78

EMPLOYMENT  PSYCHOLOGY

work,  and  had  attempted  to  rate  them  as  to  their  actual
ability.  This  promised  to  give  a  fairly  reliable  basis  upon
which  to  estimate  the  results  of  the  experiment.  At
the  conclusion  of  the  experiment,  the  manager  of  the  office
made  a  statement  regarding  his  opinion  of  the  results.
This  statement  describes  the  problem  of  selecting  clerical
workers  so  clearly  that  it  has  been  considered  advisable
to  quote  it  before  rather  than  after  the  experiment  has
been  described.
“The  problem  of  hiring  clerks  consists  of  sifting  from  the
candidates  available  those  who  can,  by  constant  application,
adapt  themselves  successfully  to  certain  very  definite  routine
tasks.  In  dealing  with  large  numbers  of  such  people,  all  possessing ­
  more  or  less  similar  personalities,  an  interview,  no
matter  how  searching  it  may  be  in  analyzing  a  person’s  aptitudes, ­
  is  not  sufficient  to  determine  a  clerk’s  degree  of  technique.
Up  to  the  present  time  we  have  as  a  rule  guessed  at  a  person’s
skill  and  hired  him  on  trial.  We  have  gone  to  the  expense  of
‘breaking  in’  clerks  on  one  task  and  then  another  until  they
have  reached  their  level,  or  until  they  have  left,  or  have  finally
been  discharged.
“The-tests  which  have  been  employed  in  this  office  seem  to
supply  the  mechanical  means  of  quickly  and  cheaply  determining ­
  to  a  practical  degree  the  manual,  ocular,  and  mental  technique ­
  demanded  for  certain  classes  of  routine  office  work.
By  thus  supplementing  the  personal  interview,  I  believe  we
can  not  only  eliminate  some  of  the  expensive  ‘trials’  now  being
made  but  give  good  personal  advice  and  prevent  many  personal
disappointments  and  embarrassing  situations.
“  As  a  case  in  point,  a  new  girl  was  hired  in  one  of  our  sections
because  of  her  alertness  of  speech,  pleasing  appearance,  interest
and  conscientious  attitude,  and  because  she  had  been  taking
special  lessons  on  a  computing  machine.  We  felt  that  she
would  be  particularly  well  adapted  to  our  work.  In  starting