Psychological Profiles When Applying for Software Development Jobs

Probably on the same order of effectiveness as homeopathy and with similar credentials. HR in particular, but the business side in general, seems to get caught up in various forms of woo that blow in and out of fashion. Anyone been to a Deming training session this century?

Had one guy explain that his trick on personality tests was to answer as if he was channeling John Wayne...

Look at it this way: you probably wouldn't have liked it there anyway.

I have not read the questions, but am curious if there is one about whether or not you have Asperger syndrome? If they want gifted engineers, then it should be the only question required.

Regards, Richard.

• formatting link
  Designed for Microcontrollers. More than 7000 downloads per month.

I believe you are being very reasonable ... I also believe you won't be considered for a job by any manager that puts stock in these tests.

To understand the mindset behind these dumb ass things, I suggest you read "Making Sense of Software Development and Personality Types":

I don't believe a word of it, but far too many PHB and HR types do.

George

I think that's both a vast oversimplification, and probably inaccurate. Even if how far along one was on the ASD spectrum were an indicator of how gifted a software engineer you were, there would still be the question of whether you could, or would be remotely interested in, applying your giftedness to something that someone else wanted.

I remember spending +24 hours in a bus through Europe with a bunch of colleges doing that Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

but we had lots of fun telling the two guys running it our honest opinion about the the whole thing :)

it is basically a money making machine, all the test and such were on special paper that could not be copied and half the pages seemed to be copyright info and treats of legal action to anyone trying to make similar test based on their copyrighted theories

-Lasse

One of the modules I studied for the psychology degree I got 30 years ago was psychological testing. They seem to have missed out important stuff like test-retest reliability, split-half reliability, lie scale, and lots of other things I've forgotten.

Leon

Has anyone taken (forced to take) a test written by the scientology people.

A company in Broomfield, Colorado ask me to take this test after my first interview. I think they called it a personalty inventory.

At first I did not think is was too bad, but the questions get more and more personal.

Has anyone else seem this test, or better yet have a copy to share ?

Thanks

hamilton

I am all for freedom of beliefs - I don't care if someone thinks their immortal soul is descended from aliens because they paid an ex science fiction writer lots of money to tell them so. But you shouldn't mix personal religion with a professional workplace. I certainly wouldn't work for a company that did so.

If you want to see one of these tests, then I'm sure you can find them floating around the internet - there are so many anti-Scientologist groups and sites that the "Church" can't sue them all out of existence.

I would think a blatant question would run afoul of disability law. However, the tests can and do identify insular personalities.

Having an insular personality has no effect on one's ability to write software ... but such a person may not be a good fit to a job that required a lot of contact with clients or even other design teams: e.g., requirements gathering, integration, installation, support, etc.

George

I'm wondering if my comment has not been taken in the light hearted (i.e. not serious) way in which it was intended.

Regards, Richard.

• formatting link
  Designed for Microcontrollers. More than 7000 downloads per month.

We Aspergers don't do that ... ;)

-- Roberto Waltman

My take is that if I took the test and passed, I should get paid higher than market scale, since I was now a higher than market prospect. The more their research claims good things for their testing, the more I, having passed the test, should get paid over market. Wonder how they'd respond to that...

Em 31/10/2011 13:33, KK6GM escreveu: [snipped]

Your take is from a perspective that the test selects some "better ones" among the all other commons. However, their take is that their test checks the matching of a prospect to a job position.

It would depend on how much demand of your particular profile is against market offer, don't you agree?