The interview had been going on for about 20 minutes and everything seems to be going well.Then,suddenly,the interviewer asks an unexpected question,“Which is more important,law or Dove?”
Job applicants in the West increasingly find themselves asked strange questions like this.And the signs are that this is beginning to happen in China.
Employers want people skilled,enthusiastic and devoted.So these are the qualities that any reasonably intelligent job applicants will try to show no matter what his or her actual feelings are.In response,employers are increasingly using questions which try and show the applicant's true personality.
The question in the first paragraph comes from a test called the Keirsey Personality Sorter.It is an attempt to discover how people solve problems,rather than what they know.This is often called an aptitude test (能力倾向测验).
According to Mark Baldwin many job applicants in China are finding this type of questions difficult.When a Chinese person fills out an aptitude test he or she will think there is a right answer and they may fail because they try to guess what the examiner wants to see.
This is sometimes called the prisoner's dilemma.Applicants are trying to act cleverly in their own interest.But they fail because they don't understand what the interviewer is looking for.Remember that in an aptitude test,the correct answer is always the honest answer.