A close friend of mine recently went to an assessment center for a data analyst position. They told me they were given a picture and had to write a story about it, to which I replied stunned, “seriously?!” This picture is taken from a test called TAT (Thematic Appreciation Test) that was developed in the 1930s and was used in the clinical context to learn about patients' personalities. Research has shown that this tool's validity is close to zero. Even if it was predictive, can you imagine the candidate’s experience?

When you use an external vendor for your candidates' assessment, ask them for the data about their tools’ predictive capabilities and make sure they are tracking candidate experience. I have no doubt this vendor didn't check.

#informedecisions