APPLYING THE RESULTS 
41 
most needed. And yet it would have been even more 
difficult for the employment manager than for the foreman 
to detect this lack. As an operator on some other job, 
this girl would undoubtedly have been an exceptional 
success; but as an inspector she was an evident misfit. 
One girl was so nervous when she appeared for exami 
nation that it did not seem possible that she could have 
the qualities required by the exacting work of inspection. 
Her nervousness, according to the shop instructor who 
brought her, was not due to fright but was chronic. This 
subject was absolutely helpless in the tests for steadiness 
a nd accuracy. However, her time in the number group 
checking test and in the cancellation test (numbers 8 and 6) 
Wa s considerably faster, that is to say better, than the 
maximum. This girl, it was later found, was the eighteenth 
best inspector among the 58 examined. (It will be re 
membered that the accuracy and steadiness tests were not 
found significant for this work, while tests numbers 8 
and 6 showed the highest correlations.) The instructor 
who supervised the work of these girls expressed her 
mability to understand the success of this particular 
girl. “She’s a reliable girl”, was her only explanation. 
But so were many less successful girls, and besides, her 
r ank as a worker was not based on mere steadiness but on 
s peed as well. This also goes to show how misleading a 
more superficial observation of a person’s qualifications 
may be, even though the observer be one whose business 
is to pass judgment on those qualifications, as in the case 
°f the instructor just mentioned. 
Another case was that of a girl who was exceptionally 
S°°d in the steadiness and accuracy tests but who was 
considerably beyond the maximum time in tests num 
bers 8 and 6. This subject was a good, quiet worker,