86 
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
tests. Whereas mistakes in hiring were once attributed 
immediately to the tests, office heads are now inclined to 
question their own judgment as well. The result of this 
change of emphasis from the personal to the impersonal 
has been a much more consistent treatment of clerks in 
general, and a much more decided conservation of human 
material. Snap judgments are less common than was once 
the case. 
On the other hand, there have been freq lent instances 
in which the tests themselves were at fault. For example, 
the examiner would find that certain clerks who had failed 
in the tests but who had nevertheless been engaged for 
a trial, were succeeding beyond a doubt. A more minute 
scrutiny of such cases usually showed that the clerk in 
question was engaged at work for which the tests were 
not in the least intended. For instance, it was once 
customary to give every clerk a test in the fundamentals 
of arithmetic. However, it frequently happened that 
clerks were put at work which did not involve any knowl 
edge of arithmetic, and therefore they often proved suc 
cessful even though they had done extremely poor work 
in this test and only fair work in the remaining tests. 
Such cases, frequently met with, showed not so much the 
inadequacy of tests in general as the inadequacy of cer 
tain tests for certain kinds of work. In fact, one of the 
most valuable features of the systematic follow up out 
lined was to reveal discrepancies between particular tests 
and particular kinds of work, and thereby point out 
the need for a more careful study of the varieties of 
clerical work and, at the same time, a more careful adapta 
tion of specific tests to meet these varieties. The manner 
in which these requirements were filled is described in 
following chapters.