Situational Judgement Test 3 things to think about

The instructions on a situational judgement test may well request you select the item which comes to mind as quickly as possible and not to think about it. However, the choice of items to choose will be limited and the one you want to choose is not actually there. This creates a dilemma.

1. Understand what the organization wants, what is it's mission statement and what are it's values?

For example, if a house is burning down and the SJT is for the fire brigade an impulse might be to run into the burning building. Alternatively, the impulse might be to grab a fire hose first. However, the question may have left out information. Like saying whether there were actually known to be people in the building, or children. It is at this point any further decision you make could be on made up information in your own head. Going beyond the information provided could prove fatal to passing the question. So if the question indicates it is a residential building on fire, and the first moto of the Brigade is to save life which it lives by, running into the burning building could be the first thing you actually do. However, if there is not an option to choose, put on breathing apparatus first and take in an axe you will be flummoxed. 

2. Contemplate whether you could apply for this post with a false application form.

If applying for a post online means a lot to you, then you want to try and get it right first time rather than be shortlisted out of it ASAP. So why not cheat? Create a false identity, email address and a real address you know exists. You could even go so far as to get a burner SIM card and number. If the first layer of the application allows you to do this, then you have gotten under their security. The employer cannot spend time vetting whether every applicant is genuine, the computer system for the SJT has to make an evaluation of whether this person has passed or not. Use a program to screenshot the questions and answers, or even take photographs of the screen questions and answers as they come up. If you fail you may be able to get feedback, and if the employer uses an automated feedback text program, this will give you an idea which questions you have failed on. Now you are armed with further information for another go. At your leisure, you can re-read through the questions and re-evaluate.

3. Spend time on the application process.

If you really want the job, then you are going to have to be smart. A lot of your spare time is going to be spent looking over the job specification, the job description, the values and code by which the organization runs itself. Or rather as one Occupational Psychologist called them the Espoused Theory of how the organization runs. For this let it be known what an organization says and how really does things is not the same. Some of those people don't follow the rules, they act differently and will have their quirks. They will be all grades of hierarchy. Some of those high level managers never went through this recruitment process and no doubt would fail if they did. The recruitment process is in many ways just a to wheedle out those who are going to be just as good at doing the job as anyone else but can't be arsed to think about what they are doing. Be different, you are going for a financial contract which is many thousands of pounds per year. 

Getting a job is hard work, but you must commit to getting it. Otherwise you'll be stuck in a job or career below your capabilities. When opportunity comes be ready.

Situational Judgement Test is not real life, so is it an appropriate instrutment

 I've had the recent unfortunate luck to come across the situational judgement test. Having never seen one before I wondered why it hadn't put a shot across my bows given I've had post graduate study in these things. Needless to say I failed the test a number of times, probably about 10 times and then hit it lucky with two passes. I do not understand how this test can relate to real life. Yes, it has been constructed by occupational psychologists, yes it went through the ringer with subject matter experts to check it's validity. However, from my first hand real life experience of the field it was testing me in, I am utterly and completely sure it is not an appropriate test to use. Given I have 20 years experience in a specific field and then found I failed the SJT has made me think how completely stupid and wrong it is. I understand every aspect of the prospective employer, they decided there would be certain traits their staff should have and they so fitted the test around those traits. They did not take any accounting of the applicants actual experience and actual abilities. The test was making a judgement on potential correct traits. 

In fact finding I had failed and then re-trying the same test a number of times and failing again. Was ridiculous. I know if they had put me in a work setting I'd do the job to a pretty high standard, in fact I'm not your run of the mill average employee. I am currently in middle management and could do senior management roles.  So I'm gutted. They have got it wrong. They have sold down the river an incredibly capable person, they did it all online and without even a single sentence between me and a recruiter.

These SJT are tailor made, they are tested on staff who are already doing the job, however, those staff had to gain experience and knowledge in the actual job before they became experts. They had to learn through real life experience and they no doubt changed as they learnt the job. The reply or answer they gave when the test was being constructed may be completely different from the answer they acquired over time and through learning. This learning process is important. The SJT then justifies itself by saying that the experts map well onto the actual questions and answers they've constructed. However, the reality of the test is it must be mapped to those who have already been employed through the test scenarios at 6 months to a year later. Further, they should employ staff who failed the tests provided and then compare them also in 6 months to a year later. There has to be not just a control but a counter control.  I'd bet given the chance the training and the experience, even those who were not considered suitable for the job would be able to do the job and some would be excellent at it. Effectively I would argue the sifting process is at fault, especially if it does not take into account someone's life experiences and past experience.

It's OK to say the test examines attributes such as Dignity, Compassion, Respect and maths ability. However, if an employee is put in a overwhelming work situation, will these aspects also control whether the candidate can keep a calm head under pressure? I doubt it very much.

So for now I have to keep my above average wage job and can not move onto a lower wage job in the same sphere because I failed the test. They don't know what they have rejected.

Work Values

In a demonstration of the ultimate organizational arrogance, perhaps validated by the organizations own belief in being right new Values have been imposed on the entire workforce. There had been no discussion with me, not that I'm particularly important, however, if I really wanted to get everybody on board with an idea I'd do them the curtisy of asking them all to input and refine said idea. In this instance there were a few focus groups, where the odd selected member of staff went to a meeting and gave their views on Values. But I am talking odd. Perhaps two people in a hundred, alright maybe three people. Their views were taken on board and then we were hit with D day.

D day was when it all happened, which was a Monday. Monday morning coming into the office there suddenly, imposingly there were posters all over the place. They are loud posters the type of bright colour which gives a migraine. Puce green, violent red, heavy orange, each colour had a different value the workforce was meant to take on. In addition one of those go-getter types had the irritating idea these emblazoned disaster zones were going to come up on screen savers when staff left their computer terminals too long. The posters are on lockers, doors and mirrors. 

I felt offended because I wasn't part it, my organization didn't give me a choice and I don't know who to complain to because of the values there doesn't appear to be one which allows recourse to objeciton when things are objectable. I work for a public organization and expect a lot of money was spent on these abhorent images. I can see one value "Be Better" which gets my heckles up. I'm straning for time to get my work done, straining to ensure staff feel they are supported and don't break down through the overload of work put on them and this message says "Be Better" when the question is how the hell can I be better when my organization isn't helping me or the employees I have be better? It's been two days since these monstrosities were put up and I'm am already planning on how to remove the ones which happen to be the most annoying of all. It's going to have to be over a period of time, whereby they are gradually and slowly binned. To help I now strategically turn off my monitors when I leave my desk. They are then just black screens. I will not be part of this brain washing corporate idea. I will impliment my own values in my work and they are of a higher standard and more honourable than the idiots who put these in place.

Learning to Manage the Boss

I recently came across and article titled "Managing your Boss" this was from the Harvard Business Review and was written by Garbarro and Kotter in 2005.

Firstly I can only give my opinion on bosses, but of all the bosses I've had, there have been a greater number of inadequate poor bosses than good ones. Often they would even be given titles as 'leaders' but if there were two of us holding maps and lost in the countryside I would rather follow my own map then be lead by the idiot reading the other map. Bosses are indisputably not leaders, they are individuals who have managed to climb a career ladder which led them to be in the position they currently hold. Usually this is through tenure, other times its because they happened to be in the right place at the right time and never yet have they been through performance. Further I can say bad bosses come in both genders being a woman or a man doesn't make a boss any better. I will say though, those bosses I have felt it is possible to hold a conversation with and have listened to what I've said were more likely to have my respect and cooperation than those who thought they were leaders and carried the torch for the organization. Now to get back to Garbarro and Kotter's article.

Managing your boss appears to be a description of how managers went about their business when they had a new boss. Often there is a way of working which a boss has and all bosses are different in this respect. What Garbarro and Kotter determine is those managers who were able to adapt to the ways the new boss wanted them to work meant they were able to achieve the bosses goals.  The article then goes on to implicate that managers who were unable to do this were then at fault and probably deserved to lose their jobs. Although not in so few words just put. The funny thing is the attribution of blame here. In an example they give of a boss who had bad interpersonal skills but the company knew this man to be very good at what he did. The organization then put a manager with him who had performed very well in the past, one who could communicate with employees. Unfortunately a year and a bit later the manager had been sacked. Garbarro and Kotter did not look at whether the boss was to blame and seemed to accept well it was known he was a poor communicator so this person had no blame at all. To an extent the attitude of Garbarro and Kotter seems obtuse to say the least. Organizations work well when they communicate and what these writers partly understood was those adaptable managers were the better communicators and stayed in business. In another example they give both the boss and the manger were sacked from the organization. However, Garbarro and Kotter fail to identify what the problem was, just that adaptable managers were successful. So attributing blame to those managers who were unable to adapt to bosses. What they didn't do was make an evaluation of the bosses as though the very conception of a boss being wrong didn't have any meaning.  The fact is, if you want to drive a car you need to know how to navigate, have a understanding of how the car runs and be aware your passengers have their needs. 

In a contrary and somewhat more enlightening article by Chris Argyris who likes to talk about learning organizations (Teaching Smart People to Learn, HBR) Argyris makes the following salient and powerful comment

"Until senior managers become aware of how they reason defensively and the counterproductive consequences that result, there will be little real progress. Any change activity is likely to be just a fad.”

Unlike Garbarro and Kotter, Argyris looks to how people recognise when they get things wrong, the barriers they put up and the defence mechanisms they put in place. It is these things which affect how well an organization succeeds or not. He also remarks it is individuals who have been successful most in their career who have a problem of understanding how to learn from their mistakes. Because paradoxically they have had little in the way of experiencing failure.  It is failure which teaches good bosses how to be good. 

The fact is good bosses are recognised by their staff just as much as bad bosses are, and if a boss is bad they are responsible for the failings of an organization just as much as those who follow. They therefore should also be sacked as often as those below them are sacked. Unfortunately we all know this kind of thing doesn't happen. I would hope anyone reading Gabarro and Kotter would use a bit of their own initiative before accepting what they wrote.

One quality not measured

So there I was thinking about an interview and failed to get the job. Yet wasn't bothered, the interview went OK but clearly this candidate was not good enough. It was an internal job and there were fewer than a handful of applicants, possibly only three. It began with a short period of a half hour set aside so as to prepare a presentation. The interview would then begin with the presentation and go onto the finer details of questions. These totalled 9. No psychometrics were applied, the panel were all internal incumbent managers who likely know nothing about such things and probably have never heard of a Gaussian curve to say the least. I don't see it as a failure but as a learning experience about myself, a little like writing a post card when abroad and then getting home home and using it as a memory c que to recall the holiday. Quite simply I did not want the job, but this doesn't mean I was the best candidate and it doesn't mean my lack of enthusiam meant I was incapable.  I am passionate about my work, I enjoy it, love the intellectual stimulation and even research in my own time most weekends. It is a good job, but I'm not a occupational psychologist, which would probably be easier than what I do. I prevaricated because the new boss was someone I didn't particularly like and thought was not I could respect.  Perhaps this was the wrong frame of mind to have.  Yet, I saw how hard the previous person worked in that job, they'd done done two jobs not one. Psychologically I was unable to reconcile how I felt and judge this individual and in turn this has affected my career. 

One measurement which is not measured by occupational psychologists when it comes to selecting job applicants is the enthusiasm and passion they have, or the enthusiasm or passion they may well develop in the job they learn what it is and how to do it. Or alternatively how their future passion may wane. The way I see it is humans are adaptable learning organisms, they change their methods and learn the system. I heard one instance of a girl who wanted to work for the civil service. Each year she would take the online tests or exams and fail. She was only allowed to take the exams once a year. So each year she learnt from her mistakes and then changed her answers. It took seven years before she got a job in the civil service, a job she always wanted to do an had a passion to learn and do. Yet the selection process had failed to select this individual the first time round, it clearly failed and failed the tenacity and ability of a great recruit for an earlier 6 years. In real costs the civil service may have lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in productivity.  So the quality I am talking about is passion.

An individual may pass an interview because they have the skills. Lets say, the skill to make widgets, they then go on to do the job and make the widgets. However, this was all the employer wanted someone to make widgets full stop. Yet another individual who may not have the skill to make widgets has the passion to learn how to make them and would then have the passion to spend their own time learning even more about widgets.  They might not just improve their skills but create an even better widget the world has not seen. It is clear sometimes to get a certain job done it is necessary to learn a new ability. An example of this might be spreadsheets, or powerpoint, the ability to use either of these programs is useful to every manager. Though it may not be necessary for them all. One thing leads to another. It is not necessary to have a skill, it is necessary to have the ability to learn it and it is even far better to have the passion to go beyond what is asked.

In my workplace there are people who do jobs and they know those jobs inside out, the job has become something to do to earn money in order to live. It provides no further passion, they have learnt everything about every possible situation which involves their job. And then these individuals are no longer helped to create other skills utilised. Equally there are some people I have seen who like to harbour their own knowledge and don't let others know what they do. Everything is kept under their hat so as to make them indispensable. Or in their mind they feel indispensable, in reality nobody is. So here's a viewpoint, employing someone who knows little about the job but has enthusiasm and passion to learn and therefore clearly has a pathway where they are going to move and be the biggest asset the department or organization may well ever possess. Now that's a thought.

Passion, Passion, Passion.

Recruitment and it's biggest failure

The fundamental idea of recruitment is to whittle down from the selection pool those candidates who are most likely to fit the job in skills, abilities and knowledge.  Usually because there are so many applicants the selection process will use cut-throat de-selection as a norm.  Employers can reason they are unable to spend time and money going through every single application and interviewing every single person.  It's supported by Occupational Psychologists who sell their service, Human Resource personnel who are basically administration staff and the short sightedness of employers.  What they need to understand is, people like to be in employment, and they like to earn money doing a good job, sometimes they may change over time if they are not given sufficient varied duties and responsibilities, acknowledgement, social satisfaction, have problems in their private life or become physically or mentally unable to do their job. Most employees however would just like to have a stable job and get on with their life.  Once in a while a holiday, or their own little luxury, employees are human beings.  Maybe this is a contrary view of the notion we have careers, when in fact a more likely view would be along the lines of, working class people have jobs and the idea of a career is somewhat of a misnomer.  Another reality is social and economic advancement does not happen.  For the biggest factor of job succession is who your parents were.  If you are born poor the statistics are you will probably always be poor and if you are born with a golden spoon in your mouth you will always be rich.  Opportunities versus social and economic wealth are without doubt married in a partnership which can be seen in any gypsy crystal ball.


It is the employer who decides whether they will incorporate selection methods so they look to the latest trends in recruitment.  However, the bottom line to this is no one will ever know whether those candidates often not selected for short-listing or for a job vacancy are the best candidate. This is not to say there should not be a selection process, just those in place need to be rebalanced.

The reverse of what is called head hunting should be considered, but I have never heard of it.  I wonder what such a thing would be called.  Questions should be asked of employees in organizations, whether those selected actually do the best job they can.  How they were recruited and whether another individual would of been more suitable.  Lets face it. The reality is, we are in an employers market and they should be asking questions about capability just as much as selection. Workforces should be reviewed, the indolent, incompetent and plain uninterested sacked.  Looking around any workplace organization there will be personnel who are mediocre to poor when it comes to output.  Through entire hierarchies they exist and there is a blindness for those in top positions to be questioned on their abilities.  The scyth of capability should be so sharpened it holds no bounds and no areas are beyond being severed.  This does not happen.  Yet the dead wood which turns up for work each day will continue to turn up. The manager who acts on a whim, who has gained their position through dead-man's-shoes will continually rule the roost in any way they feel fit, regardless of organizational procedures, HR policies and what anyone else thinks. They stay and often they advance through the ranks, everyone knows who they are and does their best to keep out of their way.  They are protected by tenure, qualification, incumbent knowledge, but it doesn't mean they know how to do their job or they are any good at it. And organizations with people like this, whose arrogance leads the way are unable to turn the spotlight on themselves.

Those who are failed
Those who are failed are individuals who had a tough life. Have done the best they can but the circumstances around them and opportunities have not been available. They have not had the mentor ship of good examples through their family. The son and daughter who have grown up struggling in a home life with a father who is an alcoholic or a mother who is a depressive. Where they have been living from hand to mouth for years, they then go to school and have to deal with non interested teachers, gangs, youth violence and fear.  Fear of not being accepted as part of the in crowd, not knowing what their future will be like and then acceptance the little expectations held of them will become fruitless gardens because they their dirt knows not the taste of manure. These individuals see the world in a different way, however it does not mean they are not capable.  They may show symptoms of learned helplessness but they are not useless they just don't get the opportunity.   A small spark of assistance can lead to a raging fire of passion in absolutely any sphere of employment or career. They are failed because the so called industrial psychologists of today do not know how to bait a selection hook to take in someone with such potential.  Their questions, IQ tests, assessment centres, personality types fail to understand these individuals little in the way of life skills to have prepared them to pass your tests or interviews.  Selection and recruitments processes are inherently poverty negligent, potential negligent and negligent of equality.  They don't measure what an individual is like when they are motivated, they don't measure dedication, perseverance, in a few words they don't have of Out-of-the-box thinking methods, they rely on correlations and assumptions.

Someone once discussed with me his selection and management style.  Preferring to surround themselves with intelligent people and those who would challenge and debate.  He encouraged the employment of staff from poverty backgrounds, put them on as much training as he could, he engaged and motivated them and had the best team of staff in all the organization.  He said their hunger and thirst was amazing because they had a chance to prove themselves. Pity there are few employers like this nowadays.

Even the incompetent can be successful

Out of some nostalgic perversity, I looked up an ex lecturer of organizational psychology.  She wasn't a bona fide real lecturer but one called in because she could be relied upon by the real man in charge.  She was part way through doing a Ph.d and given the supporting role of helping Masters students with their work.  To tell the truth I didn't think she was that good.  But being crap at what you do doesn't mean you can't be a success.  It was common knowledge she also ran or part ran a management company.  No matter what I think of this person as a real psychologist which personally is pretty low on the scale, (if there were a scale) what I found was a little startling.  It was a single picture of a woman who was standing on a yacht, wearing very dark sunglasses and a life vest.  She fitted the image she had certainly aspired to while teaching a class of students.  The bottom line for me is, as I know this woman I would never in hell employ her as a consultant in my business (had I a business), but yet there she was obviously doing well for herself.  Or giving the image she was doing well. 

Which probably goes to show.  You don't have to be good to do something, just persevere, because even incompetent arseholes can be successful, but I'm sure they will still be incompetent arseholes anyway.