About a year and half ago I was applying for a software engineering internship at Goldman Sachs and they made me take a Pymetrics test. One of the tasks was to press the spacebar as many times as possible in 30 seconds. I didn't do the task and withdrew my application.
This. People think stupid tests and ineffective recruitment stand for incompetence. They may actually signify a well-tuned process to identify compliant, mediocre individuals that don't produce results, stand out, nor are self-motivated, but rather aim to please the boss, without question, and to "fit in".
As an engineer, you want to increase your value contribution to the org and the org should see you the same way. This usually means look for software product companies with at least some meritocracy. It should be about software all the way down.
In any other scenario, it's about something else, usually pleasing the boss, you are a servant, and good luck with that.
>They may actually signify a well-tuned process to identify compliant, mediocre individuals that don't produce results, stand out, nor are self-motivated, but rather aim to please the boss, without question, and to "fit in".
You might be giving them too much credit. I suspect that may have been the original intent of the question, but was mindlessly aped after appearing in an article by countless hiring managers and recruiters.
It doesn't even have to be conscious. Implementing a meaningless test still provides a valid test as far as candidate compliance and desire to fit in are concerned.
Merit-driven applicant: This test is not backed by science, does not measure anything related to performance relevant to the job and is arbitrary. Oh, and did you check how do the developers of the test address the fundamental problem of lack of replicability and reproducibility in psychology?
Hiring (if they can actually articulate and self-reflect, a rare occurrence): So you think you're smarter than us?
Subservient applicant: I gave this test 110%, thank you for this opportunity! I look forward to learn more about how I can contribute to the continued success of [org name]!
Speaking to a mediocre manager with a very stable career, tt was a revelation for me to hear them say "smart people get frustrated quickly. I've learned through the years to select those that are agreeable". Value and value creation were not on that managers radar.
>"smart people get frustrated quickly. I've learned through the years to select those that are agreeable"
That might make sense if you're hiring people to dig holes in the ground but seems absurd to use as a filter for any sort of skilled professional position.
The idea here is that the hiring manager is likely to care about things other than raw productivity of their direct reports, such as how easy they are to manage.
Perhaps you aspired to find a job that rewarded on merit. They perhaps aimed to form an orderly line of obedient sycophants. The test worked, to the benefit of both parties.
A finger-tapping test is often used to normalize other kinds of response time, essentially to control for uninteresting between-person differences in neuro-muscular performance. Was there some kind of cognitive control task too, e.g. where they ask you to refrain from responding to certain stimuli? Typically in something like that you'd have a hard and an easy condition, and the difference in average response times between those conditions is a proxy for "cognitive control" or impulsivity. If an employer were interested in that they'd want to remove the effect of finger speed.
I don't think companies should be administering psychometric tests. But it doesn't make the task you refused to do meaningless.
All data is meaningless if interpreted or used incorrectly. Is there any evidence supporting the use of psychometric evaluations in the context of making hiring decisions? Just intuitively, I would think the predictive power would be low.
There was an arcade game many years ago where that was part of the game play, and this “test” could probably be manipulated in the same way: “
Because the game responded to repeatedly pressing the "run" buttons at high frequency, players of the arcade version resorted to various tricks such as rapidly swiping a coin or ping-pong ball over the buttons, or using a metal ruler which was repeated struck such that it would vibrate and press the buttons.”
Pushing candidates who actually question the requests being made to select themselves out of the running sounds like the ideal recruitment software for a consulting firm.
I enjoyed California Games more than the already great Summer/Winter games. For a little boy far, far away from California, somehow they managed to pack a whole lot of California Feelin' into 320x200 pixels... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSp8XHpEKzw&t=0m33s
