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 examination
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 remembered
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 numbers
8 and 6. This subject was a good, quiet worker,
