I recently applied for a job in Silicon Valley.
The recruiter had me take a battery of tests that measured my verbal, mathematical and visual aptitude. I'd guess it was a mini-IQ test; it wasn't a mini-MMPI. As a result of the tests I was invited to interview onsite.
At the end of the interview the manager declared that he wanted me to take some tests.
His tests were brain teasers he had downloaded from a random website. The brain teasers had nothing to do with the work I was interviewing for. He seemed to ignore the battery of sophisticated tests I had been subjected to, and to believe that he could do better.
What is the REAL purpose of using brain teasers during an employment interview?
Is it just to make the candidate feel stupid? Are any of these people qualified to interpret the results? Are any of them industrial psychologists? Or is this all about power and control?
Please advise.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:03AM
But of course too many do a bad job in software engineering, no matter how brilliant coders they are.
Don't delude yourself in thinking that management is a discipline that can exist in no relation with the things which needs managed.
A construction manager and a software dev manager need to think and act differently because the things they need to manage are different.
Expecting the "mind picking" to be the same for the two is naive.
And this comes with the big assumption that the manager is always "clueful" and can't ask wrong questions.
Which, in my experience**, is more often than not a failing assumption.
** I worked in this industry for quite a long time, both as contributor and manager - I've seen heaps of clueless managers and, on occasions, I even been one myself. In the latter position, I have had the common sense to notify those better positioned to solve the problem that I'm doing it only until they find one more suitable and I expect that they solve it soon or else I'm gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford