3 6 4 
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
quently happens that the individual must wait hours and 
sometimes even days, before his turn comes. Now the 
length of time which an applicant is willing to spend in 
. the waiting room of an employment office is roughly pro 
portionate to his degree of self-esteem. A man who places 
a high estimate on his value will not spend as much time 
in waiting as a man who does not. An expert electrician, 
for instance, is not likely to spend three hours or half a 
day simply waiting for an interview. He is too well 
aware of the fact that in the same amount of time he can 
probably find a position elsewhere. And even when the 
labor situation is such as to enable employers to enforce 
long waits upon applicants the injury done their self-es 
teem will rebound sooner or later to the disadvantage of 
the employer. 
Another way in which the quality of self-esteem mani 
fests itself is in respect to courtesy. Courtesy may be 
defined as the active acknowledgment of the other man’s 
point of view. To treat an applicant discourteously is to 
ignore his point of view and to administer a violent blow 
to his self-esteem. There are myriad ways in which cour 
tesy may manifest itself during the course of the employ 
ment process. From the very arrival of the candidate at 
the doors of the employment office to the time when his 
application is rejected or accepted, there is opportunity 
after opportunity for the exercise of considerateness. 
The fact that the applicant is, for the time being, more 
or less at the mercy of the employment interviewers 
sometimes promotes in the latter a tendency to be sharp 
in their questions and abrupt in their replies. This has 
a decidedly bad effect upon applicants, making them 
either very nervous or indignant. 
Finally, it must be recognized that the most funda-