Comment by jofer

Similar tests have been standard for over 20 years. When I worked at McDonald's (late 90's), they didn't do the personality test, but when I applied across the street at Arby's a few years later, they did.

The one that I just got annoyed with and decided it wasn't worth switching from McD's to Arby's was "would you rather read a book or talk to a person?". I mean, I get it, they want people-focused-people, but being introverted and/or just liking books doesn't mean you can't give excellent customer service.

Sure, it's easy to guess what want most of the time, but the fact that personality tests are as widespread as they are in employment is maddening.

Many years later I worked at Chevron (upstream as an exploration geologist -- not a gas station). While they didn't do it as part of the application process, you were required to take a personality/communication style test when you started (ecolors). That's all well and good (it _is_ very useful to understand personalities for communication styles), but in a lot of roles you literally had to wear the colors on your badge. If you wanted to go into management, you essentially had to score "red over yellow". "Greens" and "blues" were considered to be limited to technical roles and were explicitly not given opportunities to advance, though it took a long time to realize that. I started out thinking "hey, this is actually practical" and then over a few years went to "oh, they're using this to decide who moves up... That's a problem". I asked folks and was told by my manager's manager that ecolors were explicitly used in advancement criteria and who got opportunities to lead projects/etc. That's around the time I left. I hear they've dialed that particular bit back a lot, but it's still very weird to me that it's considered a normal and acceptable practice.