The Economist - USA (2020-11-07)

The EconomistNovember 7th 2020 Business 59

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Bartleby Questionable behaviour

H

ere is atest. Assign a score of 1 to 5,

where 1 is “strongly agree” and 5 is

“strongly disagree”, to the following

statement: “I really care about my work.”

If you have answered that kind of ques-

tion before, you have probably applied

for a job at a large company. Psycho-

metric tests, as they are called, have

become increasingly popular.

Eager job-seekers may think the

answers to these questions are glaringly

obvious. For any statement, give a re-

sponse that creates a portrait of a dili-

gent, collaborative worker. Of course,

applicants care about their work, love

collaborating with other people and pay

careful attention to detail. But the people

who set the tests know that candidates

will respond this way. So questions are

rephrased in many different ways to

check that applicants are consistent and

make it difficult for them to remember

what they have already said.

Aptitude tests are not a new idea.

Intelligence tests have been around for a

century and were popular with govern-

ment departments. Charles Johnson,

who has been involved in psychometric

testing for 40 years and was responsible

for constructing the tests used to recruit

British civil servants, says the second

world war had a big impact. The British

were impressed with the efficiency of

German army officers and learned they

had been selected with the help of in-

telligence tests. This led the British to

create the War Office Selection Board.

Alongside verbal and non-verbal reason-

ing, it challenged candidates with word-

association exercises and being made to

lead group discussions.

For high-skilled jobs, these tests are

useful. However, Mr Johnson says there

is a risk with using such tests to recruit

workers for low-skilled jobs. If you select

people who pass sophisticated cognitive

tests, they will learn the job quickly but

will then get bored and leave.

Psychometric tests became more pop-

ular from the 1970s onwards and are now

seen as a useful way of sorting through the

many candidates who apply for the jobs

offered by big companies. “It is a laborious

task to sort through thousands of written

applications,” says Julia Knight, another

occupational psychologist. “As well as

being time consuming, it is not very effec-

tive and subject to bias.”

Questions in such tests may ask a can-

didate to describe their behaviour in hypo-

thetical situations: dealing with an angry

customer, for example. The suggested

answers may all be plausible (apologise

profusely, fetch a manager and so on), so

there is no obviously “right” answer. Nev-

ertheless the aim is to build a profile of the

candidate to see if they have the right

character traits for the job.

People are generally judged on the basis

of five characteristics with the acronym

oceanfor openness, conscientiousness,

extroversion (or introversion), agree-

ableness and neuroticism. The ideal

characteristics can be surprising: it turns

out that introverts are the best train-

drivers as they seem to pay more atten-

tion to details such as safety procedures

and can cope with spending long periods

of their time on their own.

Extroverts do not make the best call-

centre employees because they can

spend so much time chatting to custom-

ers that they don’t get much done. The

most useful trait among such workers,

according to Steve Fletcher, an occupa-

tional psychologist, is assertiveness; this

enables them to deal with more calls.

These tests are used to assess senior

managers, as well as new hires. Along

with oceancharacteristics, testers are

also looking for what is known as the

“dark triad”—psychopathy, narcissism

and Machiavellianism. Factors that can

make people successful as junior manag-

ers may limit their ascent. Candidates

who are good with detail turn out to be

obsessive micromanagers; people who

flourish in sales may have an excessive

need to be the centre of attention.

A large majority of big companies use

these tests but they are hardly perfect.

Paul Flowers, the former head of Co-op

Bank, a British lender, passed his psycho-

metric tests with flying colours, accord-

ing to testimony at a parliamentary

inquiry. But he was later ousted in a

sex-and-drugs scandal that led him to be

dubbed “the crystal Methodist”. Mr John-

son says the tests can be useful, but only

in conjunction with aptitude tests and

structured interviews.

That probably won’t save job candi-

dates from having to take these tests in

future, because they winnow down the

list. But at least they beat the old-fash-

ioned method: drop half the applications

in the bin and pick from the other half.

Companies are relying more and more on psychometric tests

Game-streaming sounds attractive on

paper, but few expect it to transform the in-

dustry overnight. “I would describe the

market as embryonic,” says Mr Harding-

Rolls. Still, there is huge interest: Ampere

tracks 60 firms whose offerings are either

in public testing or available for use. And if

streaming does take off, it is likely to prove

just as disruptive as it has been in other

media. “If you can make streaming work,

you could grow the gaming market ten-

fold,” reckons Mr Pachter. The video-

streaming wars have seen deep-pocketed

tech giants and media companies spend

billions on content. Similar jockeying may

be under way in games. On September 21st

Microsoft bought ZeniMax Media, which

makes the best-selling “Fallout” and “Elder

Scrolls” series of games, for $7.5bn.

It is too early to pick out winners and

losers, but most analysts think Microsoft is

well positioned. Its Azure cloud business is

the world’s second-biggest, giving it a

reach that many competitors lack. Last year

Sony, which lacks cloud infrastructure of

its own, said it was exploring the option of

using Azure to power its own gaming ser-

vices. And unlike Google or Amazon, its

only real cloud rivals, Microsoft has de-

cades of experience in the games business.

But its competitors have strong points,

too. Amazon has 150m subscribers to its

Prime service, which already includes

streamed video and music. Google could

leverage YouTube, where gaming videos

are popular. Facebook plans to pitch its ser-

vice at people who already play simpler,

browser-based games on its existing plat-

form, which boasts over 2bn users a

month. And Sony’s success with the Play-

Station has proved that size is not every-

thing. There is all to play for. 7