a panel interview on personality type stuff. Then a panel interview on technical stuff. Then a written test on lots of different engineering problems. Then another written test with diagram problems to solve. Then a hands on test using a crappy drawing and a mechanical gismo....had to use the drawing to take apart the gismo and get the core part out, then put it back together and then describe how the whole thing went together because the drawing was meant to mislead. It took all day.

Is that too much? I don't think so. I got the job too.

I'm going to guess that you had some choice of time for the phone test. Then the company flew you in (on their dime) to interview you. That shows some degree of consideration for you that was lacking in the original link.

I once took a personality test for a job as a store clerk(!) For whatever reason, I didn't get hired. Later, while in grad school and afterward, I worked for five years for another store as a clerk, no personality test required. I would work for that store again and they would be glad to have me.

At least we can all be confident, those of us who are exmo, that at some point, we passed our pre-existence tests!

If you are unwilling to invest three hours of your time to apply for the job, why would I have any reason to believe you really want the job? Seems like a good way to weed out non-serious and lazy applicants from the get go.

Well, most job seekers aren't just applying for one job. Some may be applying for many a day. I've been through the job seeking process recently. Every single company wants you to take an online assessment. First you upload your resume. Then you have to edit or fill out an application anyway. And then you have to take a test. Do that a few times a day and it does get annoyingly time consuming, and when you're looking for employment time is money. Nothing lazy about it.

I have mixed emotions about this. I've seen a lot of "resume inflation" this past last decade. It is frustrating.

They sometimes oversell themselves as being able to do a lot more than their capabilities show once hired. There are people with college degrees who honestly seem like they shouldn't have passed high school.

I'm surprised at how many people with glowing resumes somehow can't spontaneously write three coherent sentences about anything, let alone asking for basic grammar. (I'm not asking for perfection. I'm not an English major either.)

I'm especially wary of "biology" degrees from Bible colleges. Believe it or not, there are a lot of them in applicants I see. Every once in a while we get lucky so you have to judge the person and sometimes take a risk. Some do excel. If there were a test, the process might be easier.

Plus, I'm not impressed that your university is national champ in a sport. I'd rather you learned to read.

transcription for as a "contractor" after working at the local hospital made a bunch of changes after I had worked for them 19 years. I decided to quit and just work for my other employer. My other employer lost a bunch of work 8 months later and I called this other place. They had let many administrative people go that I had worked with and I had new people back East to deal with.

I had 8 interviews or tests to do before they hired me. It is ridiculous. But it is standard with that company now. I did get the job, but the changes they had made made it impossible to make much money, so I started looking elsewhere.

My current 2 bosses both hired me without even filling out an application as I've worked for both of them before. They are very small transcription companies.

BUT I have applied for a few other transcription jobs in the past few years when work was slow. Yes, they had me do several tests before they talked to me. Then both jobs were a joke. I worked for 6 weeks for one job and 1 week for another job.

After the experiences I've had, if they start off with all this testing, etc., then I wouldn't consider working for them.

My job has gone from a great job to do to a job that most of the employers are trying to make a lot of money on your skills and pay you next to nothing. I feel lucky to have the 2 jobs I have right now as they still pay really well. I'm just hoping they last until I'm at least 62, which is 15 months away.