I applied for an HR position through their online application portal, and I was very excited about the position because my qualifications perfectly matched the job posting description. I read all about the company, which I found was extremely unique. The company runs on a set of "Principles," which includes a lack of a traditional "management" hierarchy. Departments run as teams who are responsible for their own work. Coming from a company which operated with no principles, no ethics, and a totalitarian management approach, this was very refreshing and appealed to me quite strongly. I was contacted for a phone interview by the HR Generalist who was in charge of Recruiting. She seemed friendly and was very talkative. In retrospect, it seemed that she was more interested in talking about the company than discussing my qualifications, experience, or getting a feel for my personality. She was speaking very fast and seemed to be rushing, and I remember wondering how much coffee she drank. My impression was that her interaction with me was moreso rehearsed than genuine. She said that she was interested in meeting with me, but that I would have to complete some online assessments first, and she emailed me the links to them. I took the tests, spending maybe 45 mins. to an hour on them. (Additionally, the Recruiter mentioned that there would be Criminal Background and Credit Screening at some point, and a Panel interview.) The testing included personality, honesty, and skills questions and if I remember correctly, they were all multiple choice. I found that some of the questions were difficult because they were ambiguous and/or did not give enough information. Some of the honesty questions were "How much have you stolen from an employer?" or "Do you smoke marijuana?" I know that I am a very honest and trustworthy employee, and I know I aced the Skills portion of the tests. However, a couple weeks later, I received a letter that I was no longer being considered for the position, with no explanation. The tests apparently gave them an impression that I wasn't a good fit for the job, which I assume was the Personality Test. But this could mean anything from I'm too assertive...to I'm not assertive enough...to I'm overqualified...to I'm too comfortable working independantly, etc..etc...In other words, who knows? But I do know one thing--as an HR Professional myself, it's obvious that their recruiting method is alienating great potential employees, such as myself, who are eager, honest, flexible, skilled, and are enthusiastic about the company's "Principles." I would have been an excellent employee, so it's really a shame. Wondering why I was rejected, based solely on the tests, left a bad taste in my mouth of the experience, to be quite honest.
