A job application asked me if torture was worse than prostitution (2018)

https://www.askamanager.org/2018/02/a-job-application-asked-me-to-rank-if-torturing-a-person-was-worse-than-prostitution.html

by vector_spaces • 2 years ago

23 20 2 years ago

askamanager.org

Havoc2• 2 years ago

I’ve encountered similar at a major Fin services co.

Don’t recall the exact wording but think stuff like “do you save two adults or one child” scenarios. No clear relevance to job and weird undertones like that where it’s a sorta ethics question but without a clear right/wrong

Part of their psychometric testing sessions. Probably a misguided attempt to check for dark triad or something.

csense• 2 years ago

I'm thinking maybe this kind of question is trying to "create dirty laundry" as a form of "insurance" that can be used to blackmail people.

Want to whistleblow and reveal the company's shady practices? We'll tell everyone you're the kind of sicko who will sacrifice a child's life to help adults, who will believe you!?

Thinking you can just leave if you don't like our low pay and crappy work environment? We'll put it out there that you said you'd kill two people to save one, who will hire a latent serial killer!?

Havoc2• 2 years ago

The questions weren’t quite spicy enough for blackmail - multi choice so you’re not really articulating much of a personal view.

But def weird enough to raise eyebrows.

A competitor also did extensive psychometric testing but no weirdness

lnxg33k1• 2 years ago

I wonder if hiring managers and recruiters go some kind of dehumanising process before starting work, something a la full metal jacket

makeitdouble2• 2 years ago

I mean, I feel confident that “receiving a medal for bravery” is better than “poisoning the town’s water supply” or “torturing a person,” but yeah, the idea of using this to hire people is absurd.

I sympathize with the author's confusion, but then, we have no idea how that question was actually processed nor the intent behind it, so we're only left with a one sided outrage.

IMHO absurd questions can totally be part of an interview, as long as you get something valuable out of it and it doesn't hurt/offend/make a fool of the candidate.

As a thought exercise, they're postulating for a copyright position, if the next step was to have them rewrite the question in a decent way I'd see this a valid first step.

ohmyiv• 2 years ago

they're postulating for a copyright position

The article starts with:

I’m trying to change fields from copywriting freelancer to something in the admin assistance sphere.

But either way, these questions are iffy at best.

Does this really tell you something about the person applying? What about people who game systems like this? How do you weed them out? I went to a career building workshop and the instructor gave us ways to get around tests like this and those automated resume readers.

Did the person applying really think the question through?

Who's morals are they using for the "correct" repsonse? What if the person applying has no opinion on prostitution and ranked it higher than most but the HR person/AI/automated system doesn't agree? Who's right? Does this really matter for an admin assistant job?

There's too much subjectivity in a question and response for this.

and it doesn't hurt/offend/make a fool of the candidate.

People get hurt/offended over stuff like ethics all the time. There's no "proper" answer for that question, so it's about guaranteed that someone will get hurt/offended/feel like a fool, especially if it's for an interview.

Just like the MB test, things like this shouldn't be used for employment. Skill tests, sure, but not ethics "tests".

I will say, maybe for higher-level jobs they _might_ have some kind of bearing. But for the vast majority of jobs, like an admin assistant, it really doesn't help. Unless you're trying to limit your app pool, but even then, it would be better to increase requirements than to use some pseudoscience.

makeitdouble2• 2 years ago

Who's morals are they using for the "correct" response?[...]There's too much subjectivity in a question and response for this.

Except we don't even know if the question was about morals, if there is a "correct" answer.

In particular, as it's an online form there's a myriad of things that can be gained from this that aren't directly related to the content (from the top of my head, how long it takes the candidate to answer, how much back and forth happens etc). Coupled with follow up questions, this could tell a lot about how the person comes to a decision, does it incrementally or not, deals confusing situations etc.

I mean, that's basically what we do in our field with whiteboard sessions. Throw a potentially random question and work with the candidate to see how they handle it.

PS: > it's about guaranteed that someone will get hurt/offended/feel like a fool

Taking your correction on them applying for an admin related role, if they're offended by seemingly absurd question, I think they'll have a hard time dealing with many of the checklists they'll have to fill in their role.

Otherwise if a candidate isn't comfortable with a test or question I'd expect them to discuss it with the interviewer. If that exchange can't happen, the relationship is already in a bad place and I see that application as dead (whoever's fault it is). Imagine entering salary discussion when you can't even ask what an interview question is about.

ClumsyPilot• 2 years ago

sure, but not ethics "tests"

I mean there are legitimate ethics questions, people that work with children should value children and people that are judges should respect the law.

But they don’t get asked ‘is prostitution worse than cancer”, this is an idiots idea of an ethics question

rerdavies• 2 years ago

My theory: they're either trying to avoid hiring libruls; or trying to avoid hiring conservatives. Is prostitution more evil than torture? This might be a very good way to test for liberal/conservative values.

NemoNobody4• 2 years ago

The world is divided almost exactly 50/50 rn - I'll bet a far more benign question would work even but I'm not being sarcastic by agreeing with your sarcasm - that one could work quite well

Maybe the age old divide of our species is wether we fundamentally prefer sex or violence

klyrs• 2 years ago

It's not so black and white, though. A friend of mine is paid quite well to torture people, and this is broadly considered sex work. You wouldn't catch me espousing such nuance in a job interview, though.

serf• 2 years ago

i've shifted between political 'sides' in my life, but my opinions on prostitution (and torture, I suppose) haven't really changed.

tl;dr : I think that's a bad yard-stick.

NemoNobody4• 2 years ago

OK, but a good yardstick to measure where people are at - like your comment.

I can't say I would never torture someone but the only reason I can see myself actually doing so would be for movie reasons, like where the super virus was hidden but I've read toouch data on how tortured people essentially just anything and everything they think you want to hear, I could never outright trust answers I got via torture - the virus is a bad example, I couldn't trust a person I tortured to honestly give me the names of people that are against me, for a better example.

Prostitution tho - that's a whole different thing.

Ever wonder why it's the world's oldest profession??

Bc most men didnt have families like we think of families now, like lots came from families but didn't start one - were single their whole lives.

The military is a great example. Was a lifelong guard, living in the castle barracks keeping his wife and kids there? They didn't really get time off... or choices in general.

Women were also valuable to their Fathers as virgins but a burden as an unwed mother - Mediaval Fathers did not allow their daughters to just hang out with young men.

For lots of men, sex with a prostitute was the only sex, with a women, they would ever have.

CheeseLovers• 2 years ago

Maybe if you take the test you instantly fail the interview. If you call it out as BS, you get short-listed.

jkestner• 2 years ago

These may be captchas, filtering for humans now and training AIs to ethically drop bombs later.

m463• 2 years ago

A guy I know took a test to become a law officer.

One question was "you pull a car over for drunk driving, and it turns out the driver is your mother"

He told me he would just call another officer to drive her home. Apparently they don't want to hire someone who would take their mother to jail.

NemoNobody4• 2 years ago

I had an uncle or older cousin growing up who apparently scored too high on one of those tests and they didn't want to hire him.

Had he insisted they would have but they essentially explained to him that was going to end being very bored and would eventually quit and they would lose their investment training him so they "asked" him to leave the program on his own.

I knew that was bad bad as a kid.

Does check out with current societal interactions with officers tho

more_corn• 2 years ago

A guy sued for being denied employment as a police officer for scoring too high on the IQ test. He lost. Apparently “too smart to be a police officer” is a real thing.

beefnugs• 2 years ago

Whats worse is any kind of "business related morality" questions.

You don't want me to talk casually about how shitty you are to future people... so why are you asking me about how i dealt with shitty in the past?

Do you really want a moral person working for you? Or do you want someone who will shut up and do what they are told? What if my morality is that business leadership and sales is inherently immoral?

it is no win nonsense

NemoNobody4• 2 years ago

Fundamentally, a business must charge more than the total costs and actual inherent value of a product or service - that's what profit is, getting people to pay more than something is worth.

They really did make the iPhones that started selling at $500+ dollars for like $8 something. The people that constructed the phones received none of the additional $492+ bc they were already included in the $8 something

The fact that Apple is one the biggest companies in the world - beloved even and yet functions like that, is all but universally praised for that level of exploitation... THATS the problem, profit itself is the slipperiest slope.

Tbh, if only 2 out of 100 people are actually going to get some of that profit pie - the whole system is just so obviously not worth it, I don't understand why people go to work at all

A job application asked me if torture was worse than prostitution (2018)

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