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EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
which all phases of employment psychology contribute 
to the establishment of this fact. The first task of the 
psychologist, it has been seen, is to devise means which 
will enable him to assign the applicant to the work at 
which he can be most successful. Instead of relying upon 
the customary crude and unscientific assumptions about 
various types of people and various kinds of work, he 
makes a separate study of each kind of work together 
with the people who have failed or succeeded at that work. 
He engages in the work himself in order that some of its 
less obvious features may not escape him. When he has 
selected a group of tests which seem to apply to a partic 
ular kind of work he does not assume their value but first 
tries them out on workers whose success or failure are 
established facts. Indeed the process of finding and apply 
ing tests is based upon the closest and most continuous 
study of actual people actually at work. Experiment must 
follow experiment in order to obtain the means by which 
the applicant’s abilities can best be determined. 
This applies not only to the use of the more strictly 
psychological tests but to other methods of interviewing 
an applicant as well. The ordinary and usual manner of 
observing and questioning a candidate reveals a decided 
inability to penetrate his particular mental state. In 
stead of random observations it has been shown that 
observations based on a carefully mapped out plan and 
on actions relevant to the work in question will reveal 
much more of the candidate’s state of mind. And it has 
also been seen that questions are not likely to discover 
the real interests and feelings of individuals, much less 
their knowledge, unless they are carefully worked out by 
means of the same experimental process as that which is 
applied to the development of significant tests. It has