I noticed last time I was job hunting that a fair few companies have a stage where you have to take a bunch of online tests to check your skills at maths and solving obscure puzzles where you have little idea what you're even meant to be doing.
Since I'm getting into full job search mode now and don't want to mess it up if I get past the initial screening....any advice for these tests?
Anyone know much about the rationale behind their design and what sort of thing I can be doing to prepare?
Are you talking about things like the Brainbench exams?
Quote from: Caliga on February 13, 2013, 03:06:19 PM
Are you talking about things like the Brainbench exams?
I've never heard that term before.
Googling....possibly.
There's questions like here are 4 weird shapes, which one is the odd one out, and more reasonable yet occasionally difficult questions like here are financial reports for the past 10 years, by how big a percentage did gross income rise between 2 and 6 (for an easy example), etc....
Quote from: Tyr on February 13, 2013, 03:41:14 AM
I noticed last time I was job hunting that a fair few companies have a stage where you have to take a bunch of online tests to check your skills at maths and solving obscure puzzles where you have little idea what you're even meant to be doing.
Since I'm getting into full job search mode now and don't want to mess it up if I get past the initial screening....any advice for these tests?
Anyone know much about the rationale behind their design and what sort of thing I can be doing to prepare?
It's not about what solution you get it's about how you go about solving the puzzle, how you work with the group and how you organize your task.
Group? :unsure:
I've never encountered one with any group element.
Tests like that are just designed to see if an applicant has basice logic, reading comprehension, and mathematics skills. In other words, they just weed out the dumb ones.
In my experience they were also helpful in detecting fraudulent applicants, not so much because of how they did on the test but more because that sort of applicant will often bail on taking them because they're afraid a poor score would expose them. You might be surprised how many people lie on their resumes, provide false references, etc.
Quote from: Caliga on February 15, 2013, 09:26:00 AM
You might be surprised how many people lie on their resumes, provide false references, etc.
I wouldn't be, but most people probably would.
You might be surprised how many people expect people to lie on their resumes?
I'm not talking about exaggeration... I'm talking about outright lying like claiming to have degrees one doesn't have, professional certifications one doesn't have, etc. I challenge you to find an HR department that 'expects' people to lie about those and will hire someone they catch in a lie about credentials. :)
Quote from: Caliga on February 15, 2013, 11:27:51 AM
I'm not talking about exaggeration... I'm talking about outright lying like claiming to have degrees one doesn't have, professional certifications one doesn't have, etc. I challenge you to find an HR department that 'expects' people to lie about those and will hire someone they catch in a lie about credentials. :)
The ones that call to verify expect people to lie about them. :contract: I agree they're unlikely to hire offenders.
Hey, some of the tests I've seen are pretty hard.
The language one is of course piss, and the maths one if you prepare right (actually have a calculator and note paper in front of you) is fine, but those weird logic ones...sometimes reasonable, other times seemingly random.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 15, 2013, 11:33:23 AM
Quote from: Caliga on February 15, 2013, 11:27:51 AM
I'm not talking about exaggeration... I'm talking about outright lying like claiming to have degrees one doesn't have, professional certifications one doesn't have, etc. I challenge you to find an HR department that 'expects' people to lie about those and will hire someone they catch in a lie about credentials. :)
The ones that call to verify expect people to lie about them. :contract: I agree they're unlikely to hire offenders.
For the most part, employers that don't verify information from applicants don't assume that the applicants are telling the truth, they just don't give a shit.