Behavioral Interviews for New Hires? 396
banetbi asks: "I am a PHP developer and FreeBSD administrator, and have been looking for a new job for a couple of months. Finally, I got a call back from a company, but they want me to take an on-line questionnaire before I come in for an interview. After doing some research I found the company that makes the test and checked out their website. It looks like this is some sort of personality test (they call it an artificially intelligent behavioral analysis). What does my personality have to do with my ability to perform in a job? Have any of you had to take a personality test to get a job? Should I do it, or just keep looking?"
fact of interviewing life these days. (Score:5, Interesting)
Behavioral and Personality Type tests are becoming almost standard for larger companies (read, ones that can afford them). Whether or not they add value is debatable, and whether you should "move on" obviously will be a personal choice. If it's a job you really want, you probably should consider taking it.
I don't consider these tests harmless, especially since many companies allow too much weight to the results. I wonder how many industry leaders today would get "passing" results.
All that said, if you're interested in what they're looking for and some info on why, and what you might do to improve your results visit this site [uwec.edu].
For a perspective from the "hiring" side, you might want to look at this article [about.com].
Also, here's an article [job-employment-guide.com] that describes what behavioral interviews/tests are. It claims (I won't agree or disagree):
It's mostly voodoo garbage (no offense to voodoo practicers) but is a fact of life in the interviewing world.
I took one for my current job (Score:3, Interesting)
My advice? Go ahead and take the test. Techies aren't hired for their personality, so if you've got a proven track record a test shouldn't affect your chances one way or the other. OTOH, if this is your first or second job, then a test might carry more weight (since they've got little else to go on).
Re:Your personality is tested *regardless*... (Score:4, Interesting)
I was given one during some management training I attended and found it to be not only somewhat interesting but also informative about the other people I was with. I was pretty suprised to see how closely the results matched the predictions. We were given the test and then given the descriptions of the 4 core areas of this test. Then before we got our scores we took turns trying to predict what each other's scores would be. It struck me as a *fairly* accurate measure - nothing to get too bent out of shape about but closer than a 45 minute interview would be.
Another potential positive about taking a test like this is that it could indicate potential to your employers that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to see. If you're working in a cube all day and your bosses boss never sees you then they might not know that you're "a born problem-solver" or "a natural leader" since they never interact with you. Keep in mind that there's room for lots of different personality styles in a business, so there's nothing wrong with being "on record" as having a particular style. Successful people have lots of different personality traits - it's not like there's only one way to do things...
TMM's remark about interviews being personality tests is also 100% correct in my opinion.
Spoof it (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Out-doublethink them, answer in a way that seems polite, co-operative and not too self impressed.
3) NEVER NEVER use the "Stronlgy agree" or "Strongly disagree" answers, unlessit's an obvious trap
I have a degree in psych, was married to a shrink and have done graduate work in this area. It's all about as accurate as a horoscope, just anothe way to one-up you before they slip on the harness.
Re:Your personality is tested *regardless*... (Score:1, Interesting)
What if you're both? I'm someone who mostly keeps to himself during the day. I don't go around shooting the shit with co-workers, I don't attend going away parties, etc... However, whenever someone comes to me with a problem/question, I'm always helpful and nice. I even do the Dale Carnegie routine of asking them about themselves during downtime (waiting for a file to d/l or for a computer to reboot). I never have a problem putting down my work to help someone either.
In an in-person interview (or phone interview), while I'm probably going to be nervous, my communication skills and my genial personality will still show through but I'm worried how a test would rank me. Would I show up as an anti-social person? Would I wind up looking like Milton from Office Space on paper even though I'm actually nothing like that?
Re:"Behavioural" questions at an interview (Score:3, Interesting)
The Behavioral questions tell me more about the person than how they compiled a module into Apache. Who cares? I need someone I can -work- with. I can teach the technical things, but I'm not Pavlov.
In all seriousness, I look for two things in candidates: 1) Will you fit with my team; and 2) Did you lie on your resume? If it's on your resume, expect questions about it. You should've seen the face on the guy who claimed to have built a Beowulf cluster (seriously.) When I started asking questions about interconnects and latency, he clammed up and admitted to having installed some Linux flavor or another (which one doesn't matter), but not really -doing- anything.
Just don't lie to me. It's OK to tell me you don't know something, but don't claim to be an expert in it on your resume.
I had one (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"Behavioural" questions at an interview (Score:4, Interesting)
I deliberately didn't give many examples of what I ask - and I tend to ask a lot of questions in an hour's interview - because as you say, there are those who prepare answers. Part of the course I went on was to help me come up with a set of my own questions that won't be typical outside my company, another part was how to deal with obviously-prepared candidates...
I personally think a candidate gets a fairly gruelling day, and if (s)he succeeds, there is the (harder) 2nd-round to look forward to, with fewer but far more in-depth interviews. All the interviewers compare notes at the end of the day for every candidate (on 1st and 2nd round interviews), and I think it would be hard for anyone to maintain a faux personality over that entire day, with different people asking similar but differently-focussed questions.
Simon.
Re:Illegal? Hardly... (Score:3, Interesting)
illegal are those that reveal "protected class" status (e.g. race, sex, religion, handicap etc.)
raised the question in my mind, since my disability is directly linked to my label of having Asperger's that a psychiatrist slapped on me. Now while this is a plus (I'm a computer programmer, and when the question of personality tests come up, I go ahead and take them, and if based on MBTI, then go ahead and explain how a strong INFP makes for a good detail-oriented programmer, and one who can debug programs written by the much more common INTJ and ENTJ types, thus fitting well into a team of those types), I have to wonder if I could prove discrimination against a mental illness based on the prevalance of such tests.
HR / Psych usually don't understand Tech workers (Score:4, Interesting)
I've dealt with a range of different company sizes, from the old-style huge company I've worked with to the little techie shops my friends and customers have often worked for. The folks in the HR department may have psych degrees, but they generally don't understand how tech people think, work, relate to their work, or relate to each other. They _sometimes_ have a clue about how sales people think and work, but HR people who understand techies are really rare golden folks, and you usually only run into them if they're at consulting companies brought in to help your company out of a jam.
I don't think that an HR person needs to be able to read a Java-graphics-widget-set manual to understand how a developer and tech writer talk to each other through the process, but they do need to be able to read things like "The Existential Pleasures of Engineering" or at least read science fiction or have some familiarity with Monty Python or other fundamental works of our culture, as opposed to "The Inner Game of Golf" or "How To Feel Really Really Self-Motivated about Success" if they're doing HR for sales people.
HR people are usually good at dealing with employment bureaucracy - hiring rules, legal requirements, medical insurance, payroll, administering salaries in line with market trends, etc. Sometimes they're good at employee counseling, and you'll find good psych types there handling things like alcoholism or family-related stress. But how often have you seen the HR folks spending time with your department looking at the personal dynamics between people, coaching managers in how to manage the folks working for them? I'd be happy if the HR people could make sure that the resumes they forward to us are for people who understand what all the buzzwords they use mean; I guess they're mainly adding value by filtering out responses that _didn't_ include the right buzzwords, and by understanding the clues that mean "got fired from last job due to ongoing criminal activity" or checking whether they actually attended the colleges they say they did. But if they don't know how developers talk to each other, or what kinds of stories consultants tell with their clients, or what depth of math background is needed for the kinds of problems we solve, then they're seldom likely to add value by sending the ESFJs to one department and the INTPs to another, much less interpreting MMPIs in ways that are any use at all.
Nor do I usually see them forwarding that kind of information on to managers, who might like to know that one developer is an INTP who needs to be encouraged to see the value of shipping code before all possible features have been added, while another is an ISTJ who needs regular short meetings to discuss whether the tools have sufficient generality to really capture the potential user spaces before starting to write the user interfaces for it, or is an ENFP who needs to be given some critical concepts about the functionality and the capability limits so that the user interface actually supports the right features and also needs a supply of chocolate bars to bribe other developers into communicating with the documentation people.
Back in the early 80s, when Affirmative Action was becoming a social issue, we had a lot of HR types spend a lot of time with us to deal with attitudes about cultural diversity (ok, and to deal with lawsuits), and there was a lot of good psych work in some of that as well as generally useful tools for dealing with situations, not only about cultural relationships but also about getting my ISTJ football-player boss to understand different work styles. On the other hand, when the HR department comes around with courses about "Change Is Good!" and buttons saying "We're Navigating Change!", that's really a clue to get your resume in shape for the upcoming layoffs. (I did wear the button
Re:"Behavioural" questions at an interview (Score:2, Interesting)
As a result, I hate Dallas, I hate the state of Texas and all the snobs that live there. It's unreasonable I know, to put the blame on them, but too bad, I do it because I can. Man what an awful week.
About the interviews, I remember the technical interview was in some kind of meeting room, just me and 4 HP geniuses or whatever. The gave me problems and had me code them on the whiteboard. I had never done anything like that before, I couldn't help but be nervous in that situation. So that didn't go well because I had a hard time thinking like I do for homeworks, I would go blank. I also remember one of the many interviews, a guy asked me to put in order of importance to me, 4 things I value in a job, location, money, people, and the type of work. I can't remember for sure, but I think I said type of work, people, money, location. The order should probably switch money and location right? I'm pretty sure I blundered when talking about money. I said it wasn't last because I actually did need it. I said this in the naive college student sense. I wish I would have elaborated now. I meant that I would need money to have an apartment (since it was far from home) and food to eat. I was a poor college student, living off the scratch from summer jobs and some from parents, come on. I know he took it the wrong way and didn't get where I was coming from. One of them seemed to go well. We talked about Itanium and how it was RISC but sorta not
What would have happened if it went differently and I did get the internship there, I wonder. I remember they laid off a lot of people soon after that and I imagine the interns were the first to go, but at least I would have had the word "internship" on my resume. God, what an awful job market this is.
Re:I had one of those ... (Score:1, Interesting)
My last job interview did this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just before my interview, the company implemented a policy that they would test for personality before hiring ANYONE. Even the lowest worker. The reason is that there were so many people that disrupted the harmony of the workplace and made everyone's life miserable. They decided to fix the problem and it's worked. It's a totally awesome place to work.
If you don't have the personality to pass one of these tests, by all means, don't take it and just go find another company to apply to. If you think you are a likeable person, take the test.
Well, give a some people a hammer (Score:3, Interesting)
Are tests like this useful? Yes.
Are tests like this going to cause some people to make bad decisions? Yes.
The bottom line is 90% of the people in the world do not know how to handle data. It isn't about being good at calculation; it's about triangulation. Every bit of evidence has to be weighed in context.
What they need to do is take the following bits of information (in order of importance IMO):
(1) Your references
(2) Your interview
(3) Test results
and look at them as a whole. It's like SATs. You take a kid with low grades, an intriguing interview and high scores and the picture that comes out is, "bright kid, bored in school." Or the kid with high grades, a bit uncomfortable in the interview but obviously bright, and low scores is "test anxiety".
What does my personality have to do with my ability to perform in a job?
A great deal. In many cases as much or more than your technical skills. After all, if you're smart skills are easy to acquire, but attitude is hard, possibly even harder for smart people, who are used to being right when everyone around them is wrong. It may be that they're looking for somebody who doesn't like people. There are jobs for people like that, people who have to do tasks that would suck the life out of a gregarious person. But most jobs require people skills, because most of the time there is more work than one person can do without interacting with others.
The problem with these tests IMO is that they don't necessarily measure adaptability. Sometimes you have be able to work as a loner, other times hand in glove as part of a team. You tend to think of yourself in terms of your most recent work, but it doesn't mean you can't work a different way.
Re:Problem with personality/honesty testing (Score:2, Interesting)