Getting Testy

Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.

  Career Development  

Remember the good old days when you dealt with human beings throughout the entire recruitment process? You didn't realize how good they were until recruiters went high-tech and started using online questionnaires, real-time chat rooms or a combination of phone and online interviews.

The only time you get to clap eyes on a humanoid is when a company is seriously interested in you and wants to see you in the flesh to determine whether you are worth hiring. There's something to be said for face-to-face contact, if for no other reason but to humanize the hiring process. It's one thing knowing that a company thinks you are "human capital," it's another being treated as such.

Luddites would have a field day with pre-employment assessment tools for all the obvious reasons. Yet, from a purely subjective and emotional standpoint, would you say that many technological innovations may not be all that beneficial? One of them could be pre-employment tests because they create universal testing standards for different jobs. Kind of Orwellian, no?

Just a thought. I'll say no more. Read on and come to your own conclusions.

Maybe I should stop thinking about the millions of job searchers who have to endure insensitive and tricky pre-employment tests and think about the higher good--what the tests are achieving. Uppermost, they're making …

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