Phone Interview

I was surprised that I was contacted by the HR staff of the prospective employer where I had the personality test.  Maybe this is the time that I should swallow my own words from my previous entry, one of those times when I did not follow the think-before-you-click mantra of responsible bloggers.  But no one’s complaining (so far) and I still think that some of my concerns about such personality tests are valid. I won’t specify which ones though… haha!

So I was scheduled for a phone interview, the HR being in another Asian country.  I found it difficult at first since the caller’s accent was just too different from mine.  Add to that that we were talking over the phone where the sound was a bit muffled and there were no gestures or facial expressions to give additional cues.  It also did not help that in my concern that the interviewer hears the ambient noise in my neighborhood – the cawing of the roosters, the gossip of the idle neighbors (as if I wasn’t idle myself!) hammering noises, and all the other cacophony of sounds – I opted to go to the food court of a mall.  Okay, call me foolish or stupid or whatever, but I thought it was a better environment for an interview.  Well, I earnestly thought it was.  I had the unfortunate late-night experience quite recently when I woke up to the sound of neighbors fighting.  There was a brief but noisy squabble accompanied by breaking bottles, followed by the sound of a herd of people on a stampede, and then very loud shouts of obscenities, threats and curses.  Anyway, I thought it was wise trading the possibility of that happening as I was being interviewed to the noise of people chatting over brunch and the loud whirr of the blender from a nearby stall.

Well, we did manage.  The interview lasted an hour, my left ear (the better of the pair) aching slightly afterwards.  I found the questions more difficult than the usual interview questions I had been asked.  They were situational, almost always starting with ‘Describe a time…”  It was a good thing that I have worked for so many companies already, many of them part-time or project-based, and I could choose from so many situations and examples.  In fact, the bigger problem for me then was which situation I should talk about.  I know that these types of questions are really the best interview questions to ask during recruitment.  The historical perspective also gives a more accurate picture of the applicant’s profile; following the philosophy that history would repeat itself.  Still, I believe that people do change, especially after such critical situations and it is important in answering these type of questions to state the outcome or how these situations affected one’s own principles and beliefs.

Knowledge of how to answer such questions is one thing but actually answering them is another.  After what seemed to be an interminable barrage of situational questions and digging my memory for past experiences and choosing the best among them, we finished the interview.  The HR staff then enumerated to me the findings based on the personality test I took.  At least the interviewer began by saying that such profiles have a tendency to change depending on the job.  Then, the findings were read to me one-by-one and I was given the opportunity to react to each.  In the end, I had to concede that the results were fairly accurate.  I said fairly because the findings indicated that I liked to be the center of attention.  Hmm… an introvert who is also egocentric, narcissistic and a control freak.  I don’t know, maybe that was part of my Johari window I was blind to.  The results also indicated that I have trust issues and have difficulty meeting people for the first time.  Maybe I do have trust issues now but mainly due to the bad experiences I’ve had when I delegated responsibilities to people whom I thought I could trust.  I did thought that people are inherently good but such naivete had led me several times to tight spots and difficult situations.  I think I have been betrayed too many times already and I had to learn to be wary of people and to take their words always with a grain of salt.  I realize of course that the higher up in the organization’s hierarchy, the more that one has to trust his subordinates, does this mean that I am a bad manager or that conscientiousness takes precedence over trust.  I’m afraid I painted myself to be a disagreeable manager in the personality test.

Or maybe I have always believed myself to be too trusting and in my haste to shield this quality (I’d like to say unknowingly), I made choices pointing to the opposite pole.

Egocentric.  Narcissistic.  Of course, the interviewer did not mention these adjectives to me but what else would I think when she said that my personality profile indicated that I like to be the center of attention.  I wanted to laugh out loud when I heard that.  Maybe I did, but I had to say that the results were not true.  I do want to lead, additional proof during my recent stint at the university that I almost always wanted to lead my own group of selected members, but you would not see me in parties or other social ritual.  In this case, I only wanted to be the center of attention in my own comfort zones, social gatherings not among them.

The profile also indicated that I was conscientious (did I choose my answers specifically to show that, or am I really?) and analytical (this I can believe as my superiors in two separate companies have made this remark of me and I believe I would not have made it in my job if I weren’t… Hmm… is it pride talking?

To cut the story short, the phone interview ended. I peeled the phone off my left cheek, stretched my left arm, shook the residual tension off, and left for home - back to the cacophony of fighting cocks and neighbors.

Personality Test

This does not bode well.  Two of the more promising applications I’ve made this past month have just been reposted on the job website.  One of them was, in a way, expected after what transpired during the job interview.  It turned out that my background is really far from what the position demands.  What I can’t figure out is why they would specify manufacturing experience when the position clearly calls for a service industry professional? 

As for the other company, I only got as far as the personality test.  They reposted their vacancy a day after I submitted to their online personality test.  Does this mean that I don’t have the personality that companies want in their management team?  I answered the personality test during a failed bout with insomnia at 3 AM.  I wonder if my answers were in any way affected.

The first time I encountered a personality test such as the one I took, I was being considered for a promotion.  As part of HR’s new requirements, I had to undergo an online personality test.  I had a difficult time then (as I had a few days ago) as the questions were asking me to make choices when decisions were not always clear cut.  Fortunately, I passed the test barely ten points from the passing rate, or so they told me.  When the results came out, there were many complaints from employees as to the reliability of such tests and why it was necessary to go through them to get promoted.  The company administering the test even stated in their website that the test was only predictive and not prescriptive. (I wonder what the HR would do if the test predictions were not exactly favorable.  Would it not be tantamount to a prescription not to hire or promote the employee?)

The HR countered that there were no really correct or wrong answers and that the test would not be really be used for promotion purposes.  Yet in the end, they had to delay the promotions of the candidates who ‘failed’ and had them to retake it after a few months.  I don’t know if they were able to ‘pass’ the second time they took the test.  As far as I know, these tests tend to give the same results even if they are taken repeatedly.

From my HR Management and Organizational Behavior classes, I found out that such tests were mainly administered to assess the personality traits of people and to what extent they possess the Big Five Personality Traits.  The Big Five were extraversion, emotional stability, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness.  According to research, these five traits are strongly correlated to effective management. 

Okay, I don’t think I can challenge data but I wonder if there is something can go wrong as to how a test was designed and administered, e.g. if I take the test when I’m in a certain mood, such as when I am too busy to do administrative tasks for HR or when I am cranky and groggy from insomnia.  Then, there’s Hofstede’s Theory of Cultural Dimensions that shows how values of people from different geographical locations can differ according to their culture.  Will the test be valid for a Filipino of a certain age and background as it was for Americans or to whatever citizenship of the sample used by the test designers? 
And why force people to make choices when they can be flexible and choose differently depending on the situation or, as I mentioned above, their mood.  For example, I often take a participative management style when I am leading a high performing team whom I have worked before and already trusted.  When in a crisis mode, however, or if there is a change that I immediately had to implement, I had to take an authoritative stance.  How would I answer the test given two opposing decisions I made in the past and both turned out positively.

When I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Assessment, it revealed that I have an INTJ personality which is one of the rarest personality types at 1 - 4% of the population.  I wonder if the personality still holds true, that is if they designed the test based on the general population or did they also consider rare personalities. 
As for extraversion, the Big Five studies showed that high extraversion leads to emergence of leaders but it does not mean that they are going to be effective.  It may even be dangerous to make leaders of people just by virtue of their extraversion, as influence and charisma can only take them so far.  In my case, MBTI showed that I am deeply introverted.  I can say that that is true as making speeches, attending parties, going to social gatherings, and other social rituals make me uncomfortable, but I can still perform on the job.  I can still communicate with people from all levels, conduct meetings, make presentations and perform activities that normally would call for extraverts, albeit I can do them with greater emotional labor. 

Personality tests seem to be the trend nowadays in hiring and promoting for managerial and supervisory jobs.  I just hope that HR officers understand that these, unlike mathematics and physical sciences, are not exact and should be treated with some wariness.  After all, we are talking about human beings here with their own free will and can act unpredictably in most unexpected ways in specific situations.

The Rat Race

Source: Wikimedia

I remember watching this film many years ago and it was the first time I heard the phrase.  In this 1960’s film, two characters – Tony Curtis playing a saxophonist and Debbie Reynolds, a dancer – were faced with the problem of unemployment and the many unscrupulous persons who take advantage of young inexperienced professionals trying to make it big in New York City.  Thinking about it, the year could be 2012 and the place, the Philippines.

I may not have the dashing looks of Tony Curtis nor his talents but I will have to admit the same inexperience and naiveté in landing my first job many years ago.  I had just earned my engineering license after passing the board exam and was expecting companies to scramble over this new graduate (the foolish pride and optimism of youth).  Well, I thought I had a right to be proud.  The university I graduated from was well-admired in the country and my board exam rating was not bad at all.  I was overjoyed when I received the first call for an interview and exam.  It was from a manufacturing company located in a province a few hours from Manila.

I was given a battery test and it was not termed as such for nothing.  Even up to now, I don’t think I’ve had a more grueling pre-employment exam.  There were tests for language ability, numerical ability and abstract reasoning, all taken under time pressure.  I was given pictures to arrange according to what I believe to be the right sequence of events.  I was interviewed to assess my personality, asked to interpret pictures, and even made to draw pictures of certain themes which I guess would give them a psychological portrait.  There were even two-dimensional puzzles as well as a memory test wherein I had to repeat numbers given to me, first in the correct order and then in reverse.  Finally, just when I thought it was all over, I was made to write an essay on any topic that I want to write about.  I simply wrote about the novels that I have read.  Quite a flimsy topic, in retrospect, but I was tired and bored and most of all, inexperienced.  The whole process of exams and interviews started at 8 AM and ended close to 6 PM.  At the end, my head felt heavy and the fingers of my right hand numb from writing, but I was happy to have survived such mental battery.

After the grueling exam day, I was interviewed by one of the managers.  After that was a panel interview, which to me was like a mock trial as the managers were throwing questions one-after-the-other in quick succession - more in an attempt to rattle me than to extract information.  Still, I thought I was prepared and handed it well.  In a few days, I received a call offering me the job.

During the whole application process, I believe I had asked the recruitment staff about the salary and I was always told that we were going to talk about it in time.  The day that I found out was on my first day at work.  They had dormitories within the company premises just a stone’s throw from the plant and I already had my bags, prepared to settle in.  When I entered the HR Office I was shown the employment contract.  The salary was lower than what I expected (but I know now that it was still competitive).  There was no overtime pay as I was to hold a supervisory position. Benefits were non-existent except for those mandated by law.  In addition, they were requiring me to sign a two-year bond wherein I had to stay with the company or return 50% of all salary received (or to that effect).  When I asked the HR Officer the reason behind the bond, she smilingly replied that the company shall be training me anyway.  Well, they did give a lot of trainings and seminars in the first six months but they were all internal – the kind that any company should give their employees in the first place.  I found out later that the position I occupied was one with the highest turnover, thus the real reason for the bond.

Last week I appeared in another interview.  There were no battery tests, just the HR staff eyeing me and asking me questions about my job experience.  I have no idea about the salary range as I don't have any experience working in their industry and the job title and description was vague to the effect that it didn't appear in any of the salary survey websites I visited.  The interviewer did not give a salary range either.  Again, there were no benefits other than those required by law and work hours exceed the normal 40 hours per week.  I don’t think I’ll get any offer from them any time soon as my credentials are really too far from the job but maybe it's for the best if I don't get to proceed to the next step of their recruitment process.

“The Rat Race” ended positively with Tony Curtis and Debbie Reynolds falling in love and deciding to go on with life as best as they could.  I could use a happy ending right now, if not with a lady as pretty as Debbie Reynolds, at least a well-compensated job where I can use my talents and be happy with until retirement.