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0 pointsClosi4y ago0 comments

You don't require a degree in human psychology to evaluate if someone is a team player in a group assessment.

I've been assessed during a similar group assessment (we had to work together to produce a layout for a shopping centre), and also been an assesser for one of these excercises. All you are really trying to identify are:

1) The people that won't help others, and will intentionally try to throw other candidates under the bus (so you make sure you never hire them).

and

2) The people that do genuinely try to help the other candidates who are struggling (so you can hire them).

It's not exactly some sort of highly-complex psychological evaluation, you are just seeing how people work in a group task.

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6 comments · 2 top-level

chrisseaton4y ago· 2 in thread

Who's not the team player in this story? The person who stands up and tries to provide some leadership in a situation that has stalled?

function_seven4y ago

How did they do that? A couple possibilities:

1. "You're all being mired in nonsense. Give me the board, hand me the packets, and I'll show you how it's done."

2. "Okay, let's organize this somehow. I'll make a list of related widgets and gadgets. Becky, can you see if we all have the same dooh-dad structure?"

I'd say 1 is an asshole, and 2 is a Team Player™

chrisseaton4y ago

...but the recollection doesn't differentiate between these two so it doesn't seem to be the important factor?

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bjourne4y ago· 2 in thread

Yes, you do need a degree. However you react in this artificial situation in which you are grouped up with seven stranger has no bearing on your performance as an engineer. Furthermore, if you had a degree in psychology and wanted to perform an experiment like this you would need to seek approval from an ethics committee and they would turn down your request because the experiment is fucking stupid. Whoever devised this "IBM Asshole Test" is the real asshole here.

fatbird4y ago

The test wasn't to determine your performance as an engineer, it was to see if you demonstrated bad behaviour working in a group under pressure. You could be a great engineer and I'd still pass you up if, in this test, you were rude and abusive, or impatient and condescending to the rest of the group.

ClosiOP4y ago

You need a degree and an ethics committee in order to do a simple group task interview?!

We are seeing how people can work in a team to complete a simple task to help a hiring decision, not replicating the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Do we need professional actors and casting directors to judge the role-play excercises? We should probably get journalists to do the interviews too.

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