Pre-Employment Testing on the Rise

The Wall Street Journal has a post on the use of personality testing and the increase in companies using them either in their employment process or shortly after a person is hired.  A couple of great points were covered in the article: 

These days, more than 80% of midsize and large companies use personality and ability assessments for entry and mid-level positions as either pre-employment or new-employee orientation tools, says Scott Erker, a senior vice president at Development Dimensions International, a global human-resources consultancy.

If you are active in the job search market you probably have already experienced companies using some form of pre-employment testing.  You no longer simply send your resume, cover letter and complete an online application.  Now you may be asked to invest 10 minutes to more than an hour to complete the online application form and assessment.  Personally, I like this fact, but you may not.  To me it is more convenient to sit at my desk and complete this type of process to find out if I’m a fit instead of having to go through several rounds of interviews to finally realize that the company, environment or job responsibilities were not a match for me.

Which leads me to the other point from the article:

While you can’t study for a personality assessment, there are some things you can do to get a leg up. First, do your homework to understand the job and the organization, says Mr. Erker. “The criteria used to score the test is linked to the job being filled,” he says. Try to find out which assessment is being used and then research how and why companies use it. That will give you insight into the company and the particulars of the job.

Although the article goes on to caution one not to study or research the assessment being used, my thought is that trying to understand the criteria used to score the test is taking it a bit far.  The point about understanding the job and the organization is great because it will put you into the right frame of mind, but never try to “out-think” the assessment.  The typical results that occur are either:  you land a job that you will be miserable in or you bomb the assessment.

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Bad Office Etiquette

I was reading through the CareerBuilder Blog this morning and came across a post on office etiquette.  The title caught my attention, What not to do: Bad etiquette at the office.  I’m like a bug drawn to light when I read a title that contains “what not to do…” in it.  I was hoping that it would have some outlandish stories in it.  It didn’t, but it did give good solid advice and I recommend that you go read the whole list.  Being the post didn’t have a story in it, let me leave you with one that ties into this excerpt:

If you use a shared refrigerator, make sure you mark your food with your initials and date. And no matter how hungry you are, never, EVER eat food that a co-worker has brought in - - at least not without asking first!

Eating someone else’s lunch, to me, is just taking it too far and I won’t tolerate it.  In one of my previous manager roles we had someone stealing lunches and we couldn’t figure out who was doing it.  Prior to this lunch theft happening, if you didn’t get there early enough you would have a hard time finding room in the fridge for your lunch.  After a few months of thefts, the fridge started looking like a barren desert with only a few people even using it. 

Then all of a sudden the lunch stealing stopped and for the reminder of my time there, no one had their lunch stolen.  Naturally, I tried to find out what happened. I even went so far as having HR look to see who was no longer with us and cross reference their time worked to see if it matched up to the thefts.  None did and no one I asked seemed to know why it stopped.

A couple years later I moved back to Minnesota and started my career in recruiting.  When I left they gave me a going-away party and at that party I asked if anyone knew what happened.  The room burst out in laughter and this is what they told me - a couple of the employees took it upon themselves to take action.  When it got to the point that only a couple of lunches were in the fridge, they started bringing a lunch that had brownies laced with Exlax in them.  If the lunch didn’t get stolen they would eat the lunch minus the brownies of course. 

What they shared with me was that after a couple of times of the laced lunches getting stolen, the lunch burglar stopped.  So I asked who was that was stealing them, they told me they had no idea.  I started laughing harder.  How could someone actually eat brownies laced with Exlax and hide that fact from their co-workers.  That was just remarkable to me along with the plot by these 2 employees to catch the thief.

Job Search TV

First there were online job boards then social networking sites.  Now you can look for jobs on TV.  Job Search Television Network (JSTN) is a Chicago-based, multimedia job search network that currently offers companies the ability to create a video that gives job seekers a  profile of the company within a three-minute segment.  The segments generally consiste of an employee talking about how they got hired, what’s offered in the cafeteria, and anything else they find worthwhile to tell you about the company. 

Nick Dorado, Account Supervisor, said that the network is looking to expand its daily two-hour broadcast powered by Comcast into a 24-hour job channel.  I have not checked it out yet, but this is definitely a step outside the box and an interesting concept that is worth taking a look at.

If you want more information you can check out Vanessa’s post over at Cheezhead (that’s were I first learned about JSTN).

JobFox Offers Candidate-Employer Introductions

Are you tired of putting your resume up on a job site only to wonder if anyone is viewing it?  JobFox.com now offers introductions to employers.  According to RecruitingTrends they are the fastest growing job site and are now adding introductions to employers to their service menu.  If you have not already done so, I encourage you to go check them out.

What Does Color Have to do with Career Choices?

Vanessa Dennis over at Cheezhead had a great post about CareerBuilder’s new color career counselor (CareerPath.com).  I’m still chuckling over some of her comments.  CareerPath uses a new technology, powered by the Dewey Color System.  It is used to match people to jobs based on their color preference by giving users the option of selecting color combos from 3,375 different options. The colors you select in the online test will aid you in determining what career best suits you.

It is a color-based personality assessment and I just couldn’t leave it alone so I went and took the free assessment.  It only took a few minutes to complete.  The response format seems a bit more subjective than other personality assessments I’ve completed so I was a bit skeptical before reading my results.  After reading through the results, I’m not sure what to make of it . . . maybe my suspicions were correct.  The keywords for me are:

Nonconforming, Impulsive, Expressive, Romantic, Intuitive, Sensitive, and Emotional

Most do not fit into my personality profile as my business partner can verify.  The only keyword that people who know me would say fits is Intuitive.  The report also describes your ideal company environment and occupations.  I wasn’t impressed with the list of occupations for me.

I think there are many better reports to use if you find yourself struggling with what type of career to consider.  Most of the assessment out there cost less than a couple hundred bucks.  So should you go take the color assessment?  Let me close with a quote from Vanessa’s post:

But if you’ve got a few minutes to spare at night before the Ambien kicks in, this colorful application might be worth checking out.

5 Cell Phone Tools You Might Not Know

Ever wish you could get straight to a talkative person’s cellular voicemail to avoid a sure-to-be lengthy conversation?  I give you Slydial (great name).  US News & World Report lists 4 other websites that provide amazing options in using your cell phone. 

Slydial: If you have someone’s U.S. cell phone number, dial Slydial to leave a voice message and dodge the chit-chat. The service somehow slips into the voicemail systems of wireless carriers and drops a message into a mailbox without ringing their phone. A free MYslydial account can assign four-number PINs to contacts for faster dialing. A premium version cuts out the short ads when making a call.

Pinger: Similar to Slydial. When calling from a mobile phone, Pinger allows a sender to get a voice message to mobile customers in about 20 countries without ringing their cell phone. The service sends a text message to the recipient’s mobile phone. They call the number that’s included in the text message to receive the voice message. Pinger also can send the same message to multiple recipients.

Phonevite: If blasting E-mail invitations seems so last century, send a voice message to as many as 25 friends and relatives. Type the numbers on Phonevite’s site, dictate the message, and Phonevite calls the recipients simultaneously to deliver the recorded memo. Or sign up for an account and use any phone to dictate a message for delivery to a group. Great for last-minute changes to softball practice, recruiting a substitute, or reminding colleagues of a meeting.

ReQall: Think of this as post-it notes for voice, and a lot more. Call ReQall to dictate a to-do or shopping list, meeting reminder, or other item you need to remember. ReQall uses voice recognition software to turn the call into a text that appears in an account you sign up for on its site. It can even post meeting dates to some calendars, including Microsoft Outlook 2007, Apple iCal, and Google Calendar.

YouMail: A free, pumped-up voicemail service for cell phones. Get voicemail messages via the phone, E-mail, or YouMail’s site. The site lists who called and where he or she called from and displays his or her photo (if you’ve uploaded one). Callers can hear greetings customized specifically for them, and a “DitchMail” option hangs up on callers whose messages you don’t want to hear.