Pre-Employment Psych Tests

[Huntsman]

I am going for a second interview for an entry-level job with a firm that offers me some unique advantages. Today, a colleague told me that they will give an aptitude test and a 300- question psych test. I am actually insulted at the idea, and feel that it is unprofessional in the extreme -- not only of being tested as if I was in the third form, but of having to answer questions that may be personal in nature.

Is this common in your field/experience? How would you feel about having to submit yourself to such a device?

I'm pretty conflicted about it. Were it not that geographically this firm would allow me to really be a help to my family, I'd go for the interview, and if they rolled out such an abomination I'd thank them for their time and walk.

Regards,
Huntsman

 

[javyn]

I think it's insulting as well. A criminal background check should be sufficient in determining whether you are a psychopath or not. The only other reason I could think of for administering a psych test is if it is a sales job, to see if you are an aggressive go-getter or not. At least the test is during the interview in person though. What is worse is being told to apply for the job online and then having one of those idiotic personality tests emailed to you to try and screen you out. Nevermind your experience, education, skillset, &c....you can't work here because we didn't like what you saw in the inkblot!

 

[Tokyo Slim]

I have had several jobs that ask interview questions like
"if you were an animal, what animal would you be" and "Pick a color. Describe the way this color makes you feel" and "You're in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you... You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. 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?"

I've gotten all of those jobs BTW.

 

[j]

Let me tell you about my mother. BOOM!

 

[shellshock]

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

I have had several jobs that ask interview questions like
"if you were an animal, what animal would you be" and "Pick a color. Describe the way this color makes you feel" and "You're in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you... You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. 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?"

I've gotten all of those jobs BTW.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M NOT HELPING?

 

[montecristo#4]

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

I have had several jobs that ask interview questions like
"if you were an animal, what animal would you be" and "Pick a color. Describe the way this color makes you feel" and "You're in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you... You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. 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?"

I've gotten all of those jobs BTW.

Waiting for the turtle to cook in the sun so I can eat it.

 

[benchan]

Huntsman, I know more firms are starting to require thier applicants to take psych test and the result starts carrying a bit more weight in the hiring decision. So yours is not an isolated case. Usually the test is graded by an independent company which specializes in this fied instead of by the HR dept or personnels in the company you are applying for.

 

[j]

Originally Posted by shellshock

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M NOT HELPING?
Is this testing whether I'm a replicant, or a lesbian, Mr Deckard?

 

[Huntsman]

You stretching a point, or have you really had a question like that, Tokyo? Because that would really...agitate me (as it is this topic is near to getting me to start cursing here). I have some respect for psychology, but this seems to arbitrary and pathetic. By the way, why aren't you helping? benchan, can't say whether I prefer some contractor doing the analysis or having it just languish in the files of some manufacturing firm that's not likely to ever do anything with them.

 

[Arethusa]

Would it agitate you enough to kill the guy administering the test? Why is that?

 

[Tokyo Slim]

You stretching a point, or have you really had a question like that, Tokyo?

I've had the first two questions, the third one is from Bladerunner.

 

[Kent Wang]

What about companies that google your name? I've had a friend who went into an interview for a technical writing position and they asked him to elaborate on a particular political post he had made on his blog. Sure, what one posts on the internet is public but googling someone up and then asking about them about it for a job interview seems excessively nosy.

 

[johnapril]

My 3-year-old underwent a psych eval as a part of the application process for his school. As you might guess, it is difficult to assess a child that young. Worse, the person evaluating our son was not very qualified to do so. She is a psychologist and fancies herself as bilingual, but when asked to give an example of how she spoke to our son, she used incorrect French, which he would not have understood. Likewise, if you have an untrained person administering a psych evaluation, reliability of that assessment goes out the window.

But that isn't your beef, is it? I'd be hesitant to undergo such an evaluation as well.

 

[johnapril]

Sane Chinese Put in Asylum, Doctors Find

By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: March 17, 2006

BEIJING, March 16 "” Dutch psychiatrists have determined that a prominent Chinese dissident who spent 13 years in a police-run psychiatric institution in Beijing did not have mental problems that would justify his incarceration, two human rights groups said Thursday.

The psychiatrists spent two days testing the dissident, Wang Wanxing, in Germany five months after China released him and sent him abroad. They said in a statement that their examination "did not reveal any form of mental disorder."

The report could add fuel to charges that the Chinese police use a network of psychiatric prisons to silence political dissidents, often without trial or right of appeal.

Mr. Wang, now 56, was confined to the psychiatric center after he was detained in 1992 for unfurling a banner that criticized the Communist Party.

The authorities determined that he had "delusions of grandeur, litigation mania and conspicuously enhanced pathological will," which Western human rights groups say are diagnoses that officials have used to lock up troublesome dissidents who have not broken any laws.

After his release in 2005, Mr. Wang described widespread abuses in the mental asylum, known as the Beijing Ankang. He said he had lived in cells with psychotically disturbed inmates convicted of murder and was forced to swallow drugs to blunt his will. He also said the staff members had used electrified acupuncture needles to punish patients while other inmates were made to watch.

The two Dutch doctors, B. C. M. Raes, a professor of forensic psychiatry at the Free University of Amsterdam, and B. B. van der Meer, also a forensic psychiatrist, examined Mr. Wang in January. Their findings were released Thursday by the Global Initiative of Psychiatry and Human Rights Watch, two human rights groups that have been critical of China's use of psychiatric prisons.

"There was no reason that Mr. Wang had to be locked up in a special forensic psychiatric hospital or to be admitted to a psychiatric facility," Dr. Raes and Dr. van der Meer said in a statement. "He was not suffering from any mental disorder that could justify his admission."

Their diagnosis contrasts sharply with one made by doctors at the Beijing Ankang, who said when Mr. Wang was released last August that he had not been cured. "His systematic delusions have shown no conspicuous improvement since he was first admitted to the hospital," the Beijing examiners said, adding that Mr. Wang should be kept under "strict guardianship" in Germany.

Human Rights Watch says it has documented 3,000 cases of psychiatric punishment of political dissidents since the early 1980's. The group contends that the use of penal mental asylums to confine dissidents has increased in recent years as the police have sought ways to punish followers of banned religious sects, political dissidents and persistent petitioners without channeling them through the court system.

Robin Munro, an expert on the Chinese psychiatric system with Human Rights Watch, said Mr. Wang's examination by the Dutch psychiatrists was the first opportunity for Western specialists to directly test a diagnosis by doctors in one of China's psychiatric prisons. He said the Chinese doctors "clearly got a failing mark."

"The Chinese diagnosis of Mr. Wang was based on disreputable theories inherited from the Soviet Union that claim that certain types of dissident thinking and behavior can be attributed to severe mental pathology," Mr. Munro said. "This is completely at variance with international standards today."

 

[Stu]

Originally Posted by Huntsman

Is this common in your field/experience? How would you feel about having to submit yourself to such a device?


There is a newspaper in San Juan that uses a psychologist whose job is to totally **** with you in the interview process. The guy probes to find your weak spot and then once he finds it, proceeds to destroy you. Hence the owner of the paper has a psychological dossier on each and every employee in the company so he knows how to blackmail, manipulate etc., the employee. Pretty freaking diabolical.