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Would you do this at a job interview?

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Anything weird and silly at interview.

 

Next thing you know its on youtube and you are world famous.

Edited by dutch

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Yes I would absolutely do it if it was clearly part of some group exercise as part of overall candidate assessment.

 

Spot on. Although it sounds a little silly, it was to weed out those who wouldn't take the initiative and make contact with others.

 

I did the same thing at uni, although we had to write our favourite food on a label and seek out a good match from someone else in the room.

 

The last thing a shop wants is a wallflower who won't take the lead to speak to customers.

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Spot on. Although it sounds a little silly, it was to weed out those who wouldn't take the initiative and make contact with others.

 

I did the same thing at uni, although we had to write our favourite food on a label and seek out a good match from someone else in the room.

 

The last thing a shop wants is a wallflower who won't take the lead to speak to customers.

 

If a recruiter is not able to come up with easier, more accurate, efficient and pleasant way of assessing communication skills than this silly tests, then the recruiter is just lousy.

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I went to an Asda "magic session" the other day, we did various activities to see how we worked as a team, not as daft as the ops tho.

We did have to line up in shoe size, and play a bingo game where you have to choose somebody, and guess one of the sentences on your board would fit them, like "cat person" or "stayed in a tent" to get talking to the others and interacting

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I wouldn't entertain such total nonsense, especially for low-pay shop work.

If you attend on time, present well and are polite and well spoken you're best part there.

 

Shops can't pay peanuts and expect Einstein.

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I wouldn't entertain such total nonsense, especially for low-pay shop work.

If you attend on time, present well and are polite and well spoken you're best part there.

 

Shops can't pay peanuts and expect Einstein.

 

These types of exercise are designed to determine whether people are suitable for the job. It's better to do this at the interview stage than to discover it once someone has started.

 

For instance, the bag on head, mooing game play will determine useful characteristics such as trust, ability to function in a stressful environment plus other useful traits for someone dealing with strangers on a daily basis.

 

Alternatively, you could ask the applicant if they have all the above traits and rely on them telling the truth.

 

As an employer, which would you prefer?

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Exactly. Anyone can say anything they like at the interview, but be rubbish at the job.

 

I've interviewed a few candidates in the past who were brilliant at the interview, but completely failed the technical challenge which was instrumental to the job.

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Yes I would absolutely do it if it was clearly part of some group exercise as part of overall candidate assessment.

 

I have in my past had to do group role play discussions, make models using pasta, play guessing games about people as part of various recruitment.

 

The world of Q&A in a meeting room is changing rapidly. These days is all about observing candidates, watching them interact with others, problem solving, improvisation, reactions to scenarios, logical thinking, willingness to particpate etc... etc...

 

I dont really get the whole "humiliated" and "degrading" nonsense. All seems a bit OTT to me. I dont know what this "student" is planning after their A levels but if they want a job in the world of white collar or indeed any sort of larger professional organisation they had better grow up fast, because there will be lot more of that to come.

 

Your average annual team building day is filled with crap like that let alone the sort of things prospective candidates are expected to do on corporate assessment days, work placements or even client networking events.

 

He cant have been that humiliated considering he named himself in the National Press and got his mummy to give a comment sticking up for him. Im sure that will really help hide his embarrasment :rolleyes:

 

Seems more like an attention seeker to me with mummy just fuelling the fire.

 

Maybe i'm just of completely different age and temper but I can guarantee if I went running home to mummy all "humiliated" because of an ice breaker exercise in a job assessment she wouldn't have got my back when I cried to the press.

Yes, it's crap. In fact it is complete and utter bllx. I've had to put up with plenty of totally pointless 'team building' exercise and the like. I've walked out of a few too and made my displeasure known to those at the top. These things are generally crap, thought up by idiots and hated by those who have to participate.

When management resort to these type of shenanigans you know that they're grasping at straws trying to solve a problem which either doesn't exist or is beyond their capacity to deal with.

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Yes, it's crap. In fact it is complete and utter bllx. I've had to put up with plenty of totally pointless 'team building' exercise and the like. I've walked out of a few too and made my displeasure known to those at the top. These things are generally crap, thought up by idiots and hated by those who have to participate.

When management resort to these type of shenanigans you know that they're grasping at straws trying to solve a problem which either doesn't exist or is beyond their capacity to deal with.

 

Alternatively, they are using them to weed out those unsuitable employees who refuse to be part of a team. Seems to work.

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Following instructions is the only attribute that could possibly be measured by such a ridiculous task. I certainly wouldn't want to use an interview format when hiring a shop worker, I would set up exercises to observe how people are with others, eye contact, willingness to help, using initiative etc. None of which would necessitate putting a bag on one's head and mooing. Because I'm not a knob.

Spot on. If you want to assess how someone is going to perform selling shoes then why not do a mock up scenario of selling shoes, or have them on the shop floor for an hour doing something like, oh I don't know, selling shoes maybe?

 

---------- Post added 16-05-2018 at 11:11 ----------

 

Alternatively, they are using them to weed out those unsuitable employees who refuse to be part of a team. Seems to work.

Except wearing a bag on your head and mooing like a cow is not an indicator for working as part of a team. I've successfully worked as part of a team for countless years and if my boss asked my to do that as part of an exercise I'd tell him to stick his head in a bucket of water an only come up for air when he'd thought of something better.

Far better to give them a task which requires cooperation and individual participation in order to succeed.

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Except wearing a bag on your head and mooing like a cow is not an indicator for working as part of a team.

 

Except there's more to it than that:

 

He told the newspaper: "I got there and all 25 of us were given a bag and an animal we had to pretend to be. They said I had to be a cow. 'We had to make the noises until we found the other person in the room who had been given the same animal.

 

To me as an employer that says the exercise is to see whether the person has the skills to seek out an identify someone from a crowded noisy room, or shies away in the corner.

 

And it was only PART of the interview.

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Seems more like a hearing test for those who don't mind being groped by strangers to me.

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