In Europe I've never seen these tests as an entrance exam; just yesterday I watched Persona and was surprised that McDonalds of all companies seems to require such testing.
What's the deal here? Companies are so desperate for any criterion to reduce the pile of applicants? Do they believe it helps? Do they look for a few of these profiles and never the others?
Hiring is hard, I know, but I only know of these models in the context of understanding existing teams, not hiring for individual positions.
The dirty secret of recruitment software/processes is that recruiters are dealing with hundreds or thousands of resumes, the vast majority of which they will end up rejecting somewhere along the funnel, and they are eager for better ways.
It's actually pretty draining and difficult doing multi-way comparisons between so many candidates, let alone doing it day after day. And recruiters/HR are only human.
So any technology or approach that can attach a number/rank a job application is seen as hugely welcome. If Bob scored 56 out of 100, and Sue scored 87, then even if we have doubts about the methodology, surely we can still go ahead and reject Bob based on such a large difference! Then we don't need to spend a lot of time looking at Bob's resume, we can screen him out early on.
The dirty secret is that it doesn't even matter that much whether the scoring process has any real science behind it - the mere fact of attaching a number is so desirable that employers are wide open and begging for this kind of capability. At the end of the day, who really cares if Alice was better that Bob or not? Virtually no companies have the HR performance monitoring in place to even know this anyway.
That's why in the HR world, psych testing firms are not quite fly by night, but they are the kind of companies an entrepeneurial type can set up in a couple of weeks with very little tech but a lot of powerpoints, and immediately start selling to really big companies that will funnel a lot of money their way. Such companies normally make a big song and dance about the scientific verifiability of their technology/approach, even to the extent of having on-staff psychologists.
Many people would feel though that the process has little more validity than reading tea leaves, or drawing up astrology charts.
>What's the deal here? Companies are so desperate for any criterion to reduce the pile of applicants? Do they believe it helps? Do they look for a few of these profiles and never the others?
Yes. They are looking for anything that lends credibility to their choices and that they believe objectively guides them toward the right candidates. Truth is, it's a total crapshoot but no one wants to acknowledge or believe that.
What's the deal here? Companies are so desperate for any criterion to reduce the pile of applicants? Do they believe it helps? Do they look for a few of these profiles and never the others?
Hiring is hard, I know, but I only know of these models in the context of understanding existing teams, not hiring for individual positions.