Request for neurotypical insight

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And then people within the HR department take advantage of this bureaucratic waste, and use it to their own advantage to inflate their petty egos by enforcing pointless tests on others in order to make themselves feel powerful. And by questioning the worth of said tests, the HR people are offended that you aren't doing what they have asked, even if what they ask would require you to lie and provide false information that will be of no practical value. Because they value blind and unthinking obedience to arbitrary company policies over rational thought.

Is that it?

Please tell me that I am wrong because I hope that isn't the case.
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Hi Tracker -

I don't think so.

I think that different positions require different personality types, and this is one way to see if you will be able to manage the job at hand. For instance, if the position is for a software engineer who will work alone 99% of the time, they would be looking for a no to the teamwork question.

I am in sales and marketing, in some of the many sales training g courses I have taken, we take these tests and then see how the answers put you in a category. The intent of these tests at the pre-hire point, is to see if you fall into an acceptable category.

Unfortunately, the "I don't want to take your test" category is rarely a "fit" for an organization which values these tests.

I can say, based on the many tests I have seen, they're not all worthless. They can be helpful to determine if you will fit. If a job needs you to just follow direction your answer would be different than if a job requires I dependent thought, same goes for team player and a host of different issues that don't fit into qualification buckets.

As I have gotten older, I have come to believe that every job I didn't get was because I wouldn't have fit. I need to be able to be myself, quirks and all. Think about it, if by being yourself you were disqualified this early, had you lied, you would have spent your whole time in the job, trying to second guess yourself. You may need a job that encourages free thought and "push back". That's ok. This wasn't the right job for you.

You must remember...they are paying you to be trained to do what THEY need done...to their specifications. To be able to work as part of a team...to be flexible enough to forgive small bumps in the road to get the larger mission completed. Should people not have it in them to be anything but a free spirit (don't get me wrong...many a free spirit have greatly improved society through their non-conformity)...that is fine...however...they are usually self employed...or in a niche...where their skills are rare and in great need.

I think you have to remember that most of us posting here have enough Aspie in us to think negatively of these tests and the people who want to use them. But it would be incorrect to extend that line of thought to those who make the decision to use them. While they are likely to agree the testing is not a perfect tool, they still think it is reasonably useful enough to function as a first screen, and some believe in it's value quite strongly. You could even argue that it helps Aspies, because it takes the interpersonal social cues away from the process of reading a candidate's personality. And personality IS a valid job characteristic, because people do work in environments with other people, and variations in task and team tone are a natural part of work.

My husband has been at his job for several years and is just now being asked to take one of these things. The firm is, today, ten times the size it was when he started, and they are really struggling to bring all these entrepreneurs into what has to become a bureaucracy at some level. It's not a pretty process, but I'm not about to say the new HR people there are wrong for trying just because my husband hates it. He also hates the chaos they have right now that HR is tasked with trying to sort out. Life is full of imperfect processes that actually are well intentioned, one has to remember that when confronting concepts we dislike.

If I had been in your shoes I think I would have simply said, "yuk, why would I want to work in a place like this?". I agree with kailuamom that every job I haven't gotten is one I really would not have wanted. My hesitation gets written all over my face in the interview so of course they turn me down. Jobs are done best by people who are happy with all the factors that surround them, company tone, HR process, bosses personality, and all.

Chalk it up to a learning experience and move on. You have a lot to offer the right employer and, while finding that right employer is going to be tricky, I know that firm must exist.

i think the tests also show other things to them as well, like your intelligence level and how neat you are. they most likely don't want to hire someone who can't spell or who goes on and on. it shows them how flexible you are and that you are willing to do something you feel is silly because it needs to be done. the tests are also saved and put away in your file if you are hired and can be used against you if you make up something you can't do, just like a resumee. i don't see the point in arguing about doing the test. it's the first step to getting a job.

You learn fast.

Welcome to the real world.

You got it my friend. Welcome to my nightmare which is reality.

Tracker - I read your post, but found the threads awfully long, so please excuse me if I'm repeating information.

These tests offer overgeneralized psychological profiles. They are designed to screen out certain types of people who might become a problem to the company later on, especially in situations where safety is concerned - but they are not designed to address people on the spectrum. IMO, as a person with a known disability (at least as far as the ADA is concerned) you should not have to take this test.

I would suggest contacting an employment lawyer, or at least your local office for disability rights, and find out how to invoke your right to reasonable accommodation under the ADA; you might well be able to reopen the discussion with the company that was so interested if you have the right strategy. I am guessing you will have to be open about your status as a person on the spectrum - which I would NOT do without outside support and a specific plan of action. I have a feeling that most employers of engineers do not consider autism to be a liability; they're more concerned about lying, stealing, etc. This type of test is going to present the same difficulty to almost anyone on the spectrum.

Frankly, I think the whole idea of refusing employment to someone based on the possibility that they might be mentally ill to be incredibly offensive, but many employers are actually required to screen employees in this way.

I'll repeat. Ascribing the majority point of view from those on this board to people in HR is a mistake. They most definitely do not see their tests as meaningless or themselves as involved in a power play. Their motives are not that negative; people who go into HR are often the types who like and care about people of all sorts. To them, this is all just how they are supposed to do their jobs, the only way a non-engineer has to figure out how to hire an engineer or keep a company of technical people interacting smoothly.

Shoot, I have a friend who is in HR. I'd consider asking for her input but she'd probably be really hurt by the comments here.

I don't think it's productive to enter the work world with such a heavy dose of cynicism. I think it's fine to realize that it will always feel that way to you, but you should buffer it by acknowledging that your sense of reality may not BE reality when viewed from a different lens.

DW, I want to believe you but the test just doesn't make any sense, and I"m NT. Why are they asking about what I think about most people if they are trying to find my personality type? I could be one who thinks most people think like me, or most people do not think like me, and the reviewer does not know the difference.

Tracker, I'm sorry it's so hard to find a job. I'll be praying the right one comes quickly. You know, it is just possible that a perfect candidate that they had been persuing just happened to change his mind and take the job as they began to pursue you. As long as something like this is possible, it makes no sense to get yourself too upset about the testing problem. And it is a problem.

In general, I'm with DW - there is some validity to these tests, or they wouldn't use them, and I don't think a fatalist attitude towards them helps anyone get a job. I found a link to an HR conference that describes their use in one of the required situations I wrote about earlier, police and fire departments: http://bit.ly/j9DCMB

Here's a site that specializes in these tests (and they have a self-test, which you might try to take a couple times for practice) http://corporate.psychtests.com/solutions/hr_testing

If you click on "science and validity" in the sidebar, you'll get a good explanation of why employers use these tests. This kind of testing is extremely general, so if you as an employer use this test, you will be more likely to get the kinds of employees you want over the entire pool of employees - but with an individual person, the results may be wildly inaccurate. An HR department's job is maintaining the quality of the entire employee pool, losing a few good candidates to a test is OK as long as their pool of new employees improves markedly. Think about consumer marketing research and how it's used to drive advertising - the principle is the same.

Like I said before, these tests are not set up to consider the needs of people on the spectrum, who will test oddly or come up against the issues Tracker faced, but who are probably perfectly capable of doing the job. They would be one set of potentially good-employeee outliers the test would screen out because it is a general screener. This is a disability rights issue, and I think anyone on the spectrum should find out specifically what to do if confronted with one of these tests. (This is one of those situations where having a diagnosis is helpful as an adult.)
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Let me put it another way: a blind person might be perfectly capable of doing one of these jobs, but would be unable to take these screeners without accommodation. The employer would have to make allowances for them under the ADA. I don't see the spectrum as any different.

I think this angle is very much worth looking into, and a productive way to spend the frustration energy I see from so many in this thread. Turn that energy into positive change, create a way for employers to recognize the test is not valid for a defined group of people.

I'll repeat that I'm far from fond of these things myself, and they are part of the package as to why I don't work for large firms. But it's a "me" thing, in my view, not a "them" thing.

For many of you, I think it does become a disability issue (sorry for the d word, but you have to be willing to use it in this one situation in order to invoke the applicable laws.) In which case, change should be sought.

What you say does not contradict what I said. You are talking about motivations. What I'm agreeing with is talking about actions. There is a difference.

I agree that the HR people probably think they are doing the right thing, that they are doing the best they can, that their motives are not that negative. I also agree with those that say the results are pretty pointless - not completely pointless, as I've pointed out in Tracker's other thread, but pretty close.

The underlying problem, by the way, is that companies need too wide a variety of different kinds of people - the best people for engineering departments are different from the best people for marketing departments, for example - and it's simply impossible for a single HR group to understand all the different needs well enough to do a good job at screening applicants for the entire company. However, they're still required to screen the applicants, so the result is that, since they can't do a good job at it, they do a bad job at it.

There is a way to overcome this: outsource HR functions to companies specializing in placement of specific types of expertise. This is pretty standard in the software industry where I am: if you need a software engineer, you don't use your own HR department; you use a headhunter.

The downside is that these placement agencies are expensive, so large companies choose the false economy of bringing even specialized functions in house.