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EMPLOYMENT  PSYCHOLOGY

viewers.  For  this  reason,  the  same  general  failings  which
have  already  been  attributed  to  any  method  which  rests
primarily  upon  the  unaided  judgment  of  the  individual
can  be  attributed  once  more  to  this  phase  of  employment.
These  failings  are  in  sum,  lack  of  consistency,  inaccuracy,
liability  to  the  moods  and  prejudices  of  different  individuals, ­
  and  in  general  the  errors  due  to  the  variable  and
uncertain  factors  of  the  personal  equation.
There  is  one  notable  exception  to  this  arraignment  of
the  question  method;  that  is,  the  application  blank.  The
application  blank  represents,  in  most  cases,  a  standard
set  of  well  thought  out  questions  which  are  given  to  all
applicants  in  exactly  the  same  fashion.  It  is  an  attempt
to  arrive  at  the  most  important  facts  about  an  individual
in  the  most  specific  and  lucid  manner.  That  it  does  not
always  succeed  in  this  respect,  and  that  there  are  grave
objections  to  many  items  on  most  application  forms,  need
not  be  questioned.  In  any  event,  it  has  procured  information ­
  of  inestimable  value,  and  it  is,  without  a  doubt,  far
superior  to  the  method  which  leaves  the  obtaining  of  this
information  to  chance  or  to  the  discretion  of  the  individual
employment-office  clerk.
However,  there  is  a  large  number  of  applicants  who
cannot  read  or  write  English  and  many  who  cannot  even
understand  it.  In  such  cases  oral  questions  must  be  resorted ­
  to.  Either  the  employment  interviewer  must  fill
out  the  application  blank  himself  or  it  must  be  discarded
entirely  and  the  applicant  interviewed  orally  as  well  as  is
possible.  In  such  cases,  the  most  simple  and  obvious
questions  may  be  a  stumbling  block  rather  than  an  aid.
As  an  example  of  this  possibility,  the  following  incident  is
related.  Almost  always  the  first  question  which  an
interviewer  puts  to  an  applicant  is:  “What’s  your  name?”