As cases against psych-screening go, this article by Cathy O’Neil in Bloomberg View seems pretty weak sauce, but I understand that change requires some subset of change agents to be working within the system.
“Maybe all employers really want is a tool to help them reduce the huge pool of applications they receive for any given position.” Maybe. “Whether or not personality tests actually work, they fulfill that basic requirement.” But so would randomized selection of a small number of names from a huge hat full of applications, and would cost astronomically less. An explanation that requires less suspension of disbelief than personality tests as winnowing tool is personality tests as weapon of intimidation. Certainly everyone who has taken one (basically 100% of people below “professional”-level career status) has noticed that the typical multiple choice exam question has one answer that has unmistakable pro-business (i.e. politically conservative) implications and n-1 answers that are patently absurd. They could also tell you about infantilizing surveys that communicate that the employer is of the opinion that the applicant pool is a population that’s oblivious to the importance of coming to work on time, being sober and not committing embezzlement, and therefore each applicant needs to be quizzed on those subjects multiple times just to drive home the point. Employers personality-screen prospective employees because they can. I doubt employers care whether the submissiveness score surveys have positive or negative ROI. Employers (and their toadies in HR) enjoy the power they have over workers. They get their kicks watching people squirm, watching the tears well up in the face of someone trying to decide whether the opportunity to be considered for maybe being hired is worth grovelling in submission. The love of power is as intrinsic to the nature of employers as the love of stinging frogs is to the nature of scorpions. The psych tests are but one speed bump along a long gauntlet of indignities that is every sub-yuppie-status application process.
For the next few months I will use the Bloomberg article as a textbook example of why non-radical critique is an oxymoron. Good luck with hoping appeals to employer self-interest (let alone their better nature) will lead to a reduction in these human rights abuses.
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