The Thamesmead Grump

THE COMPUTER SAYS "NO"

Over the years, employers have used ever increasingly bizarre methods in their staff selection processes. I have seen astrology, palmistry, phrenology (that's determining a person's personality by feeling bumps in the head), graphology (that's interpreting someone's personality by their handwriting) and a truly strange thing called psychometrics; this isn't actual psychometrics, which is a different thing altogether, but rather setting someone a series of tests to determine a subjects ability to behave in certain circumstances. These things are a favourite page filler for tabloid newspapers and lowbrow magazines: by answering a few questions, you will discover who your true love will be or what colours to wear to prevent you from catching cold sores. In Japan, they have decided that you can do all this by nothing more than your blood group and have taken it to such extremes that job applicants will include it on their c.v. and politicians include theirs in election leaflets.

Now, according to this report on the BBC website, our future careers are going to be decided by computer algorithms. These are the same things that Facebook use to determine that the term "garden hoe" is derogatory.  

I have to wonder, do any of the companies actually carry out some sort of quality assessment of these things? It wouldn't be hard, all you need to do is ask your existing staff to take one of these tests and compare the results with the employees actual performance; it wouldn't take long to find out if these things are any good or not worth the paper. Personally, I suspect the latter.