35°

EMPLOYMENT  PSYCHOLOGY

and  unqualified  workers  slip  through  it  as  easily  and  indiscriminately ­
  as  water  through  a  sieve.  In  order  to  make
a  more  careful  selection  and  grading  of  applicants  than
is  now  being  made,  the  addition  of  half  an  hour  or  more
to  the  interview  of  supposedly  skilled  workers  will  be
fully  justified,  particularly  when  it  is  remembered  how
much  time  misfits  cost  once  they  have  been  hired  and
lost  sight  of.  Moreover,  now  that  so  many  unskilled
workers  and  semi-skilled  workers  are  being  given  a  slight
training  in  some  one  of  the  skilled  operations,  all  the
more  care  will  have  to  be  exercised  to  discriminate  between ­
  those  who  are  really  skilled  and  those  who,  on  the
basis  of  a  superficial  training,  claim  that  they  are  skilled.
We  now  come  to  those  applicants  who,  possessing
neither  training  nor  experience,  still  prefer  a  definite  job
which  requires  these  qualifications  to  a  greater  or  lesser
degree.  There  is  an  amazing  number  of  workers  who  fall
under  this  class;  for  it  includes  not  only  those  who  have
not  yet  learned  a  trade  but  also  those  who  do  not  intend
to  learn  a  trade  and  who  will  be  content  to  shift  from  place
to  place  or  job  to  job  as  circumstances  dictate.  We  have
divided  this  large  group  into  two  classes,  those  who  have
a  fixed  preference  for  a  certain  kind  of  work  and  those
who  have  an  accidental  or  derived  preference  which  is
subject  to  modification.  In  each  case,  the  wishes  of  the
applicants  should  be  given  every  consideration,  and  they
should  be  tested  for  the  work  which  they  desire.  The
nature  of  the  tests,  however,  must  be  quite  different;
for  these  applicants  do  not  claim  to  have  the  particular
skill  or  training  which  is  required  by  the  work  for  which
they  are  applying.  The  tests  must  therefore  be  such  as
to  discover  the  applicant’s  potential  skill,  his  innate  ability, ­
  and  his  general  experience  and  general  intelligence.