Sunday, June 18, 2006

Why would you test a 16-year-old job applicant?

Returning ApplicantMy kids are in the process of applying for summer jobs. As part of this process, they have learned that
  1. an increasing number of companies are taking applications online (which is good), and
  2. most of them provide exactly one type of job application for everyone to use, no matter what they apply for (which is very, very bad).
Consider pages 15, 24, and 29 of a 37-PAGE online psychiatric evaluation offered by those who apply to Borders, even those who are only 16. You must answer the following with either strongly disagree, disagree, agree, or strongly agree:
  • There are some people you really can't stand
  • You do not fake being polite
  • You show it when you are in a bad mood
  • When things go wrong, it's hard to control your temper
  • It bothers you when you have to obey a lot of rules
  • You worry about saying the wrong things to people
  • You like to take frequent breaks when working on something difficult
  • You have plenty of self-confidence
  • You are not interested in your friends' problems
  • You do not like to meet new people
  • You are careful not to offend people
  • You think a lot about things that have bothered you
  • You could not deal with difficult people all day
  • You don't care if you offend people
  • You pay close attention to people's feelings
I understand the necessity of asking the same question different ways on tests like these: it's one way to remove the bias introduced by our natural tendency to lie to ourselves when we self-report. The problem is that most 16-year-olds don't KNOW the answers to at least half of these questions, because they have never been TESTED in such environments. So why would you make someone so young spend an hour to fill out a test like this, when they will not give you meaningful answers, and they won't earn more than minimum wage even if they are hired? This is just another business practice that leaves me scratching my head. And it's why entrepreneurs depend -- or SHOULD depend -- on face-to-face contact to answer such questions.

Oh, yeah: my son filled out a questionnaire from a company working through deploy.com, and here's what we found out:
  • If he wants to work at either of two sites, he must apply twice, filling out the 30-page questionnaire from scratch.
  • He can either already be IN college, in which case he must have completed a full year, or he can be planning not to GO to college. There is no way to fill in "I start in the fall and I don't know my schedule yet."
  • The survey doesn't work with FireFox. He fills out 20 of the 30 pages, saves the results for later, and the button that takes him back to where he left off (pictured above) is non-functional in FireFox. We had to reinstall MSIE -- the hated source of adware and pop-ups -- to get the survey to do what it is supposed to.
Another reason or three that face-to-face is better.

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posted by Ron @ 8:22 PM

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