Frustrated by recent interview...

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So I recently had an interview at a company for a technical position.

First, before I even came in, they had me do this 'wonderlic' test online - I guess sort of a personality test - lots of statements that you had to either somewhat or strongly agree / disagree with - there was no choice for 'no opinion'.

While I was there they had me do a second wonderlic test - this one was 88 statements and you had to answer a pair of true / false questions for each - basically saying the statement should be true or false for an ideal person, and then is true or false for yourself. I guess another personality test.

Before I get to the rest of this story, the short story is that I was sent a rejection email by the company two days after the interview - basically a form letter saying they decided to go with someone more qualified. I'll get to this later but really frusterating because they learned no more about my actual technical qualifications from the interview than they could have determined from my resume, because they asked me almost nothing.

Anyhow no idea how I did on these wonderlic tests and maybe I am just being self-conscious about my aspiness lately but I really wonder if I'm almost predisposed to do poorly on this sort of personality test, though I answered them as best as I could. Anyone else think maybe we are at a disadvantage on this sort of test? I wish I knew if I how I did on these tests had something to do with the rejection, or not. I just fear that there's some sort of magic wonderlic formula where if you answer a certain way, the formula concludes you're a jerk, laza, an as*hole or who knows what else?

Secondly, my other frustration is with the actual in person interview. I met with two people, the directory of IT and an HR lady.

The IT director, who I would assume would want to go over some technical stuff with me or at least ask me some specific questions, just asked me one or two general things like 'what have you been working on', told me about their company and what they do, and gave me the chance to ask him questions. I thought I asked thoughtful questions that expressed my interest and enthusiasm for what they are doing but at the same time I felt really empty after talking to him because the whole thing happened where I had no chance or just didn't do a good job telling him about my skills etc. but I felt that was largely due to him not really asking me anything of substance.

Next was the HR lady - she asked me some pretty standard stuff - why I had left each of my previous positions, my salary history, but then some personal stuff too like hobbies, etc. But at the end of the day, IMHO, nothing really of substance either.

I guess I am just frustrated because lately I feel like I just come off like one giant a-hole to the NT"s even though I don't mean to. I try to be nice but often I'm just quiet. Being quiet person just puts them off even if you just want to avoid getting into bad situations with them by being quiet. Why can't they see it for what it is - I feel like they think if I'm quiet I don't like them or have something against them. Not true.

Your post remind me this: http://codingjohnson.com/he-got-1-percent-we-cant-hire-him .

They want team players above all. I don't say you're not a team player. What I mean is that the prefer a social butterfly instead of a serious professionnal.
Psychometrics is not calibrated to measure anything outside of the average.

Thanks for that link. As you might imagine its spot on for my situation, at least from my standpoint. I really wonder just what it is that these tests are supposed to determine - they certainly don't ask you things directly like "are you a team player?", "do you respect authority?" and things like that. Plus I have to wonder about companies who use these results to influence hiring - are they trying to hire a bunch of people with the same personality type? Whatever happened to diversity? Why can someone fit in at a company if any only if they supposedly have a particular personality type?

First I feel the need to warn you that I'm not at ease with expressing myself in English. I don't know how it came out. Even though I am not an expert, nor an amateur on the hiring process, I hope you'll find here an element of information for you questioning.

I suspect they don't ask directly, because they expect the candidates to lie. If they jumble what they want to know, into a salad of questions in a way they that seems confusing to the candidate who would want to connect the dots so he/she will be able to convince with his/her lies, then the company will be confident that the result of the test-s will be truthful. So there are false negatives. If the candidate is honest, they may think otherwise if the test say so. They don't want to assess the qualities of any particular person, they just want a system that seems to work the way they expect it to. They think it's business as usual, to refuse someone, even if they are not sure if it's the right thing to do.

Sometimes it's difficult, if not impossible, to depart from an employee who is not a ?good fit?, without having to lie in a manner that may be a liability, if the former employee were to decide to challenge the dismissal. They prefer to discard a potentially talented candidate, than hiring someone who will not be able to do the job. Hiring good candidates is a pet peeve of the human resources. They want to mitigate the human factor (!) in choosing the right candidate, causing them to automate the process. They administer tests to that effect. But the tests are no better than flipping a coin. The test maker determine which questions to ask to get meaningful informations from the candidate, and choose the answers they think a good candidate would give for each question. So administering the test is easy. Everything past a certain threshold get discarded, and the hiring process continue with those deemed to be fit with regard to the test. But the same tests are used everywhere, and everywhere the tests identify more or less the candidates with the same Q/A profiles. They all hire the same kind of persons, with the same results, and because they individually compare themselves with everyone else, and see they are no worse than the competition, they take it as a confirmation that their hiring process is adequate. I don't know if my deduction is right, tough.

I just lost my thread of thought, I will try to give an answer to the remaining questions. The managers want to hire those they will be able to manage. If they don't understand (the personality of) a candidate, they very well may feel intimidated, so they want to hire people they won't perceive as a menace. But the managers are not up-to-date, they delegate an employee for the interview. The employee does not necessarily interview a candidate for a post the employee him(her)self is able to fulfil. So you get some one who expect the candidate to give textbook answers, or ask textbook questions. And the best HR can do, is identify cues as to if the candidate is an extroverted. Because otherwise, it will be taken as a red flag (I don't know why, it's possible, that being extroverted themselves, they are suspicious about those who are not just like themselves). OK I forgot what I wanted to say.

Corporations are not what they used to be. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is up to. They don't know how to identify the best fit for the company. They go with the wave, and the wave goes aground. Those who can will get out of the boat before it will sink. In the meantime, they do what they can to stay afloat. Oftentimes you can circumvent HR if someone already working at the place suggest you name to his/her boss. It's not a meritocracy, unfortunately.

EDIT: I added spaces so it's easier to read. I have a slight headache, and I'm not sure what I wrote is useful.
edit2: Corrected some errors, and removed something about nts.

These personality tests are just hogwash. Some psychometrics companies figured out how to develop a vertical market by selling the accuracy of these tests to HR departments. Really they are an incredibly inaccurate predictor of success in the workplace and you might be able to challenge this in court if you think it can be reasonably proved that the test results precluded your employment. On a job interview that I didn't care one way or another about, I decided to give brutally honest answers even though these answers might get my application rejected. In fact, one question asked (Scale of 1 (disagree)-10 (agree)) If I agree that open work spaces are good ways to function in an office. I marked the 1. Another asked about teamwork and meetings being the most productive and I also marked it as a 1. I accepted the job offer and later asked my boss if he even looked at the test results. He didn't even know that I was given any sort of test.