
Test for Dwindling Retail Jobs Spawns a Culture of Cheating - epi0Bauqu
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123129220146959621.html
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Dilpil
The test succeeds in its purpose: weeding out those who cannot figure out how
to deal with the immense amount of bullshit inherent to any retail position.
If someone isn't savvy enough to tell their employer stealing is wrong, they
probably aren't savvy enough to tell the customers the dress makes them look
skinny.

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whacked_new
This is an unfortunate stereotype, to think that retail implies a certain
amount of bullshit. I am more inclined to say it's a result of dilution of
good practice and good faith when intents and goals are misaligned. You'd
probably agree, but the blame isn't all on retail per se.

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mdasen
The real problem is that we don't have effective screens for employees. What
is an hour-long interview going to tell you? Little. And you're going to have
to do many of them. If you interview as few as 10 people at an hour a piece,
that's $250 at $10/hr salary rates. Most likely, the person doing your hiring
is getting more than that and so it could easily be in the $500-1000 range.
And that doesn't even count the time used reviewing resumes. If you're in a
labor intensive industry, you'd like to lessen the screening process if at all
possible.

I think these tests are stupid. Unions hand out answer sheets to anyone that
asks them, answers are available online, and it's not that hard to guess that
a company wouldn't want to hire someone who thought that failures were always
someone else's fault or that they usually quit doing things in the middle. We
need a lot of _good_ research in this area. It's very difficult to tell good
workers from bad workers and that causes both businesses and good workers harm
as the business can't tell who to hire and compensate at good levels. Anyone
have any ideas?

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jcl
I found this interesting:

 _"We see absolutely no evidence of any significant cheating taking place in
the use of our assessments or that the cheating is substantially affecting the
validity of the assessments," says David Scarborough, who helped develop the
test and works for its owner, Kronos Inc._

Of course, that's what he _would_ say, but what if he's telling the truth? If
anyone stands to gain from research into what tests correlate well with job
success, it's these guys.

It's entirely possible that the test still measures qualities correlated with
job success, even when the applicants cheat to pass it. It's also possible
that having _any_ prescreening test -- even a totally irrelevant one --
improves the quality of employees.

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scott_s
It's also possible he's telling the truth because no one is _looking_ for any
evidence.

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diN0bot
<http://github.com/sproutward/kraplan/tree/master>

"The Kraplan project grew out of parodies of some awful Kaplan advertisements
in the Boston subway. Kraplan is a project to use humor and invective to get
people thinking about standardized testing. "

if you want to get involved let us know.

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LogicHoleFlaw
I must admit, I have failed every one of these automated tests that I've ever
taken. On the other hand, I've been offered every position I've ever
interviewed in person for.

Maybe I just don't have a temperament suited for this sort of retail work?

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imgabe
There are actually people who can't figure out the desired answers to those
questions?

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jcl
The answers to some of the statements are not totally obvious. If we assume
the "answer key" mentioned in the article is correct (<http://melbel.com>), we
are supposed agree with "You have no big regrets about your past" but also
agree with "You look back and feel bad about things you’ve done". Likewise, we
are supposed to disagree with "You are good at leading people" but agree with
"You are good at taking charge of a group" and "You like to take the lead with
others".

~~~
notauser
Also

"You don't give up on things you start" could be good or bad, depending on
what it was you started!

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ryanwaggoner
_John Soong, 18, says that after he had failed to get jobs at several chains
that use the test, he began to poke around for an answer key, driven by
"altruistic, and maybe vengeful," motives._

Awesome.

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edw519
Reminds me of my favorite example of a prescreening personality test.

Southwest used to put a bunch of candidates in a room together and ask each
one to make a short presentation. But they weren't observing the presenter.
They were observing the audience. They figured that if you paid attention to
your competitors, you'd probably pay pretty good attention to your customers.

Must have worked pretty well. But the cat is out of the bag by now.

