Hogan Assessment (???)

[Art Rose]

It’s yet another psycho babble requirement that the “Human Resources” types came up with in order to justify their part in controlling the hiring process.

Years ago pilots were hired by talking with senior management pilot types, then taking a aviation evaluation either written and/or sim check. All aviation based and produced very good results.

Along comes HR (what use to be known as personnel) who developed a culture using such titles as “Human Resource Specialist” and then “Senior Human Resource Specialist”. These are what we use to call “clerks”.

These HR types can’t tell the difference between a bird or an airplane, so using aviation based evaluation doesn’t work for them. Enter the psycho babble test such as the Hogan. And it’s pure psycho babble. Many will flunk this test, and a very qualified applicant will be tossed aside.

There are sample Hogan’s online. Go take one and see for yourself.

We suffer from things like Hogan tests because we suffer from too much non-productive middle management. The bureaucracy they have surrounded themselves with, to justify their existence, is honestly out of control.

Doc has it correct. Human Resources is a large contributor to the problems we have. These psyc tests we're talking about are commonly used in the vetting and on-boarding processes. They are essentially worthless. In the past, I've been requested to retest in order to get the result a new employer needed. They really wanted me to come work for them.

Labor management experts, and their implementation of programs such as Six Sigma, Kaizen, Total Quality Management, and several others, are also a huge part of the problem. Too many employers continue to believe in a performance review system. Performance reviews are a worthless and pathetic method to measure an employee.

So many problems, with solutions possible, but only if we eliminate the majority of the drain caused by a bloated middle management.

Edwards Deming made it so simple, yet we continue to attempt to reinvent the wheel.

 

[LoneAspen]

So funny to see this, I just saw some of the costumes from Hogan’s Heroes today. I was surprised at how small they all were.

Oh, where? Is there an exhibit somewhere? I love going to old Hollywood and TV exhibits where they show props, costumes, etc.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

There are no correct/incorrect answers. The questions and answers define your personality. If ur personality doesn’t fit in with what the company is looking for then you don’t pass.

The answers that get you the job are the correct answers.
The answers that don't get you the job are the incorrect answers.
There is no one personality that everyone in a company has.

 

[bflynn]

Comedy aside, I'm still hoping for a proper real world answer.

It's a culture thing. Some companies believe that certain personality types don't thrive in their environment and/or are disadvantageous to the company. In the situation of aviation,they may be using Hogan to screen for fit, to evaluation problem solving techniques or maybe to identify pilots who naturally exhibit deadly attitudes. I can't tell you how any particular company is using it, but thinking from a hiring manager position, I can offer suggestions of what they might be thinking.

 

[Fracpilot]

It's a culture thing. Some companies believe that certain personality types don't thrive in their environment and/or are disadvantageous to the company. In the situation of aviation,they may be using Hogan to screen for fit, to evaluation problem solving techniques or maybe to identify pilots who naturally exhibit deadly attitudes. I can't tell you how any particular company is using it, but thinking from a hiring manager position, I can offer suggestions of what they might be thinking.

UPS and United use the Hogan as a screening tool to get an interview.


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[Velocity173]

Sounds like the biographical history section that I busted on the Navy’s flight aptitude test. Passed all the technical aspects but since I would keep a $20 bill that I found on the ground vs giving it to the homeless, I wasn’t their type of candidate.

 

[AggieMike88]

UPS and United use the Hogan as a screening tool to get an interview.

Which is how I discovered it, looking at Ameriflight's flow program for UPS.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Which is how I discovered it, looking at Ameriflight's flow program for UPS.

UPS and United use the Hogan as a screening tool to get an interview.


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I’ve known pilots, ATP’s with 15,000+ hours, multiple transport types, heavy 121 and international experience with resumes that 10 years ago would have guaranteed them jobs where ever they wanted. Yet, because of a bogus Hogan test they were deemed “unacceptable”.

HR has done more damage to the hiring process than they ever improved.

 

[Skip Miller]

So funny to see this, I just saw some of the costumes from Hogan’s Heroes today. I was surprised at how small they all were.

Except for Sgt. Schultz's costume, I presume.

RIP, Norman!

-Skip

 

[Fracpilot]

I’ve known pilots, ATP’s with 15,000+ hours, multiple transport types, heavy 121 and international experience with resumes that 10 years ago would have guaranteed them jobs where ever they wanted. Yet, because of a bogus Hogan test they were deemed “unacceptable”.

HR has done more damage to the hiring process than they ever improved.

I know plenty of great dudes I flew with in the military and civilian jobs that busted UAL’s Hogan. UAL recently trimmed the questions. I don’t know if they cut the pool down altogether or if they altered some of the questions as well.


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[schmookeeg]

Has hiring softened recently? I took a job at a 135 around this time last year, and the test seemed to be "fog this mirror 3 out of 5 tries"

I'm convinced I could have gotten multiple $5,000 referral bonuses out of them using the techniques documented in "weekend at bernies".

I've taken a series of those personality evals at various coding gigs. I'm pretty consistently rated a "psychopath lacking only an ice cream van" on those, but they hire me anyway. I assume, same as piloting, because of scarcity.

 

[AggieMike88]

Sure it wasn't because you brought ice cream to the HR interview?

 

[schmookeeg]

Possible. Hey, it got me 9 weeks of the best ground/sim/flight training in my life, plus a healthy slice of logged TETP ... and a paltry amount of couch-change in payroll. Almost made it worth waking up at 4am.

 

[MuseChaser]

Has hiring softened recently? I took a job at a 135 around this time last year, and the test seemed to be "fog this mirror 3 out of 5 tries"

I'm convinced I could have gotten multiple $5,000 referral bonuses out of them using the techniques documented in "weekend at bernies".

I've taken a series of those personality evals at various coding gigs. I'm pretty consistently rated a "psychopath lacking only an ice cream van" on those, but they hire me anyway. I assume, same as piloting, because of scarcity.

And, now that you've given me my first needed belly-laugh of the day, I'm off to do four hours of quality lawn mowing. Thanks. Excellent post.

 

[flyingron]

Anybody who administers the Meyers-Briggs hokum as anything other than for entertainment purposes should be shot. Utter and complete nonsense without anything to back it up. You might as well read the astrology column.

 

[Ravioli]

Labor management experts, and their implementation of programs such as Six Sigma, Kaizen, Total Quality Management...

Edwards Deming made it so simple, yet we continue to attempt to reinvent the wheel.

Help me with this. You want to slam the programs, great. But then you credit Demming, who was the author behind THIRD program in your list. What's up with that?

At least you didn't talk TQL, which was Crosby's BS in the 80's. He said Quality is free, but in the same book he talked about tracking "the cost of quality." The two things together tell me I don't have to track the cost of quality because the initial assertion is that the cost is Zero and needs no tracking.

Also, lest it gets lost... none of the programs you mention are labor or HR related metrics.

 

[denverpilot]

Help me with this. You want to slam the programs, great. But then you credit Demming, who was the author behind THIRD program in your list. What's up with that?

I was wondering about that. I worked for a place that was constantly chasing the stupid Malcolm Baldridge Award during that timeframe, too. Never seen so many useless meetings...

I think your question about why he’s talking about stuff that technically isn’t an HR metric, is that when management goes off on these wild goose chases, often the only people they trust to help announce them and run the little training sessions and stuff, who they also feel have the bandwidth to do them, is the HR staff. They end up knee deep in the hoopla.

It was the nice lady from HR who sent my team offsite with a smile to go to a “team building” event where they had rented a huge conference room in a hotel and set up a giant fold up board made to hold thousands and thousands of colored dominoes.

The idea was the team would learn to work together to set up this enormous thing throughout the day and do hours and hours of work, then knock the dominoes over and go ooh and ahh.

They apparently underestimated the number of total klutzes on my team as well as just how ****ed a room of 20 people will get at the two people who keep knocking down thousands of dominoes too soon, considering we had all heard that previous teams were allowed to go home early when they’d finished the goal.

Talk about Lord of the Flies. People who didn’t even work in the same department started “banning” the klutzes from going anywhere near the board. Literally told them to get off and stand still. LOL!

Apparently the consultants hired to run this whole thing never thought about what to do if everyone in the room wanted to kill two people by 3PM or so. Hahahahaha.

HR magically lowered the number of people participating per day and stretched the things into the following week, and only used half of the board after that.

Which, we all thought... was very funny. If you first don’t succeed, only do half the job!!

 

[MuseChaser]

In my line of work, "Shared Decision Making" was a big buzzphrase a while back. The idea was to make all "stake holders" (the people who actually did the work and produced results) believe they were an important part of the decision-making process above us. We'd have extra meetings, extra paperwork to complete, and conferences to gather our input... then the idiot management above us would make the decisions anyway, completely disgregarding the input we had given, then share those decisions with us.

Dilbert cartoons would be really funny... if they weren't so darn realistic.

 

[kyleb]

At least you didn't talk TQL, which was Crosby's BS in the 80's. He said Quality is free, but in the same book he talked about tracking "the cost of quality." The two things together tell me I don't have to track the cost of quality because the initial assertion is that the cost is Zero and needs no tracking.

Funny, of all of "those" programs I've worked through, Crosby's was by far the best. Like all of those programs, the ratio of feathers to chicken was pretty high, but I thought the philosophy worked. Currently I'm reading a Lean Six Sigma book that contains enough useful information to pack a two sided 8 1/2" x 11" pamphlet, but the author stretched into 300 pages. I thought I wrote filler BS in a couple of papers in school, but this book takes the cake.

We have an entire empire at my workplace dedicated to rolling out a new business philosophy every couple of years when the old one gets tired. We've done Crosby, Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma (which is a great tool (IMO) for a small subset of problems), but we generalized it to everything in the business, and quite a few others. I remember the guy who was over that empire trying to sell me on his latest/greatest find when we started building our first factory in China. It was huge system for project tracking, which of course meant someone had to enter all of the tasks, precedence relationships, dates, etc. into the system, then track all of that stuff. "Um, Bob, how is dedicating someone to feed this monster gonna help me with the project?" "It's gonna let Senior Management know if you're hitting your target dates for intermediate steps." "Again, how's it gonna help ME with the project <Having Sr. Mgt look over my shoulder isn't help.>? Umm...

Bob was pretty disappointed when I declined to participate in the new project tracking software roll-out.

And with HR, we've come up with 3 different "perfect solutions" for how we want to evaluate our people's performance over the last 5 years. Each of the three was supposedly the end all be all solution. Apparently, someone in HR is saving the world every time we roll one of these things out, but just I see it as a way to justify an ever growing corporate bureaucracy, which must be much more important than taking care of the real HR functions, which means working with the "little" people to help them.

 

[Art Rose]

Help me with this. You want to slam the programs, great. But then you credit Demming, who was the author behind THIRD program in your list. What's up with that?

At least you didn't talk TQL, which was Crosby's BS in the 80's. He said Quality is free, but in the same book he talked about tracking "the cost of quality." The two things together tell me I don't have to track the cost of quality because the initial assertion is that the cost is Zero and needs no tracking.

Also, lest it gets lost... none of the programs you mention are labor or HR related metrics.

In large organizations, where these programs tend to live, they are more often than not implemented and managed by HR. They are influenced by, and often do indeed become entangled and infested into labor and HR related metrics.

I'm not aware of any organization that follows Deming's teaching without modification of his basic principles and concepts. Are you? There's always somebody in the middle management chain who knows better, and who takes the initiative to modify the basic principles to better fit their organization. Even if it's as simple as retaining an established review system.

And Six Sigma. Can you find a better method for generating undertow, and building negativity, apathy, and disgust in an organization? A good journalist is taught to tell the story as accurately as possible by utilizing the least amount of words and clutter. Previously in this thread, it was mentioned something about how a 300 page book about Six Sigma could have been condensed into a couple pages. What a waste of human effort. Both by the author, and the unfortunate victim who was tasked to read it. In a nutshell, Six Sigma is a dishonesty generator.

There's too much waste being generated by too many folks who genuinely have a need to try and justify their employment. We need to start to accept the fact that we need to stop utilizing and trusting the results of these psycho babble tests and surveys, and also, that we need to stop trying to analyze everything with faulty tools.
The knuckleheads have been in control for quite some time now. Eventually, just as everything in life, things will change.

 

[schmookeeg]

I am convinced that many of these large companies keep staff levels the way they do to curry or maintain political favor, or to avoid poltical ire. It's the only way I've been able to make the equation balance.

What do you do with a bunch of worthless meat drones you've had foisted on you? I suppose six sigma or SAFe or nonsensical HR programs to keep the daycare running make sense. You can only wash the executive's car so many times before you damage the clear coat.

 

[kyleb]

I am convinced that many of these large companies keep staff levels the way they do to curry or maintain political favor, or to avoid poltical ire.

From the inside of one of those large companies (20K+ employees), I think it comes down to people having mandates. The safety organization. The quality organization. The HR organization. Every one of those organizations has a mandate and is told to do a great job. They are all branches of the organization which should be focused on supporting the operational areas of the business - sales, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, and customer support. Instead, there has been a transition, where if you didn't know better, you might think the organization was there to support the various bureaucracies.

Where that leads is to ongoing creep of those bureaucracies. They grow and grow and grow and as they grow, they gain influence. It becomes self fulfilling.

 

[Tommar98]

Well given the level of disgust shown by nearly everyone on this thread about the Hogan test (or any other) it would seem the best method for weeding out independent thinkers and aviation enthusiasts is very simple:

(1) Do you post or respond to threads on POA?”

(2) if your answer to #1 was in the affirmative, please move on, otherwise continue answering.


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[steingar]

Oh, where? Is there an exhibit somewhere? I love going to old Hollywood and TV exhibits where they show props, costumes, etc.

There is a small museum at the Port Clinton Airstrip (KPCW). A number of antique vehicles, numerous military vehicles and some Hollywood paraphernalia. Well worth the visit if you’re in the area.

 

[Sundancer]

I worked where HR was not allowed involvement in the hiring and firing process. Not included in interviewing, or reviews - do the job fairs, arrange the college visits, do the onboarding paper work.

My current org works much the same way. . .there is testing, but the results are made available to the interviewers for clues on deeper-dive questions, not for "pre-screening".

 

[steingar]

Except for Sgt. Schultz's costume, I presume.

RIP, Norman!

-Skip

The funniest thing is yes, his was the largest. But it still really wasn't all that big. I think it might have fit me, and I'm a shrimpy little guy. Ask anyone.

 

[CharlieK]

Anybody who administers the Meyers-Briggs hokum as anything other than for entertainment purposes should be shot. Utter and complete nonsense without anything to back it up. You might as well read the astrology column.

Maybe I should start looking over my shoulder, because I deserve to be shot! Of course, at the same time, I wouldn't want someone with your mind set anywhere near my organization, so... Maybe you are a god among men, and can find the perfect person every time... I'm not, either are my people. One bad apple in a bunch does a lot of damage. How smart someone is, or how much experience someone has, is near meaningless to me. Attitude, goals, and learning ability is everything.

My current org works much the same way. . .there is testing, but the results are made available to the interviewers for clues on deeper-dive questions, not for "pre-screening".

This is exactly how I see these tests providing value. Crossing someone off of the list, because of test results can be silly (may be possible, but I don't see it). My goal is to try to prove or disprove the results of the tests. To be given the test, means you have made it through the first interview. It's pretty easy to "be someone else" through any given interview. But the more tests/interviews there are, the harder it gets to fake your way through. For a larger company with 100's to 1,000's of employees, it can be easier to deal with a "bad hire". With a max of 15 employees, you need to do everything you can to put the odds in your favor, of making sure everything fits.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

1. Y/N: I like everyone I meet.
YGTBFSM Everyone? I've never met a single ******* in my entire life?

2. Y/N: High taxes make people lazy.
WTF? Is this a test of my TEA party loyalty?

3. Y/N: I'd rather do things quickly than perfectly.
Let's see, what could possibly be the correct answer to this one?

4. Y/N: I have never told a lie in my life.
ditto

5. Y/N: My parents never really loved me.
Could be true, could be false. We only want to hire people from happy homes? No orphans need apply?

6. Y/N: I am destined to be famous.
Yes. I just know that someday a flock of geese will get ingested by my engines so I can put my Airbus 320 down in the Hudson River.

BTW - there are lots of on-line test prep sites out there to help you get the correct answers.

 

[flyingron]

How smart someone is, or how much experience someone has, is near meaningless to me. Attitude, goals, and learning ability is everything.

And the Meyers-Briggs nonsense helps this how. There's not a shred of real authentication the these made-up theories. At least Hogan has spent some time validating his

 

[dtuuri]

I once took a job, if I can call it that, as a pilot recruiter. Seeing the raft of resumes coming in over the fax machine, one after another, made me wish for an online test I could give to weed out the looney tunes. I don't have expertise in those kinds of things, so I was willing to defer to psychologists to make the first cut. Then 911 hit and the aviation economy tanked, so I never did get to implement that aspect. I did though, IIRC, administer my own aviation online interview in a series of questions. I'm sure the questions I asked were as negatively received as the the tests in this thread. But, geeze man, what are you gonna do? Everybody looks like Chuck Yeager on a resume, you can't talk to them all over the phone, they're so many. To those I did talk to, I asked questions I thought gave me an insight into their flying mind.

The company my boss was trying find a pilot for was an international oil company with a fleet of G-Vs. Unbeknownst to us and the company's Chief Pilot, their HR had a contract with a popular aviation employment service to fill the position. I found out after I had found my candidate through my own methods. The first thing I did was throw away the stated minimum requirements for the job. It was as a G-V copilot and they wanted 5,000 hours. "No way," I said, "That's too many for a lowly copilot." I used my intuition during phone interviews and I'm sure the questions I asked would make an HR graduate (like my niece) apoplectic over the legal exposure, such as "Are you a smoker?" and "By the way, how much do you weigh?". When I presented the Chief Pilot with a short description of the guy I found for him, he informed me he learned that I'd have to send him to the employment service because of the contract. Then the employment service told me he'd have to take all their tests and pass before he would possibly be included among the five top candidates they send for interviews. He passed their screening, except for total time, but they made an exception, probably thinking my guy would be rejected on that basis and they wouldn't have to split the commission with me. Guess what? My guy got the job! I got 50% of 50% of the commission.

 

[MuseChaser]

I once took a job, if I can call it that, as a pilot recruiter. Seeing the raft of resumes coming in over the fax machine, one after another, made me wish for an online test I could give to weed out the looney tunes...

Good post, with rational observations about the pros and cons of pre- or screening tests. I picked out the above comment because it addresses the part about the entire process that bothers me. The tests exist to make the jobs easier for the people tasked with hiring personnel, NOT to ensure that the absolute best people are hired. Maybe in the long run, with this supposedly more efficient process, your average hire will fit the desired company "profile" and be ... well... your average safe hire. However, a lot of truly exceptional employees will be passed over simply because they may not fit some articially represented prescribed "norm" expected on a written instrument.Those tests don't exist to help find the best people, they exist to ease the work load of those doing the hiring, period.

I, too, have been on many hiring committees over the years and pored over countless resumes and cover letters. Yes, it's true that almost anyone can look good on paper, but it's also true that anyone can prepare for and misrepresent themselves on those tests, too. A candidate that writes a cover letter or assembles a resume in such a way to make it stand out from the rest in an interesting, postive manner is almost always granted an interview, regardless of a possible gap in desired experience. If we're still interested in the person after the interview, the last step is putting them in a work environment and observing them. I know that last step isn't possible in all fields, but it is very valuable when it is possible. There have been times when a person writes a great resume/letter, interviews wonderfully, but performs poorly. There hasn't been a SINGLE time when a person writes poorly, interviews poorly, but performs well... and yes, unfortunately, we've had to let poor applicants get to the performance stage because they had ties to administration. Embarassing.

 

[dtuuri]

The tests exist to make the jobs easier for the people tasked with hiring personnel, NOT to ensure that the absolute best people are hired.

I wonder if the homeless crisis in San Francisco is because all the businesses there only hire the best.

 

[SkyDog58]

... How smart someone is, or how much experience someone has, is near meaningless to me.

That’s fine if you are hiring a common laborer, a fast food worker, or a HR type, but for most jobs especially one requiring skills and higher level thinking abilities, it is a losing proposition.

 

[Art Rose]

Maybe I should start looking over my shoulder, because I deserve to be shot! Of course, at the same time, I wouldn't want someone with your mind set anywhere near my organization, so... Maybe you are a god among men, and can find the perfect person every time... I'm not, either are my people. One bad apple in a bunch does a lot of damage. How smart someone is, or how much experience someone has, is near meaningless to me. Attitude, goals, and learning ability is everything.



This is exactly how I see these tests providing value. Crossing someone off of the list, because of test results can be silly (may be possible, but I don't see it). My goal is to try to prove or disprove the results of the tests. To be given the test, means you have made it through the first interview. It's pretty easy to "be someone else" through any given interview. But the more tests/interviews there are, the harder it gets to fake your way through. For a larger company with 100's to 1,000's of employees, it can be easier to deal with a "bad hire". With a max of 15 employees, you need to do everything you can to put the odds in your favor, of making sure everything fits.

Something else for the HR types to chew on..... Maybe even the ones looking over their shoulders......

Employees responsible for recruiting and hiring in these organizations sometimes forget that they are also being interviewed during the interview process.

A prospective employee that possesses the skills and higher thinking abilities required for a particular job will sometimes reject an organization based on the interviewing personnel, attitudes, and the process. I've seen me do it.

Years ago, near the end of a first interview, I told the hiring manager thank you, and that I wasn't interested. That normally should have been the end of the process. It wasn't.

Two weeks later I received their official rejection letter. Verified my suspicions.

 

[MuseChaser]

Something else for the HR types to chew on..... Maybe even the ones looking over their shoulders......

Employees responsible for recruiting and hiring in these organizations sometimes forget that they are also being interviewed during the interview process.

A prospective employee that possesses the skills and higher thinking abilities required for a particular job will sometimes reject an organization based on the interviewing personnel, attitudes, and the process. I've seen me do it.

Years ago, near the end of a first interview, I told the hiring manager thank you, and that I wasn't interested. That normally should have been the end of the process. It wasn't.

Two weeks later I received their official rejection letter. Verified my suspicions.

I experienced the same scenario.. twice with jobs that were posted that looked attractive and a step up from the job I currently was serving. The jobs were misrepresented significantly in the postings, and the differences came out in the interviews as I asked questions. I did the same thing you did.. I terminated the interview and told them I was no longer interested. One of them even contacted me several weeks later and offered me the job. I asked them if some of the additional undisclosed duties were still part of the job, they applied affirmatively, and I replied negatively and thanked them for the call.

 

[Jim_CAK]

I wonder if the homeless crisis in San Francisco is because all the businesses there only hire the best.

Off topic - I just spent last week in the Bay Area. It is the first time I was out there and was shocked to see how many homeless people are there. We were in San Fran, Oakland and San Jose. There were villages of people living under bridges. It is a serious problem there.

 

[CharlieK]

That’s fine if you are hiring a common laborer, a fast food worker, or a HR type, but for most jobs especially one requiring skills and higher level thinking abilities, it is a losing proposition.

You are correct. And I did have the skilled side of general labor in mind when I said that (Welders). But, even with Mechanical Engineering in mind, which requires some higher level thinking, I would still question which is more important. The attitude... or the brain and skills... either one, without the other, is useless.

Skills and higher level thinking are pretty easy to spot and probe in an interview... Attitude can be much more difficult.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

Attitude can be much more difficult.

 

[denverpilot]

Employees responsible for recruiting and hiring in these organizations sometimes forget that they are also being interviewed during the interview process.

I’ve used that knowledge to scare off a couple of candidates that I knew wouldn’t be a good fit before they got past me to second or third interviews. Haha.

 

[IK04]

Wow. In the process of Googling the fluffy questions on this "Inventory," I discovered many, many "professional" organizations with really technical multi-syllabic names and ultra fancy web pages, who are ready to assist you in blowing a big, successful hole in the pre-employment test...

I'll bet they are actually two or three hippies in wife beaters in a former nail salon in a strip mall...