Cosmic Comedy…redux…

So?  What happened yesterday?  Hard to say, I’m still scratching my head.

The personal cosmic test was passed, but with a little help; the child with a 2-hour school delay ended up with no school.  This was announced just minutes before I would have to leave the house.  Meant I didn’t have to scramble back in bad weather to pick up this child, could leave BOTH of the kids at the sitter’s.  My parents called seconds before I left and said the main highway was clear and safe.  It meant I didn’t need to leave quite so early and could take a moment to chill out before leaving.  Thank you, thank you for small occasional blessings.

As for the pre-employment test: pure weirdness.  A mere 12 minutes long and I’m still puzzling over it, 24 hours later. 

Let me back up a bit.  I’ve applied for a low-to-mid-level technical role with a Fortune 100 company located within a reasonable commute.  This company uses a third-party consulting firm to administer local recruitment processes for these kinds of technical roles.  The pre-employment test screens candidates based on test scores against required minimum scores for open postings.  If a candidate achieves at or above the job’s required minimum score, they will be reviewed by the hiring department.  If they pass the review, they’ll be interviewed.  Possibly hired, depending on whether attrition or budgeting issues have impacted the position before the hiring decision. 

It could take another 7-10 days before I find out whether I’m eligible for further review, another week to a month before I find out whether I’ll be interviewed. 

In the meantime, I’ll have not a clue how I did on the test.  The test is formulaic (see Wonderlic Personnel Test); it’s a little frustrating to think THEY’LL know…

Upfront before the test, the Administrator assures us it’s doubtful we’ll get through all the questions.  No kidding.  The questions are jam-packed together tightly, requiring one to work slowly to read the text carefully so as not to cluster data from multiple questions.  If you have any vision problems, you’ll be screened out early.

As for the questions: several were comparisons of proverbs – find two that are most similar.  If you’re not well-read, a WASP or from a culture that uses these proverbs, you might not do well at all on these questions.  I know I struggled with them and I’m far better read than most of my contemporaries.  If I was a member of a minority group whose primary language wasn’t English or whose religion wasn’t Christian, I’d be hard pressed not to see this as a discriminatory tool.

One proverb was “Look not upon the wine when it is red” -- are you familiar with it?  Do you know its origin?  (Hint: it’s Biblical...)  And if this proverb was compared with 4 other proverbs, one of which is “a watched pot never boils”, would you say the watched pot proverb was similar/dissimilar from the red-not-red-wine proverb?  Could depend greatly on your personal interpretation of the proverb in question, wouldn’t it?  (I know my Baptist neighbor and I would disagree greatly about the interpretation!)

Still wondering how this helps with screening for this particular role, since it’s an intelligence test and not an aptitude test, per se.  Hmmm.

The tested cohort was interesting, a predictable spread of people from this locale for this particular posting.  12 people, of which 3 were women, two were Asian/Poly-Asian, the rest white males.  It looked like part of the screening was already done before we even made it to the test.  Not a good thing at all, to be so lacking in diversity.  Wish I’d stuck around to see the next cohort; maybe I’d feel better if I saw the next group was more representative of the population locally.

The most curious item wasn’t the test itself – it was the person next to me.  He asked the Administrator a question about the test, displaying an Aussie or Kiwi accent.  How odd in this particular Midwestern small town, to find someone who’s not a corporate executive with this accent.  Odder yet, that he’s testing for this particular mediocre technical job.  Seems like he’d come a long way for this bit of strangeness.

Overall, a really peculiar experience, begging for some sort of closure, in need of a mental Dustbuster.  I could feel as I entered the testing room that things were going to be strange.  I recited a little mantra before the test, recited a little mantra coming out, Everything is perfect in this moment; in this moment, I have everything I need.  Hoped that would help purge this sensation of weirdness.  (Had to fight off the temptation to say, Everthing is perfectly *weird* in fhis moment...)

I’ll have to let go, let this play out, dust away all the little crumbs and dust left behind psychically from this experience.  Blog it off. 

And look not on this wine for now.

11:18:51 AM    comment []