From: doug@netcom.com (Doug Merritt)
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 93 08:48:58 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Personality BS (was: Should we oppose the Data Superhighway/NII?)
In-Reply-To: <wex@media.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <199311101649.IAA15443@mail.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


"Alan (Gesture Man) Wexelblat" <wex@media.mit.edu> said:
>Hunh.  Doug, I'm sorry to oppose you on this, but I think that the sort of
>bullshit pry-into-your-personal-life stuff that companies are resorting [...]
>[The questions have to do with all kinds of shit like "Have you ever had a
>homosexual experience?" and "Have you ever shoplifted anything?" and "How
>do you feel about XXX?".  Totally unrelated to my job skills.]

We're not in opposition, I very strongly agree. It's just that we're
talking about slightly but importantly different things. The thing you're
referring to is indeed outrageous. So are the presumption-of-guilt drug tests
that I understand that 80% of all Fortune 1000 companies now require. (The
latter is particular heinous, since all tests have a non-zero false-positive
rate, for one thing.)

But what I was referring to was the common interviewing strategy of trying
to figure out whether someone will get along with the existing group,
not by prying into their personal life or giving them personality tests,
but just by the age-old method of discussing everyone's impressions of
the candidate. This all by itself is what we were told is unacceptable
discrimination (against the personality-challenged, presumably. :-)

>It's a total load of crap and should be illegal.  I, for one, am glad the
>gov't is telling its contractors NOT to do that.

Sorry, but I am pretty sure that giving personality tests is quite ok,
so long as they are one of those bullshit Supposedly Scientific things based
on Meyers Briggs or the Minnesota Multiphasic Aptitude Test or some such,
and as long as they are uniformly given to all candidates.

So they're outlawing the reasonable and allowing the unreasonable, the
worst of both worlds.
	Doug