Halloween

The interview
“We would like to interview you ...“ . Joyful words for the job-seeker, but my letter carried
a warning: ´You will be required to take a psychometric test.´ More than 70 per cent of
companies now use these ´objective´ tests for potential employees. They are meant to give a
true picture of candidates that removes the unfairness that may result from the personal
opinions ofinterviewers.
On the day of my interview for the job of assistant to a company Public Relations
consultant, my nerves were made worse by finding that the office was close to a hospital with
particularly unhappy associations. Luckily, I had deliberately got there early so that I was able
to calm myself down before a secretary rushed me upstairs for my test.
Keeping to a strict time limit, I had toassess groups of adjectives, marking which most and
which least matched my ideas of myself at work. Choosing one quality out of four when all
seemed appropriate was difficult, more difficult than the interview that followed – though I
felt I hadn´t impressed in that either.
Confirmation of this arrived a week later. My rejection letter was accompanied by a copy
of the Private and ConfidentialPersonal Profile Analysis – two and a half sides of paper,
based on that 10-minute test.
The Profile’s rude inaccuracy and its judgemental tone were harder to accept than the fact
that I had been turned down for the job. Apparently, I have ´no eye for detail´; I am also ´a
forceful individual ... who leads rather than directs´ and am ´motivated by financial reward to
pay for good living´.The words ´impatient´, ´restless´ and ´strong-willed´ also came up.
´A portrait of an ambitious, power-mad person´, said a psychologist friend of 15 years to
whom I showed the Profile. She said it didn´t apply to me at all. I know myself to be a careful,
industrious checker. I am shy but cheerful and a bit over-anxious to be thought creative. I am
not a power-crazed person.
What would I do, Iworried, if I had to take another test for another job, and this
unattractive personality emerged again?
I sent the company a polite disagreement with the Profile, purely for the record.
Meanwhile, I made a few enquiries.
Had my emotional state of mind made the results untypical of me? I had been disturbed to
find the office so close to a hospital that held unhappy memories for me.
´State ofmind will have an impact´, said Shane Pressey, an occupational psychologist, ´but
on the whole its effect will be relatively minor. It appears that the test was an inadequate tool
for the amount of information they were trying to get out of it, and it is not surprising that
there were inaccuracies.´
Too late for that particular job, I arranged to sit another psychometric test. This one tookmuch longer and was more thorough; the profile was also more detailed and accurate – it
showed my eye for detail and the fact that I have a problem meeting deadlines.
But a peculiar result is hard to challenge without seeming unable to take criticism. It is
simply not acceptable to refuse to take a test, in case the job candidate seems uncooperative
and eccentric. The interview, with its yes/nopersonal feeling, is here to stay, but so is
objective testing.
If my experience is anything to go by, the job candidate should be suspicious of 10-minute
tests that result in generalised – and possibly wildly inaccurate judgements. I accept that it
would be costly to arrange for face-to-face discussions of test results with all job candidates,
but a telephone call would be preferable tosimply receiving a written ´profile´ through the
post and having no opportunity to discuss its contents.

READING COMPREHENSION
QUESTIONS
1. Before the writer took the test, she:
A felt that she was unlikely to do it very well.
B made sure that she was mentally prepared for it.
C believed that such tests were fair to candidates.
D did some research into tests of that kind.

2. Of the...