No Right Answers

In life, it’s said that there are no wrong answers – they desperately need to extend that rule to job applications.

Those of us old enough may remember that looking for jobs once actually involved speaking to people. Be it by phone or in person, you could make a strong first impression even with no experience. A master job applicant could land a job with something as simple as a winning smile, a strong handshake or just sleeping with someone in upper management.

Of course, the same was true of complete suck-ups and people with no moral compass. That’s my point, though. At least there was a system.

Today, face time has been replaced with computerized personality tests meant to weed out bad candidates. If you haven’t been exposed to one yet, it’s essentially having a robot rummage through your brain for personal shortcomings. And it’s exactly as pleasant as it sounds.

I’m all for having less competition. But these tests full of (seemingly) harmless questions are humiliating. Five years ago, the worst a job could do was say, “You’re not right for the job.” The same is still true, though it may add, “And you’re also a bad person.”

Don’t believe me? I recently took a segment on coping with stress. I scored “problem drinker.”

Even without commentary on your flaws, job ranking can be harsh. Not being right for a position is harmless – you were no better or worse than anyone who didn’t get the job. Being “green” (hirable) or “red” (not hirable/felon) means potentially being ranked among history’s greatest monsters.

A rating of “red” means you physically can’t be hired. In that sense, you are officially tied or worse than the following people – the Hamburglar, ranking members of the Taliban and that guy from “Silence of the Lambs” who wore other people’s skin.

In fact, since the tests rank those who complete them and fail or never complete them on even ground, you’re even worse. In terms of workers, your answers put you in the same bracket as infants, sock puppets or even a mother duck leading a row of baby ducks across a keyboard.

And frankly, if this breaks down into a popularity contest, infants and baby ducks are way cuter than you.

This isn’t to say I’ve had no success on these tests. But I do know a handful of arbitrary questions have kept a lot of people from finding work. It has also, on at least one occasion, labeled me to the people at Movie Gallery as “an angry loner with a streak of dangerous risk-taking.”

Considering most of my riskiest behaviors involve taking or not taking Lactaid with dairy, I’m just not convinced the system works…