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EMPLOYMENT  PSYCHOLOGY

or  even  one  flange  of  one  finger,  it  would  ruin  your  possibilities ­
  as  a  musician  and  undo  the  work  of  years  spent
in  training.”  Instead  of  allowing  the  young  man  to  take
a  chance,  therefore,  he  exerted  himself  to  find  a  position
in  which  this  danger  was  absent.  Now,  in  a  less  obvious
way,  every  case  of  employment  involves  a  determination
of  the  applicant’s  self-interest.  The  whole  aim  of  selection
is  to  select  the  right  man  for  the  right  place,  and  naturally,
no  man  is  in  the  right  place  until  his  own  interests  as
well  as  the  interests  of  his  employer  are  being  furthered.
These  elements  of  an  applicant’s  point  of  view  are  fundamental ­
  and  are  common  to  all  normal  applicants.  It
does  not  require  a  psychologist  to  see  them  or  to  acknowledge ­
  their  truth,  any  more  than  it  requires  a  mathematician ­
  to  see  that  things  equal  to  the  same  thing  are  equal
to  each  other,  or  that  2  plus  2  equals  4.  However,  though
any  man  may  recognize  self-esteem  and  self-interest  as
fundamental  factors  in  the  human  equation  it  by  no
means  follows  that  this  knowledge  enables  him  to  understand ­
  the  particular  individual  or  to  achieve  the  individual’s ­
  point  of  view.  Just  as  the  knowledge  of  the  axioms
is  only  the  first  step  in  becoming  a  mathematician,  so
the  knowledge  of  these  fundamental  facts  of  human
nature  is  only  a  beginner’s  step  in  becoming  a  master  of
the  human  equation.  In  order  to  approximate  the  viewpoint ­
  of  the  particular  applicant  it  is  essential  to  make  a
much  more  thorough  and  painstaking  study  of  human
nature.  It  is  necessary  to  study  human  equations  as
systematically  and  scientifically  as  the  mathematician
studies  the  many  kinds  of  mathematical  equations.  For
there  is  an  endless  number  and  variety  of  human  equations ­
  or  viewpoints,  as  we  saw  when  we  tried  to  imagine
ourselves  in  the  position  of  an  applicant  and  could  not