Why Not Use Astrology?

 

Look at this picture of geese and tell me what you feel.  On second thought, let's not waste the time of both of us; this exercise, while perhaps fun, will not tell us much, despite what psychologists might claim otherwise.  The hucksters who sell personality assessments to HR morons are just doing the social science version of astrology.  Hell, doing real astrology probably would have as much of a success rate in terms of actually predicting who's a good hire or not ("Hey, you're a Libra!  That's great!  We need one to balance out the team.  We have too many Leos at the moment.").  

Unfortunately, expect more of this nonsense, especially as the recession worsens and more people are seeking jobs.  1 job I applied to has 1,545 applicants.

How the fuck do you sort through 1,545 applicants?  Well, you use bullshit like personality assessments and whatnot, but you might as well just pick someone randomly.  If he or she looks good on paper, then call her or him for an interview.  Otherwise, your organization is going to waste a lot of time, and money if you're shelling out for the garbage assessments on the market.  These things even waste the time of applicants.  An unemployed applicant like myself might not have anything better to do (we have plenty of spare time, even if we would rather not spend it filling out extra bullshit), but it fucks over the company.  Companies usually prefer to hire people who are already employed since they think the unemployed are fuckups (alcoholics, malcontents, freethinkers, whatever other dumb thing they don't like because they're greedy, corporate assholes who want bootlickers), but the employed jobseeker has even less time and tolerance for bullshit assessments.

Unfortunately, expect more of it.  A recent Wall Street Journal article (probably paywalled because American newspapers never figured out how to sell advertising right online) notes how crazy employers are getting in their hiring process:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-its-harder-than-ever-to-land-white-collar-job-978c7bc7 (9 interviews?  If a company wasted that much of my time, I'd send them a bill even if I got hired by them.  Much props to the lady with blue hair in the article who's bitching about not finding a job.  Fuck them, lady!  If they can't deal with you waving your freak flag, then you probably don't want to work there anyway.  Of course, I have a kid to feed, so I won't be showing up for any interviews wearing a Slayer t-shirt or something, but imagine the awesome world we would have if Corporate America would take one of the many sticks up its ass and we could show up as our preferred selves and get hired).  I can relate; I have four interviews this week, and one's a third and one's a second.  And I'm still applying because all these companies seem to like to fuck around for months.  If the work needs to be done, then one wonders why they're leaving all this proverbial potential customer money on the table and want to fuck around creating databases of personality types of 1,545 people.  Maybe A.I. is running things already . . .

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