Comment by saynay
2 months ago
Honestly, quotas would probably have been better than what was done here. Inventing a test (or 'questionnaire' as it was called here) where the goal was to filter out almost everyone who did not have the answer key, then only giving that answer key to the preferred race is just such a terrible way to do it.
“Such a terrible way to do it” is a huge understatement.
It is so beyond egregious it should be criminal. And that’s no hyperbole.
its actually a personality test, that ideally should be designed to be well-suited to filter out personality types that tend to be successful at the job.
The scandal was coaching people how to pass the personality test. That's just a waste. You end up getting people who are a bad fit for the job, and will ultimately not be successful long-term
For instance, I will ace any aptitude test at 99.9%+ percentile easily (I always do at any standardized test, SAT, GRE, MCAT etc). Yet I would be a terrible terrible fit for ATC. The level of detail-orientedness it needs day to day for me would be a challenge. I can do it for short periods of time of absolute concentration, but my god, there is no way I would last at the job long-term. Training me would have been a waste of scarce resources. But I know several people that such tasks energize them and may not score as high on the aptitude test, but would be a better fit for that job long-term
If done well, including personality test could have been a good way to produce better outcomes, and increase the early part of the pipelines by opening it up to more people than just CTI grads.
Personality tests being useful makes sense, but personality tests where candidates are sparse and the training/hiring bottleneck has already been passed by candidates is terrible.
Also, I have a very hard time believing these "correct" answers are representative of the already hired candidates. Worst subject in school was science, worst in college was history, and participated in four or more high school sports, but no correlation on whether they believe it is important to be fast or accurate in their work? Applied to five or six jobs in the last three years? Is bothered "more than most" by criticism from others? [1] I almost find it easier to believe that they were blatantly playing into negative stereotypes of certain minority demographics than that this survey was fit to describe already hired ATCs.
[1] https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
The switchup of 'worst' subject in high school to college seems so striking to me. At best, I could see it coming from an over-fitting of data. At worst, it was a test designed intentionally to fail anyone without the answer key. Not even 'playing in to stereotypes', but 'what combination of answers did no one choose, so we can block everyone?'