78 
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
work, and had attempted to rate them as to their actual 
ability. This promised to give a fairly reliable basis upon 
which to estimate the results of the experiment. At 
the conclusion of the experiment, the manager of the office 
made a statement regarding his opinion of the results. 
This statement describes the problem of selecting clerical 
workers so clearly that it has been considered advisable 
to quote it before rather than after the experiment has 
been described. 
“The problem of hiring clerks consists of sifting from the 
candidates available those who can, by constant application, 
adapt themselves successfully to certain very definite routine 
tasks. In dealing with large numbers of such people, all pos 
sessing more or less similar personalities, an interview, no 
matter how searching it may be in analyzing a person’s apti 
tudes, is not sufficient to determine a clerk’s degree of technique. 
Up to the present time we have as a rule guessed at a person’s 
skill and hired him on trial. We have gone to the expense of 
‘breaking in’ clerks on one task and then another until they 
have reached their level, or until they have left, or have finally 
been discharged. 
“The-tests which have been employed in this office seem to 
supply the mechanical means of quickly and cheaply determin 
ing to a practical degree the manual, ocular, and mental tech 
nique demanded for certain classes of routine office work. 
By thus supplementing the personal interview, I believe we 
can not only eliminate some of the expensive ‘trials’ now being 
made but give good personal advice and prevent many personal 
disappointments and embarrassing situations. 
“ As a case in point, a new girl was hired in one of our sections 
because of her alertness of speech, pleasing appearance, interest 
and conscientious attitude, and because she had been taking 
special lessons on a computing machine. We felt that she 
would be particularly well adapted to our work. In starting