Added-value assessments like these have dramatically changed the game for retail managers like Dennis Hannah, a Blockbuster store manager in Portland, Oregon. "Having a guide for the interview phase takes away one-third of the time that I have to spend preparing for an interview," Hannah says. "With Unicru, we know that all of the necessary data is already in the system, or the application never would have landed on our desks."
Alison Overholt (aoverholt@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company staff writer based in San Francisco.
Last fall, I saw my own employment future: I was destined to be an assistant manager at the largest Blockbuster store in Portland, Oregon. To win the job, however, I first had to take a Unicru assessment test. After completing it, I sat down with store manager Dennis Hannah to talk about the results -- and to find out whether or not I was Blockbuster material.
Navigating the computer's menu screens and answering the application questions took me about 25 minutes. Identifying my free hours and providing references were easy. So was typing in my job history. My only real twinge of uncertainty came during the personality segment. Should I really have admitted that I'm more competitive than I am polite?
Five minutes later, a computer-generated fax of the application and its assessment arrived on Hannah's desk, and we sat down to go over it. The system had automatically transferred my biographical data, job history, references, and possible WOTC (Work Opportunity Tax Credit) eligibilities into a neat, easy-to-read chart. When we started to read the application assessment, the results were eerily accurate. But I got a green light to move on to the interview phase because the test revealed that I was "more likely to act cheerful, polite, and friendly; cooperate on a team; effectively solve customer problems; and take the lead to help."
The test also suggested a number of follow-up questions. One suggestion was for Hannah to ask me about "the biggest conflict or clash that you've had lately. I don't mean a fistfight, necessarily, but an argument, disagreement, or misunderstanding." It then advised, "Listen for: stays tactful, solicits others' concerns, controls anger, tries to solve differences." I guess I answered "True" for a lot of statements such as "Slow people irritate you" and "A lot of people do annoying things." Perhaps I'm more cut out to write for a business magazine.
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Recent Comments | 3 Total
October 1, 2008 at 12:53pm by Erik Holloway
David Scarborough states in this article that an application can be completed in 10 minutes or less. Who is he kidding. Try 45 to 60 minutes! In addition to that, you can't take the answers from unicru with you to another site that uses the exact same test. It would be nice if one could logon to unicru, answer and/or update a single profile then submit it to all the retailers that use the unicru software. Besides that, the tests are completely irrelevant in that the human factor is completely removed from the process. Now hiring managers are considering a color or a number to hire for a job instead of a real person. In addition to this test being irrelevant, any candidate in their right mind that really wants a job will not answer the questions how they really feel or honestly, they answer the questions on how they think a good employee “should” answer or what the employer “wants” to hear. This totally invalidates the candidate. The fact that so many companies spend money on this program is disturbing. It comes down to the dollar as everything always does. As Mike Roemer states above “We've taken a two-week hiring process and brought it down to 72 hours.” They saved a lot of money reducing this time. They now have a bunch of liars working for them, as does any other company that uses this software.
September 26, 2009 at 1:27pm by Yono Suryadi
Thanks for this valuable information. Regards!
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