‘It’s devastating’: UK’s biggest companies locking autistic people out of jobs with personality tests
Posted by pppppppppppppppppd
‘It’s devastating’: UK’s biggest companies locking autistic people out of jobs with personality tests
Posted by pppppppppppppppppd
41 Comments
I’m in the ‘undiagnosed but everyone’s pretty certain’ camp but I’m also an absolute bell end so get it from both angles.
“There is no right answer to choose”
Actually… yes. Yes there is 🙄
Its not just personality tests but it is a big part of it. The problem is that we feel off to non-autistic people so we’re not likely to be hired.
Psychometric testing has been around for years and is such a crock of shit.
I have seen this, from the huge org the Co-op at a high level job. The problem is the tests don’t actually work very well at weeding our anyone in particular, other than those who happen to be experienced in the format of the tests or are able to cheat the system with some sort of program. They’re products sold to HR jobsworths, they’re the quantitative equivalent of a horoscope reading.
Major supermarkets make you do these tests and I keep failing them for being ‘too customer oriented’ 🙄
“Jobs that want social IQ has test that measures social IQ”
It’s not really surprising, the job market is competitive and it’s harder to pass the initial interview as introverts or the socially challenged.
Social skills are a valid requirement for jobs, just like a math or writing skill would be. If autists can ace some tests with specialised capability in factual or logical tests, then they can lose some in other areas – it’s about finding the right work environment as they can do really well in some and even take a leading role in US government administration.
What’s the point in entering an environment you can’t win in. There are just some things soft skills are immensely valuable for and this can’t be glossed over in DEI.
This goes back further. At school, think how many English homeworks might include questions like “How do you think X is feeling about this?” – now how well do you think a kid who has Autism manage to answer this question well?
At the risk of sounding cruel, if you’re struggling with answering a multiple choice question on a hypothetical situation, then maybe a customer facing role isn’t for you?
>“I need to be told everything. I need to know every single detail, for me to properly understand, or to be able to properly figure out what the solution would be.
I sympathise but also understand why this level management wouldn’t be desirable in a supermarket situation for example.
I had a massive issue when I left university because I thought people wanted an honest answer, or the most logical/appropriate one. It took me months before someone pointed out that employers wanted the perfect answer. Why? You are going to be hiring me so you might as well ask for the answer I think is best. They would find out very quickly after they hired me how well I would actually do the job regardless, then base their judgement on that.
I am so 50/50 on those kinds of things, to the point where my Job Center advised me to come in, so she can do the test for me,
TBF, you can bypass them by knowing exactly what the NTs want to hear and keeping your actual thoughts to yourself and instead work yourself to an (even earlier) grave keeping the stress and internal turmoil and physical pain of living life like a performing circus monkey under tight wraps.
*High masking has entered the chat*
And the government locking us out of claiming disability benefits with capacity to work interviews. I want to work, and i do work, but I have my limits. Sometimes people just need a little bit of help.
It’s most companies. Since “culture” and being “the right fit” is high on the list of employees to weed out absolute bellends, autistic people take splash damage because of it.
I am autistic and this matches my experience.
Applying to internships and graduate schemes, I failed every single psychometric test except 1, where I was failed at the next round for “being a little bit quiet”.
Eventually, I was very lucky to find an employer who assessed me by looking at my CV and having a conversation. Almost 5 years on, I’m still there and doing great. I just needed fair assessment to get that opportunity.
I vaguely recall there being academic research suggesting that neurodivergent candidates are disadvantaged by these tests, and court cases that ruled discrimination in instances where employers failed to provide reasonable adjustments.
The face tests are the worst, I remember doing some for new grad roles where you look at someone with an ambiguous facial expression and classify the emotion.
Weirdly enough this only seems to be a factor on (relatively) poorly paid roles. Roles offering at least £60k just send technicals and see if you can code/communicate in the normal parameters of the role.
There is a great book called “Weapons of Math Destruction” which goes into these “tests”. They are absolute BS and generally disadvantage people.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28186015-weapons-of-math-destruction
I’m NT, and really dislike the stupid online tests that shops come up with for min wage jobs, despite having retail experience.
I’ve seen some that have (I think) four possible answers – two that are reasonable (though one is better), and two that are like “leave the puddle of wine and smashed glass in the middle of the aisle with no sign and don’t tell anyone, it’s not your problem!”
Then instead of just choosing the right answer, you have to rank the answers from best to worst, so you have to choose which stupid answer that you would never do IRL is less stupid.
Even when you do get work the company then makes performance reviews which are geared towards people without disabilities.
I’ve had many a manager list my faults as being things specific to people with autism. When I highlighted it in the distant past they basically said that’s just something I need to fix if I want to do the job properly.
More recently employers have realised they can’t do that due to equality laws so when I prove that it directly refers to my autism it gets withdrawn and reworded.
Not that i’m defending the use of phychometrics, they have been proven to be a poor judge of a job applicant time and time again.
My question looking at the article is why would you want to be in a social/customer facing role when you knowingly are introverted or have poor skills in that area? I’m sure we all had teachers who appeared to not like public speaking or colleagues who couldn’t say boo to a goose
This reminds me of the MBTI which loads of Fortune 500 companies use despite it having absolutely scientific backing and was invented by a housewife who had an unhealthy obsession with Carl Jung. And is definitely a cult
> while academics have found that autistic and neurodivergent people view the tests as a negative and inappropriate experience.
I think everyone views corporate pseudoscience bullshit as a negative. Honestly the UK corporate landscape could be greatly improved by governments regulating the typical managerial pseudoscience nonsense into non-existence.
I know we like free markets but the huge on going market failure in this regard seems like it isn’t going to correct any time soon.
I have failed dozens of these in the past few years. I’m undiagnosed, never been tested, though I’ve been accused of autism. They are testing empathy, for someone who knows the role intimately, i.e. the internal candidate they would prefer for this job but have to go through the charade of an open advertisement.
I can feel that I’m just not likable. I’ve gone through years of training to get hard skills that no one really cares about. The media loves to quote, “people can learn a technology far quicker than they can a personality”. I hear very similar from interviewers. Like, if I wanted to entertain people I wouldn’t be applying to process your data, sorry if I’m not creaming myself at the prospect of it.
Your ability to manage stakeholders, communicate effectively, regulate your emotions and interpret directions independently are THE skills for most jobs.
Yeah, I personally feel a bit victimised by the employment process see to neurodivergence. It’s a shame because in good at a lot of things and pretty good with people except in strict professional circumstances. But whatever, I’ve found a role they works in self-employment and I recently got a promotion
I used to think I was just a low-performer with poor impulse control.
What’s stopping people from just lying on these tests? They’re a load of bullshit anyway, so play the game being played against you
These tests are actually horrific — maybe I am autistic?
But they ask you to answer truthfully etc… but, having worked in office for about 10 years now, I already know what good office etiquette is and what isn’t, so why verify?
Then you get these shitty HR portals that ask: ***Your colleague Linda is feeling frustrated with having to actually do some work***, do you:
* ***(A) Offer to take some of the workload off for her.***
* ***(B) Mention is to a manager to see if they can help sort.***
* ***(C) Nothing.***
I mean, in the real world the answer’s obviously (C), but I would put down (B) in the HR portal’s recruitment test. Yet, for some fucking reason that is beyond my ability to interpret the real world, (**A) would fucking be the answer**. *Because it shows gumption* or some other wanky bollocks.
I wish we were back in the days when you can just hand-delivery a CV and cover letter to be considered for a role.
The biggest “Oh crap” moment was realising that the overall unemployment rate for autistic people in the UK is about 70%. More than people with blindness, more than deaf people, even ex-convicts are seen as more employable than autistic people.
[Source](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/the-employment-of-disabled-people-2024/the-employment-of-disabled-people-2024)
Companies doing personality tests lack the ability to understand people and are best avoided.
I don’t apply for jobs if there’s personality tests, those things including group interviews are a waste of time.
But personality tests are just ways to discriminate against people and whenever they ask about diversity and equality questions, don’t answer them or put I prefer not to answer.
It’s being used against you.
Sounds like a legal challenge is needed here. Would a company be ok filtering out disabled wheelchair users by only having steps everywhere?
Personality tests should not be allowed in job interviews. Just my opinion.
“She is applying for entry-level, retail roles at companies including Co-op and Pandora, but finds the tests make an application near-impossible”
Since when does working the tills at co-op need a personality test?
And this is a big reason why I’m dreading the job search once I finish my MA. So many graduate jobs use these bs personality tests and they are often skewed against autistic people like myself, although I could very likely do said jobs with no issues. Personality tests are a bit confusing to me because surely you can easily bend the truth on them and make yourself sound like a social butterfly who is a great team player regardless of who you actually are in reality?
It does help that I’m a bit more outwardly extroverted than a lot of other autistic people but I still often misread social cues and need to clarify what people mean when they say certain things and that upsets some neurotypicals/allistics for some reason? I guess it comes across as not paying attention but some of us have brains that don’t process information very fast lmao.
Why do they want to filter out autistic people. There’s no reason they can’t be productive
Learn what they want you to answer, and do that. No use filling it out like an actual reflection of yourself
Wondering if someone can sort of help me understand where the line is on this? I’m assuming this is a personality test similar to ones I’ve completed for jobs which go along the lines of: “customer A has this problem, which option would be the right way to help” then 4 choices which range from blindly selling them a product they don’t need to listening and finding out the right solution, even if that means redirecting the customer elsewhere without a sale.
I understand how this test might be hard for someone with autism/neurodivergence but ultimately if they can’t identify and solve customers’ needs inline with the company’s ethos then they’re not right for the role?
Perhaps it can be trained? But if so, doesn’t that apply to anyone? As shit as I think these tests are (and some I’ve seen have been total dog shit – I’ve failed some because I have no way to clarify the ambiguous question, frustratingly locking me out of the chance for employment) I assume the tests are in place to remove the need for additional training on behaviours and values.
I sympathise that it must be beyond shit getting locked out of multiple companies’ hiring processes without ever speaking to someone – but would it be different for neurodivergent people in the actual role?
I actually had to do a personality test as part of an application for McDonalds. I failed 🙈
So, if you go to the experts in personality research and psychometric testing and all the rest, they will tell you quite frankly that particular scores or patterns correlate with specific areas of job performance only so much and are never sufficient to make a hiring decision in isolation.
But businesses do strange things. All that complexity and nuance doesn’t really matter. And sometimes, what they want isn’t so much “the best candidate” but to whittle a list of 800 applicants down to a more manageable level. So although we *could* use personality testing as a tool to get better workers, better teams of workers, better organisations, that’s not often been the case. It’s still
The fact that this might adversely impact some groups of capable candidates isn’t a thought. Obviously, it should be since generally we still believe that we should try to avoid capricious discrimination.
The hiring process in general is pretty capricious. Most people involved in the process don’t have any formal expertise or training in what they are doing and use a combination of “well, this is what I’ve seen other people do” and gut feeling. The end result is that *a lot* of good, capable people get looked over for all sorts of strange reasons. Yes, maybe they are neurodivergent, or fat, or have an accent, or are short, or not particularly attractive, or wearing the wrong shoes, but how often do those things *actually* matter for job performance?