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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 particular
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 applying
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. Instead
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
