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McDonald's Making Job Applicants Take Weird AI Personality Tests
- givemeethekeys 3y agoAh, the blue people test. There's a company thats selling these personality tests to large companies. Any job that requires that you be an obedient little robot will require that you take such a personality test.
- maayank 3y agoDo you know the name of the company/other references about this test?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lp0_on_fire 3y agoIt's bad enough many companies want to run invasive background checks (up to and including pulling your credit) for milquetoast low-paying-entry-level jobs now they want people to take some bastardized version of Myers–Briggs which itself is pseudoscience? I sorta understand a company wanting to do that for some C-level or upper management position, or for a finance person responsible for the books...but for a burger flipper???
- mistrial9 3y agothose with the least ability to say NO will be the targets at first. Similar case with PTSD veterans, incarcerated individuals, those alone at the end of their lives, some family law situations etc.. IMO there is literally no bottom to this, and it can and does require real legislation.
- reaperman 3y agoThe weird thing about the credit checks is that I have horrible credit. Like about every 2 years a credit card gets sent to collections. Some old rent in collections. Etc. But its never, ever affected a hiring decision for $80-130k jobs. So…why are they doing the credit checks??
- delfinom 3y agoDepending on state, it is illegal for companies to do a credit check for employment. Perhaps they are using it sell your data to some shitservice they use but it can't legally be used in your location.
- reaperman 3y agoThis is not intellectually rigorous. In locations where "it is illegal for companies to do a credit check for employment" they cannot perform one. Because they cannot perform one, they cannot be "using it [to] sell your data to some shitservice". More specific to my anecdote, I have always been in states where it was allowed to be used for employment purposes. But even if I wasn't, your speculative scenario is not internally consistent to itself.
- donor20 3y agoIf it’s credit / criminal the credit part is very cheap vs the criminal and much quicker. It can also help feed the criminal because the credit side has addresses if you do county searches. There is bad credit and then BAD credit
- whstl 3y agoMost companies I know don't really run credit or even criminal checks for jobs that pay that high. It's often a thing for low-paid. IME and YMMV of course.
- olliej 3y agoSomeone really needs to test how these “personality tests” are actually “testing” people. This feels very much like “let’s launder bias by using ‘algorithms’ that do the discrimination because they’re trained on existing bias”
- Double_Org 3y agoThere is a quasi-legal standard for creating and validating pre-employment assessment (https://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/personnel-selection-procedures.pdf https://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/personnel-selection-pro...) but there isn't a lot of regulation and there are plenty of sketchy startups happy to sell low quality assessments to middle-managers at companies with poorly run HR departments.
- senkora 3y ago> Paradox's "Traitify" product, which uses the strange slides to lump applicants into "Big Five" or "OCEAN" personality groups, rating them on how open, conscientious, extraverted, agreeable, and neurotic they are. For the record, the correct answer is always to be low on neuroticism and high on everything else. The role doesn’t matter; that is always the “ideal” personality and any deviation is a defect that will only be tolerated if they are having trouble filling the role.
- mordechai9000 3y agoMany years ago, barely out of high school, I took a test for a temporary warehouse stock picking job. The test was primarily concerned with the applicants' attitude to authority and violence. Oh, and theft, of course. Many questions were repetitive, and used slight variation in wording or reversed meaning to ask the same things over and over again. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you agree with these statements? Sometimes it is ok to hit people. I feel like hitting my boss sometimes. Some people deserve to be punched. Sometimes is is necessary to use violence to solve a problem. Taking pens from work isn't really stealing. Etc. I suppose they must've managed to screen out at least some of the people who are not very smart and prone to violence and theft.
- BriggyDwiggs42 3y agoAny company using a test like that on applicants deserves to have its pens stolen
- cool_beanz 3y agoIt's like they are screening for people who are most likely to take abuse without pushback.
- al_borland 3y agoThis only really screens for people who aren’t aware enough to choose the right answers. It’s an IQ test without being an IQ test. In reality, sometimes it is necessary to use violence to solve a problem. If someone is trying to kill me, that’s a problem. It is perfectly acceptable to meet that violence with violence to stop it and get away. Will that ever happen in a normal workplace, and will it be my go-to move? Almost certainly not, but the “sometimes” does leave the possibility open to that unlikely event.
- bashtoni 3y agoI can't be the only one who read this headline and was disappointed that in fact they are not letting Weird Al write their interview questions.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoRelated recently: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39346870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39346870
- jhbadger 3y agoYes, but that's more expected (if still not really justified). White collar jobs often have personality tests as a "filter" -- even decades ago I remember taking the now generally mocked Myers Briggs test at interviews. Fast food jobs on the other hand are traditionally known for minimal screening and it is odd that McDonald's would start doing it now when there is already a labor shortage for low paying jobs.
- tareqak 3y agoThey want to filter out people who would potentially unionize.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoJust a rewrite of walled 404 piece: Service Jobs Now Require Bizarre Personality Test From AI Company https://www.404media.co/low-paying-jobs-require-bizarre-personality-evaluation-from-ai-company/ https://www.404media.co/low-paying-jobs-require-bizarre-pers...
- camgunz 3y agoYeah there's a few of these rewrites on Futurism but this is the most blatant one so far (you can see if you search '"404 media"'). Eek.
- bjconlan 3y agoI read this as "Weird Al personality tests" and thought its a great idea. More places should be employing based on their Weird Al index, would finally improve the "fun place to work" aspects
- Terr_ 3y agoI put work-related parody Daft Punk lyrics onto a conference room whiteboard last week, so this metric intrigues me greatly.
- al_borland 3y agoWhen going around and introducing ourselves as a new team was forming, one of my teammates in India mentioned his favorite band was Linkin Park. He instantly gained several point in my booked and as we got to work together more he was an amazing person and did awesome work. I’m all for adding a Linkin Park metric after this. I should touch base with him and see how he’s doing.
- sowerssix 3y agoCame here to say exactly this. Enjoy your upvote, my dude.
- listenallyall 3y ago"Weird AI personality tests" seems scary, but it's likely many big-corporate workers had to suffer through top management's Myers-Briggs phase, (which is just as weird and just as non-scientific) forcing everyone not just to take the test but to share the results with colleagues. I'd probably also put "Kanban" as another consultant-led pseudoscience money grab that everyone detests.
- doubloon 3y agoIts simple. They are testing to see if you can do a web search for the expected answers to weird jargon questions from the upper class, which is actually a great prep for a lot of jobs… finding the magic nonsense words to say to people of higher rank is a very important skill. So is disconnecting your logical brain while doing so. A lot of jobs are about acting a role in addition to providing a service or product.
- mediumsmart 3y agoThe real lifelong personality test is having worked there. If you come back as a customer fail does not begin to describe it.