評論
打印
Business
商業版塊
Bartleby
巴托比專欄
Questionable behaviour
別有用心的行為
Companies are relying more and more on psychometric tests
公司們越來越依賴心理計量測驗
Here is a test. Assign a score of 1 to 5, where 1 is “strongly agree” and 5 is “strongly disagree”, to the following statement: “I really care about my work.” If you have answered that kind of question before, you have probably applied for a job at a large company. Psychometric tests, as they are called, have become increasingly popular.
這是一份測試。請針對下列表述：“我真的很在乎我的工作”，打1到5分，1分代表“非常同意”，5分代表“非常不同意”。如果你之前回答過這類問題，那你可能曾經申請過一家大公司的工作。這種所謂的心理測試已經變得越來越受青睞。
Eager job-seekers may think the answers to these questions are glaringly obvious. For any statement, give a response that creates a portrait of a diligent, collaborative worker. Of course, applicants care about their work, love collaborating with other people and pay careful attention to detail. But the people who set the tests know that candidates will respond this way. So questions are rephrased in many different ways to check that applicants are consistent and make it difficult for them to remember what they have already said.
迫切的求職者可能會覺得這些問題的答案顯而易見。針對每一條表述，都要做出一個能夠反映勤奮、協作的員工形象的回答。當然，求職者也要表明自己在乎工作、喜歡與他人合作、而且十分注重細節。但是設置這些入職測試的人知道應試者會以這樣的方式進行作答。因此，他們會用多種不同的方式重新措辭這些問題，以檢驗求職者是否作答一致，而且還要讓求職者們很難記得自己之前的答案。
Aptitude tests are not a new idea. Intelligence tests have been around for a century and were popular with government departments. Charles Johnson, who has been involved in psychometric testing for 40 years and was responsible for constructing the tests used to recruit British civil servants, says the second world war had a big impact. The British were impressed with the efficiency of German army officers and learned they had been selected with the help of intelligence tests. This led the British to create the War Office Selection Board. Alongside verbal and non-verbal reasoning, it challenged candidates with word-association exercises and being made to lead group discussions.
能力傾向測試并不是一種新的想法。流傳一個世紀的智力測試頗受政府部門的推崇。查理斯·約翰遜從事心理測試已經40年了，他負責構建用于招聘英國公職人員的測試。他說，二戰的影響深遠。英國人對德國軍官的工作效率印象深刻，而且他們得知這些軍官是通過情報測試選拔出來的。英國為此創建了陸軍部選拔委員會。應試者除了要進行文字推理、非文字推理以外，還要挑戰詞匯聯想練習、以及引導小組討論。
For high-skilled jobs, these tests are useful. However, Mr Johnson says there is a risk with using such tests to recruit workers for low-skilled jobs. If you select people who pass sophisticated cognitive tests, they will learn the job quickly but will then get bored and leave.
對于高技能的工作崗位來說，這些測試是有用的。不過，約翰遜表示，利用此類測試為低技能工作崗位招聘員工的行為存在風險。如若你選拔的員工通過了復雜的認知測驗，他們將很快掌握這份工作，但隨即會覺得無聊并離職。
Psychometric tests became more popular from the 1970s onwards and are now seen as a useful way of sorting through the many candidates who apply for the jobs offered by big companies. “It is a laborious task to sort through thousands of written applications,” says Julia Knight, another occupational psychologist. “As well as being time consuming, it is not very effective and subject to bias.”
心理計量測驗自20世紀70年代起開始變得越來越流行，目前人們認為它行之有效，可以對眾多申請大公司工作崗位的求職者們進行篩選。另一位心理學家茱莉亞·奈特說：“整理上千份書面申請是一項艱巨的任務，這項任務耗時耗力，效率不高，還容易出現偏差?！?/p>
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