i 7 8 
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
therefore be deficiencies which, under favorable condi 
tions, the natural capacity of the worker can easily over 
come. Workers of this kind are of the utmost potential 
value, and should be given the most careful consideration 
by the employment and educational branches. It is in 
discovering cases of this kind that the use of tests can be 
of great value in helping industrial organizations to 
make the best possible use of the human material at 
their disposal and in providing for the vocational adapta 
tion of their employees. 
Wherever tests indicate that an applicant for a certain 
kind of work is poor in both ability and training, it is un 
wise and unprofitable, from the point of view both of the 
individual and of the organization, to hire him for that 
work. It is advisable, in such cases, to try out the appli 
cant with other tests in order to discover whether he is 
better fitted to learn some other kind of work. All em 
ployment managers and educational directors are troubled 
with the urgent pleas of candidates who, in their opinion, 
are unfit for the work or training they demand. Hitherto 
there has always been a sense of injustice or apparent 
injustice in situations of this kind because the disappointed 
candidate felt that he was not being given a square deal- 
And as long as it was a question of one man’s judgment 
against that of another, there was always a measure of 
truth in this suspicion. The use of tests makes it possible 
to decide, with much less ambiguity and on much more 
impersonal grounds, whether a person shall be chosen of 
not. Often, however, when an applicant is particularly 
insistent upon a trial at a certain kind of work or training* 
it is advisable to give him the opportunity even though his 
performance in the tests is poor. This is because the 
presence of a genuine and driving ambition will sometimes