job applications just keep getting weirder…..
pro jobseeking tip: never answer these surveys honestly
also a tip: if they have a question like “Everybody steals from work sometimes” answer “disagree.”
I found this out when i was working as a hiring manager and the company i worked for started instituting these tests for managerial hires or promotions. My boss and I were promoting someone and she failed the test because she answered that question as “slightly agree” which in the results tells them that she is someone likely to steal because she believes everyone does it. When we asked her about her answer, it turns out she picked what she did because she’s cynical and does assume that people steal but didnt agree with them doing so. she almost sued the company for not promoting her based on that but chose to leave instead. We lost a good employee because corporate decided these tests were a good way to screen for “good” employees.
tldr these things are poorly designed, ambiguously worded, and structured in ways that are designed to eliminate people because the intention of the questions is never made clear. these tests are evil.
this sounds like an ableist disaster for people who aren’t neurotypical and who struggle with reading signals
When I went to get diagnosed with ADHD, the neuropsychologist couldn’t figure out what was going on, because on paper I’m apparently floridly psychotic. No, the questions are imprecise, and I am hyper-literal and extremely honest.
“Do you often see things that other people do not see?” Yes.
The question I was answering: “Are you especially observant?”
The question the test was actually asking: “Are you having visual hallucinations?”
“Does your environment ever have special messages for you?” Yes.
The question I was answering: “Does the sudden sight of a rainbow during a bout of doubt and self-loathing make you feel as though the world is trying to cheer you up?”
The question the test was actually asking: “Do you believe that your toaster is trying to convince you that the neighbors are spying on you?”
Five years later, I bombed a psych eval for a park ranger job for the same sort of thing. Tread carefully, darlings.
^^^^ that is actually such a huge issue with diagnosis!!!! and I’ve thought I didn’t experience symptoms for ages that I actually clearly had all along because of things being phrased super weirdly and confusingly 😦
And this is why McDonald’s never called me after I applied
Yeah, this is why this kind of thing in job apps needs to be illegal. A lot of discrimination is well hidden.
@tantefledermaus – the EXACT same thing happened to me when I was tested for ADHD. The test asked me if I felt like “other people could hear my thoughts.” I put “yes” thinking “yeah I’m pretty transparent and a terrible liar so I just let whatever I’m feeling show on my face” when they meant “do you feel like other people have telepathic powers?” And there were a handful of others I have forgotten about by now. It was years after my ADHD diagnosis that I really started experiencing psychotic symptoms and then I was like “…this sensation is galaxies away from how I’d lived my life for so long…they can’t be described with the same language.” I hate those vaguely worded questions so much.
On the bright side, the one good thing about having been constantly in mental health care and having to be screened over and over and over again is that I learned how to bullshit my way through these kind of amoral job screenings bc I have learned how to fake normalcy on paper once I identified “what they are looking for.” The fact that the surveys that I have filled out for job applications echo the screenings my old therapist gave me to detect potential personality disorders is extremely disturbing.
The worst part is sometimes they will make people answer those questions for you. I applied for a job that used a hiring company to screen applicants and you had to get FIVE PEOPLE to fill out a job survey for you online, FIVE PEOPLE you had worked with, at least two of which had to be supervisors–this was for a minimum wage entry level job as a SECRETARY. The questions included things about how well you handled stress and stressful situations, how positive your attitude was, how you reacted emotionally to criticism, how well you could suppress negative emotions on the job, stuff like that.
When I saw the questions I broke down and cried and my depression was badly triggered because I felt like a bad employee as someone with depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder. I was so frustrated that completing tasks I was hired to do at an above and beyond level was not enough–apparently I had to fit some ridiculous, narrow personality type that someone with emotional disorders is incapable of exhibiting. And I couldn’t even lie and pretend I was those things, because other people I worked with could simply say the truth: I did my job verywell, but I was not the unfailingly positive and emotionally sturdy employee this company wanted me to be.
When I told my mother about these questions, in tears and in a pit of depression, she was shocked and offended at how inappropriate and personal they were for a basic entry level secretary position and advised I not work for a company like that. It’s absolutely bullshit that in a capitalist society it is not enough that you are productive and effective at your job: no matter how underpaid or exploited you are, you must be ever smiling and cheerful about it. Moreover, it is not enough that you work hard, but you must also have a particular personality that mirrors the “virtues” of capitalism.
spoiler: there is no good way to answer these questions on a job survey. for ex.:
also a tip: if they have a question like “Everybody steals from work sometimes” answer “disagree.”
you’d think the obvious interpretation is “no, people do not steal, that is wrong, i am not a thief”, but they can also use this to determine how observant you are: “yes people steal from work, i see that happen all the time, i’m not an oblivious twat”. so, it goes all the way from “are you a thief” to “are you oblivious”, and no matter what you put it’s wrong.
and every question is like that.
which is the problem with questions like this. they have no value, their point is to get rid of people who won’t sit there for hours to fill the things out, and to be an unchallengeable reason to get rid of anyone else they don’t like.
i don’t think they’re allowed to ask the neurological diagnosis type ones on a job app. that’s too close to asking for medical info, and nobody is able to make a medical diagnosis from just that anyway.
I’ve always invalidated shrinks tests because I’d be like “does this mean X? If yes, then Y. If Z is meant, then W. Does this question assume J circumstance/context, or K, or something else entirely?”, either verbally or writing that down near the question.
Apparently that meant I was being “uncooperative” and rebellious on purpose, when actually I thought I was being as accurate as possible because those questions were too arbitrary and ambiguous.
I’m not surprised employers don’t take well to people who don’t just magically know the “right” answer (that seems to me how the entire job system works, you’re magically supposed to know how everything works already and what is expected of you at all times, even if you are seeking an apprenticeship for something you’ve never done to learn how to do it). But shrinks are supposed to care about assessing their patient’s individual needs as best as they can. It’s supposed to be their fucking job. The fuck are we paying them for if not that? Like, at this point I can take an online personality quiz and get the same fucking results.
This is why there’s a huge problem with psychs using the paint-by-numbers technique of diagnosis. Like they go:
“Do you have an illogical belief that doing certain things will prevent negative things from happening?”
and expect a yes or no answer. There are so many problems with that.
1. It doesn’t account for the magnitude of the action . Even the sanest people do strange things, you can’t put people who feel the need to tap the door three times before they open it under the same bracket as people who genuinely believe they’ll choke and die if they eat foods that are a certain colour.
2. It doesn’t account for how often it’s happening. Like I sprinkled salt around my bed the other day because I thought it would protect be from something and I was scarred to step out of the little circle of salt I made for a while. That sounds terrible, but it’s only happened once when I was already having a bad day, and the psych assuming that it happened regularly would seriously skew the diagnosis.
3. It doesn’t account for severity. In this case it doesn’t check to see how strongly the belief is held. Like when I was doing the salt thing, it was more a ‘better do it just in case’ thing than a ‘I one hundred percent without a doubt believe in what I’m doing’ thing. Again assuming one way or the other would seriously skew the diagnosis.
tl;dr For psychs to make an accurate diagnosis they need to have an in depth talk with their patient which covers all bases, not ask questions that assume things that may or may not be true.
4) if you asked me that (”Do you have an illogical belief that doing certain things will prevent negative things from happening?”) I wouldn’t even assume it was about delusions, I’d assume it was about paranoia because that’s what I personally suffer from. I’d likely say yes, which means things like “I have recurring thoughts about just shutting down and closing contact with everyone I know because ‘I’m bad and they’d be better off without me and that’d prevent them from being hurt’ despite normally logically knowing that’d just worry them and/or they’d be hurt by me doing that”, not “I think if I don’t count all the tiles of my floor everyday the roof will crash on me”.
Regarding those job application things… They baffle me too. My inclination is to answer them like the person who missed the promotion did.
Because if a questionnaire asks, like, have you ever told white lies? I would assume the right answer is “very occasionally yes,” not no.
Because anyone who says yes is literally lying to you right now (or possibly has a disability, but mild lying is so common I would think even quite intensely literal minded people, including a sizable number of nonNTs, have done it more than they realize.)
And if I were hiring, I would want the one who talks honestly about being human but is still committed to honesty as a virtue (and so says “rarely but yes”), not the one who claims to be superhuman (“no.”)
Also, you can know that a triggered reaction is irrational and still have it. You can know that a compulsion won’t actually protect you and still have it.
People are complicated.
Some of those tests also have validity scales that are ridiculous.
Like they paraphrase the same question five different ways. If you answer it different every time they assume you’re either lying or not careful enough to fill out the test properly.
I answered them differently because either the differences in wording changed the meaning, or because I wasn’t sure of my answer so I answered multiple ways just in case. This meant they gave me a terrible validity score.
yeah they got upset with me after giving me one of those tests because I answered the questions differently because depending how they worded it the context changed and they SPECIFICALLY TOLD ME WHEN I ASKED I shouldn’t take the test on -just- my psyche symptoms.
They absolutely refuse to acknowledge that for example, feeling hopeless could be from limited access to help for my illnesses instead of depression. That losing interest in things I used to like might be because I was no longer capable of doing them to my unmanaged disability, that being fatigued could be because I have like FIVE DIFFERENT DIAGNOSISES AND FOUR MEDICATIONS that cause fatigue.
No it’s just depression. You need CBT to work on the fact you can’t access proper health care for your physical illnesses clearly, not proper treatment for them, only the depression caused by lack of medical care.
I got nixed from a psych study once for answering “do you ever see things other people don’t?” with “how would I know that?” I wasn’t being pedantic; I literally do not know whether the things I see are the same things other people do. How would anyone know that, really? You have to take people’s word for it.
Kimchi and Justice 