A troubled tale
As an individual on the spectrum, I find it sometimes challenging to believe the employment I have secured is reliable given that coworkers have been known, on occasion, or when they are in a mood and I am insufficient to respond, to perceive I am hostile, uncaring, or emotionally withdrawn. In-person 8am interviews with panels of neurotypical individuals with high social skills and high social interactivity requirements are not the best time or place for the neurodiverse worker to shine. There is a reason we have earned the moniker 'robot'.
So, when I read a thread on Hacker News about a New York based company that publicly claimed a 75% neurodiverse workforce and an atypical hiring process designed to eliminate interviewer bias and allow selecting the best skilled candidates to join their team, I was enthused. Their QA testing position in specific seemed to be a job that would pay quite a reasonable wage for the hours involved and would never require meeting anyone face to face, period. They maintained that they trained applicants and had a one week ramp-on system to get the prospective employee familiarized with their business and work. An introvert's dream!
I put in an application using their questionnaire form and waited, received and replied to correspondence, and finally was offered an opportunity to continue the application process by taking a written test via email. I was offered a selection of timeslots to take the test in, and at the designated time, received a subsequent email with instructions and content.
In due time I completed the assignment according to my ability and my understanding of the instructions and returned it. Several days later I was informed that I had failed the assessment. I was beyond incredulous that this was the outcome given the diligence I had applied and the relative experience I believed myself to have with the subject material. Subsequently, having reviewed their diversity program results, and having given a little thought to the plausible models for the statistics of having 75% employees on the spectrum juxtaposed with 45% fairer gender retention, and observing their apparent intended fortune 500 clientele, peevishly, I felt there was some possibility that there might be ulterior motives in utilizing an objective test to establish a legal precedent for applicant rejection where the employer can arbitrarily choose to waive the results for individuals which possess desired organization image enhancing traits and choose to enforce them on entire classes of individuals they do not want to hire.
I was obviously a bit chafed. So, I issued them an cheeky ultimatum which I considered fair. They had three business days to provide me with my score, the score possible on their evaluation, a yes/no answer as to whether the individuals involved with evaluating tests are not native English speakers(not at all unlikely they outsource some HR tasks), and, were my test score within their acceptable margins, the real reason they had rejected me as an applicant. The consequence for failure was that I would, after censoring names and email addresses, take the emails, the test material, my answers, and write up a submission to ycombinator and slashdot.org to get an unbaised and fair assessment from ask my fellow techies what they feel my score was out of the possible scores observable. After all, this is supposed to be an objective test and I would like to feel my rejection was justly deserved given the objective nature of the hiring program. A little bit of sunshine on this situation would also be pretty nice if other people chime in saying they had a similar experience with this employer.
They responded to this challenge with the statement their hiring manager and vice president would get back to me, but it is now end of business on the third day and they have not risen from the tomb. Without further ado, I present to you a select set of the emails in the chain from first to last, not including their email informing me I had failed the objective assessment, the photographic test materials, my test results, and I ask you to judge my job application effort yourself, if you are so willing, and assign me a score. I am not asking you to decide whether or not the potential employer should have rejected my answers or found them sufficient. I'm just looking for a second opinion.
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So, when I read a thread on Hacker News about a New York based company that publicly claimed a 75% neurodiverse workforce and an atypical hiring process designed to eliminate interviewer bias and allow selecting the best skilled candidates to join their team, I was enthused. Their QA testing position in specific seemed to be a job that would pay quite a reasonable wage for the hours involved and would never require meeting anyone face to face, period. They maintained that they trained applicants and had a one week ramp-on system to get the prospective employee familiarized with their business and work. An introvert's dream!
I put in an application using their questionnaire form and waited, received and replied to correspondence, and finally was offered an opportunity to continue the application process by taking a written test via email. I was offered a selection of timeslots to take the test in, and at the designated time, received a subsequent email with instructions and content.
In due time I completed the assignment according to my ability and my understanding of the instructions and returned it. Several days later I was informed that I had failed the assessment. I was beyond incredulous that this was the outcome given the diligence I had applied and the relative experience I believed myself to have with the subject material. Subsequently, having reviewed their diversity program results, and having given a little thought to the plausible models for the statistics of having 75% employees on the spectrum juxtaposed with 45% fairer gender retention, and observing their apparent intended fortune 500 clientele, peevishly, I felt there was some possibility that there might be ulterior motives in utilizing an objective test to establish a legal precedent for applicant rejection where the employer can arbitrarily choose to waive the results for individuals which possess desired organization image enhancing traits and choose to enforce them on entire classes of individuals they do not want to hire.
I was obviously a bit chafed. So, I issued them an cheeky ultimatum which I considered fair. They had three business days to provide me with my score, the score possible on their evaluation, a yes/no answer as to whether the individuals involved with evaluating tests are not native English speakers(not at all unlikely they outsource some HR tasks), and, were my test score within their acceptable margins, the real reason they had rejected me as an applicant. The consequence for failure was that I would, after censoring names and email addresses, take the emails, the test material, my answers, and write up a submission to ycombinator and slashdot.org to get an unbaised and fair assessment from ask my fellow techies what they feel my score was out of the possible scores observable. After all, this is supposed to be an objective test and I would like to feel my rejection was justly deserved given the objective nature of the hiring program. A little bit of sunshine on this situation would also be pretty nice if other people chime in saying they had a similar experience with this employer.
They responded to this challenge with the statement their hiring manager and vice president would get back to me, but it is now end of business on the third day and they have not risen from the tomb. Without further ado, I present to you a select set of the emails in the chain from first to last, not including their email informing me I had failed the objective assessment, the photographic test materials, my test results, and I ask you to judge my job application effort yourself, if you are so willing, and assign me a score. I am not asking you to decide whether or not the potential employer should have rejected my answers or found them sufficient. I'm just looking for a second opinion.
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Sent: Sunday, December 8, 2019 6:47:39 AM
To:
Subject: ULTRA Scheduling Test
To:
Subject: ULTRA Scheduling Test
Dear Candidate,
Thank
you for your interest in ULTRA Testing and for completing the Software Tester Application. We would like to invite you to the next step in The Recruitment Process, which is a written test sent to your home computer. The test is not an online test. It involves
looking at images sent as attachments in an email.
The
test includes:
Comparing
multiple pairs of images from select webpages
Writing
a list of discrepancies you find between the images
Emailing
the list of discrepancies back to the ULTRA Testing Recruitment Team, preferably
in Microsoft Word, if available
The
test is timed. The time starts when you receive the email with the
assignment and ends when you send an email back with your list.
If
you are interested in taking the test, please provide a start time from the choices listed below. Choose a time when you'll be at your computer and have up to two hours available.
We
can send the assignment at one of these times (NOTE: all times are in EST):
Tuesday,
Dec. 10th: 11:00 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 12:30 p.m., or 1:00 p.m. EST
Wednesday,
Dec. 11th: 2:30 p.m. EST
Thursday,
Dec. 12th: 10:00 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:00 p.m., 1:30 p.m. EST
Most
applicants take between one and two hours to complete the test. Accuracy is more important than speed.
If
these times don't work, let us know, and we can schedule for a further day out.
Best
wishes,
The
ULTRA Testing Recruitment Team
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Please assign me to begin the test procedure at 1 PM on tuesday, december 10th. Sincerely
Sincerely yours
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Subject: Fwd: ULTRA Testing Assignment
Dear firstname,