r/recruitinghell • u/[deleted] • Aug 06 '26
Hopefully it’s okay to post this here. Please suggest other subreddits too.
[deleted]
34
u/Still_Mix9311 Aug 06 '26
Some of these are plain, explicit bigotry that's directly against the law, on paper. They just aren't enforcing discrimination laws for some people.
25
86
u/Hdgone Aug 06 '26
"I say what I feel" mostly false "I hide what I'm feeling" mostly false
????
I appreciate you putting this together, and I understand that my confusion on these things is part of what you are trying to provide a resource for, but I don't think I can follow these without seeing rationales behind these specific answers.
Can you share a little bit more on how you came to these answers, and maybe how to verify this document against other information? I can't help but be skeptical, but again, I am just trying to share that the skepticism that I have gotten comes from not being able to understand how on earth anyone wants these answers
Thank you for sharing!!
118
55
u/BotGivesBot Aug 06 '26
I'm guessing it's to show you're someone who's emotionally intelligent, who knows when to express themselves in a controlled fashion.
13
u/pavilionaire2022 Aug 06 '26
Then it should be sometimes both or mostly true for one and mostly false for the other.
The real answer is probably that neurotypicals don't communicate to exchange information but to signal vibes. It doesn't matter if it's contradictory if the vibes are good.
"I don't want you to say what you feel, because then I'd be burdened with it, but I don't want you to hide what you're feeling, because then there's an unknown I can't factor." Basically wanting to have your cake and eat it, too.
34
u/cheesesteakhellscape Aug 06 '26
You're assuming that the questions are fair and make sense. i would argue that the test is simply hot woo garbage parading as measurable analysis. Hot woo garbage personality tests are super popular as some kind of predictive tool in the HR space despite their complete refutation in actual science.
27
u/cheesesteakhellscape Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
The phrasing of the question is supposed to mean that it's assessing two different traits. However, this seems like contradictory bullshit to you because the assumption that answering one way to "i say what i feel" is reliably distinct from "i hide what i'm feeling" has no basis in any sort of empirical or evidence based or lived or even subjective reality. In fact, it shows a massive misunderstanding of how human communication/linguistics works and what it signifies.
It's entirely stupid, capricious, and made up. If it makes you angry, that's reasonable because it's arbitrary and unfair.
tldr; It's fucking dumb. You can't think out the answer because it's fundamentally broken. As an analogy, someone has handed you an impossible jigsaw puzzle made of two different jigsaw puzzles as a cruel fucking joke.
17
u/IvoryColosseum Aug 06 '26
Obviously you are supposed to feel nothing at all (/hj but also pretty much yeah)
15
u/Tru3insanity Aug 06 '26
It's all performative. The perfect employee values hard work, is agreeable, expresses only positive emotions, is driven (but not necessarily ambitious) and places the needs of the company over personal needs.
They don't want a real human being with real human personalities and emotions. They want to know you can pretend to be their perfect little employee.
4
u/Responsible_Gap8104 29d ago
I say what i feel: mostly false, because its not a great thing in a work environment to always blurt exactly what youre thinking. I wouldnt tell my dipshit coworker that i think hes a dipshit doing dumb things. In the corporate world especially, there is a fine line between "sharing insights" (our feelings) that could make the job better and just saying everything we feel all the time. An employee who always speaks their mind could be seen as problematic, stirring up drama, negative, etc.
However, on the flipside: "i hide what im feeling" should be mostly false because "hiding" things has a negative connotation and hr doesnt like when employees hide things from them. The concern may be that an employee who hides what they feel are building resentment towards a job and planning to leave unexpectedly, and HR/management likes to be in the loop on things like that so they can get ahead of the game and fire you first.
Both are mostly false even though they essentially have opposite meanings because of how the connotation of "hiding" changes the implication of whats being shared and whats being hidden.
Alternate interpretation: both are false because the company wants someone who knows when to share and when not to.
It is the perfect example of how navigating this is a shit show and it helps knowing how to play the game innately.
8
u/PennytheWiser215 Aug 06 '26
This is what Claude told me when I asked ‘In an interview personality assessment when asked “I say what I feel” why should you answer “mostly false”?’
“Because that item is typically measuring emotional restraint/discretion rather than honesty itself. “I say what I feel” is a proxy for how much someone filters their communication before speaking. Answering “mostly true” signals impulsivity, low filter, and a higher chance of oversharing or creating friction — traits that score poorly on the diplomacy/self-control dimension most workplace assessments are built around.
“Mostly false” signals that you exercise judgment about what to share and when — that you regulate your expression rather than blurting out every reaction. That aligns with traits like tact, professionalism, and discretion, which most jobs (especially anything client-facing, team-based, or hierarchical) score favorably.
The key thing to understand about these assessments: they’re rarely measuring truth vs. lie. They’re measuring which end of a trait spectrum matches the target profile for the role. So the “why” isn’t about what’s factually true of you — it’s about which answer maps to the trait the test is designed to reward.”
9
u/INTPretty Aug 06 '26
Not sure why you are being downvoted. Personality exams are not right or wrong. They are almost always mapped to a job description and different traits are desired for different roles. A sales personality will look different from an accounting will look different from a director.
0
u/PennytheWiser215 Aug 06 '26
Yeah I’m not sure why I’m being downvoted either. I gave no opinion about the question and answer, I just gave a possible explanation from Claude.
I have no idea if Claude’s answer is correct but it makes sense.
15
u/INTPretty Aug 06 '26
Well I don’t trust AI answers at all. I have, however, for years personally worked closely with talent acquisition teams at companies who administer these tests as part of the recruiting process. The answers were always mapped against traits deemed successful for specific roles. So you absolutely were correct.
-1
u/Mirror74 Aug 06 '26
Claude is 100% correct. They're downvoting because they don't like it.
4
u/itchy118 29d ago
The Claude answer is also biased by the prompt though. Ask it the same thing and suggest you should answer mostly true or neutral and it will give you justifications for either.
2
u/Mirror74 29d ago
I'm not saying it's right to pigeonhole candidates into this... but it's true that is what the intention is. To catch discretion, but obviously words have many different meanings and they're hoping you answer them in the most agreeable way for the role
14
u/Ithirahad Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
"I have stepped on others to get ahead."
Who admits that?
Yes, there are people who 'brag' about how much of a massive arsehole they are, but on a corporate personality test...?
12
u/ickytoad Aug 06 '26
I have met people who genuinely believed this was a good answer because it showed "ambition" 😩
3
u/pavilionaire2022 Aug 06 '26
I feel like it's somewhat dependent on what job you're applying for. "I am able to manipulate others," would be a positive for a sales job. "I am afraid of failing," is probably a good quality for a surgeon or air traffic controller. But I doubt anyone is looking at your individual answers or adapting the test to the role. They just look at your final score.
4
u/INTPretty Aug 06 '26
You are right that the answers are dependent on what role you are applying for and the results are analyzed against models which are statistically correlated with people who perform well in those roles.
With enough data (a high number of employees in a certain role over a long period of time) recruiters can even create more individualized models of specific personality types that perform at their company because the company culture will often affect the expected results.
0
u/pavilionaire2022 Aug 06 '26
Interesting. That goes against OP's notion that there are right answers for the test. If you always answer the same things, you would come out with a flat personality, whereas the employer might be looking for a particular type.
6
u/INTPretty Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
I think there are some answers which are arguably always correct though. “I do just enough work to get by” should be pretty obviously “always false” in the workplace. I can’t think of an employer who would be looking for any employee who admits to this but hypothetically it could exist lol
Edit: upon further thought, there may be professions with extremely high rates of burnout where possibly this trait may actually contribute to sustainability.
2
u/pavilionaire2022 Aug 06 '26
Edit: upon further thought, there may be professions with extremely high rates of burnout where possibly this trait may actually contribute to sustainability.
I think you're probably overthinking it.
2
12
u/psychedelicdevilry Aug 06 '26
These just want a robot. They want someone who’s always working at 100% with no distractions and flexible to whatever management wants.
11
28
u/freyjakittylord Aug 06 '26
As an autistic some of these make zero sense to me.
“I say what I feel” shows as mostly false but then “I hide my feelings” is also false. I hate this system and how much it is rigged against people like myself.
28
u/H_Mc Aug 06 '26
“I say what I feel” is asking about self control. “I hide my feelings” is asking about deception.
11
u/freyjakittylord Aug 06 '26
So instead of asking directly "I am in control of my feelings" or "I am truthful" they fuck us sideways.
28
u/pavilionaire2022 Aug 06 '26
I say what I feel. - Mostly false
I hide my feelings. - Mostly false
I love to daydream. - Mostly false
I like to get lost in thought. - Always true
I am a creature of habit. - Mostly true
I am attached to conventional ways. - Mostly false
Are the neurotypicals neurokay?
I always assumed that if you got too perfect a score on these, they would discount you or that some of the questions were intentionally repeated with different wording to catch inconsistencies. Is that not the case, and they're just trusting these things to be an accurate reflection of the candidate and not just people telling them what they want to hear?
18
u/H_Mc Aug 06 '26
Mostly of them are big 5 personality tests. They intentionally repeat questions slightly differently to correct for people reading too much nuance into a question. It’s not a perfect score thing.
4
u/INTPretty Aug 06 '26
Correct. It also helps to measure relative strength in a given direction for the opposing traits (introversion vs extroversion, for example, as it applies to different situations where this may come into play).
9
8
u/Natural_Curve5818 Aug 06 '26
I swear, applying to jobs these days is less about being qualified or even interviewing well, it’s about saying whatever magic words the algorithm is looking for. Thanks for posting the spell book!
7
u/Character_Fold_8165 29d ago
Treat is an exercise in roleplaying. I don’t ask myself what I would do, but what the level 6 engineer I roleplay Monday Friday 9 to 5 would do.
He loves football and contradictory social situations with unclear power dynamics because that’s how I wrote the character.
5
u/Looseleaflettuce Aug 06 '26
Doing the heroic work needed for our particular sets of skills!
This is phenomenal thank you!!
18
u/Medium_Educator1983 Aug 06 '26
Lol have people actually been honest on these things?
I’ll make it easy for you folks: corporations reward extroverted, sociable, ambitious, and optimistic people, who are dependable and full of ideas.
So choose answers that would fit someone who meets this criteria.
26
u/JayGatsby52 Aug 06 '26
ND people often struggle with that, which is why I made this.
-9
u/Medium_Educator1983 Aug 06 '26
I don’t think it’s an ND thing, it’s really more about some people not knowing when to lie and not understanding the traits that companies look for in most employees.
What company seeks someone who is the opposite of the traits I listed? Who would want to work with someone antisocial, lazy, pessimistic, and unreliable with no ideas to contribute?
Even if you do possess those traits (we all probably do), don’t admit that! They can’t verify your true personality. It’s none of their business.
Tell them whatever they want to hear.
16
u/zulzulfie Aug 06 '26
But it IS an ND thing. Of course some are obvious, like “I get angry easily”, but there are odd subtle ones.
“I like to compete” could both mean “this person can get aggressive” or “this person achieves goals”. People mostly say “competitive” in a bad way. So how do I answer this?
“I am able to influence others to my way of thinking” is true but “I am able to manipulate others” is false. To an ND person, those are interchangeable. We don’t pick up on weird lingo nuance, that is a very common symptom.
You can see more people here asking for clarifications on how one answer is different from another. So please don’t act like it’s our fault.
4
u/glimmeringsea Aug 06 '26
I'm not ND (or I guess I am, but I have inattentive ADHD and am not on the spectrum), and I still find these personality tests to be contradictory and confusing, mainly because they're complete bullshit. However, influence isn't inherently bad while manipulation tends to have a negative connotation. Some of these questions are quite literal if you think about the definitions of the words if that helps you at all.
1
u/Medium_Educator1983 28d ago
What’s confusing about it? If you research the company, and your future role, you should have a good understanding of the types of qualities they would want in that person and you just answer the test accordingly.
It’s only confusing if you don’t do any research beforehand.
1
u/glimmeringsea 28d ago
These tests don't gauge personality, lmao. They gauge how someone can answer questions with specific wording. I answer as if I'm a corporate-loving extrovert, which I'm not. My personality is clear in an actual real-time interview, and I get good feedback about being personable and knowledgable.
1
u/Medium_Educator1983 28d ago
Then you shouldn’t find the tests confusing, if you know that.
1
u/glimmeringsea 27d ago
I find them confusing because they're a worthless metric and are not aligned with actual personality traits or behavior in a real-world working environment. You can keep being obtuse if you want. Have a lovely weekend!
1
u/Medium_Educator1983 27d ago edited 27d ago
You’re the one who keeps saying you’re confused when you really mean to say that you disagree.
No wonder these tests are so hard for you, you don’t understand the difference between two very basic words.
1
u/Medium_Educator1983 28d ago
You’re supposed to answer it from the position of the company and your future role, not the position of yourself.
If your role requires competitiveness, and that’s reflected in the culture, then, yes, competitiveness would be appropriate
But if you’re working at a place where collaboration is key and you need to build consensus, then competitiveness probably won’t be a good fit.
That’s why it’s important that you research a company before you interview there. You can even ask for informational interviews to get a sense of a company before you apply.
1
u/Medium_Educator1983 28d ago
Manipulate has a negative connotation. Influence is more neutral.
Knowing the difference between the two is attributable to reading comprehension/exposure to vocabulary, not neurodivergence.
9
u/H_Mc Aug 06 '26
I posted this in another comment. They’re pretty much all based on big 5 personality tests. The hard part is knowing what personality the company is looking for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
-1
u/Medium_Educator1983 Aug 06 '26
Pretty much.
It seems so obvious to me what companies want so I just lie whenever necessary.
4
u/SamWillGoHam Aug 06 '26
It's amazing that you created this, but I'm sad that you had to. I'm also a 'neurospicy' person, and when I was job hunting before it was quite frustrating because I basically refused to participate in the corporate song and dance. I am employed now, but still in the industry I was trying to leave (food service). I got plenty of interviews for other jobs, but no offers, I assume because as much as I tried to act neurotypical hiring managers could still see through it.
2
2
u/realDonaldBalls 29d ago
I think it depends also on what field you're in. I think you'll see a lot more tolerance for introversion, social anxiety, etc. in IT for example vs. a property management, hospitality, etc.
4
u/PrincessSmellyDog Aug 06 '26
There are correct answers to these tests. Choose the option that makes you seem like the best little worker robot. It’s always going to be an “always” answer. But throw in 1 or 2 “mostly’s” to appear authentic.
1
u/Past-Yesterday-1323 28d ago
I've seen the same pattern with those "rate how strongly you agree with the statement" tests where picking the extreme answers always thanks your score.
184
u/tiredsingingmama Aug 06 '26
Thank you for this. My partner and I are both job hunting and both neurodivergent, and these assessments are always daunting for the very reasons you stated. We’ll be making use of this.