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Just to keep driving home my point of idiot HR and their psychobabble going out of control I was pursuing an analytical chemist position and was sent this. I was told to complete this before I would be submitted to the Hiring Manager. This just takes it to a whole new level. What do they think this is second grade?
Lifetime Accomplishments-Writing Assignment
It is the desire of [I haven't decided whether to include the company's name yet so I deleted it for now] to explore to the fullest degree possible a potential employee’s strength, weaknesses, talents and gifts. Furthermore, it is our belief that a person should be suited to a job in which they can use their unique strengths and gifts during the majority of their working hours.
A person’s strengths, talents and gifts have usually been consistently displayed in one’s life since early childhood up to present day. These unique characteristics are often best seen through the multiple significant accomplishments, achievements, events or situations in an individual’s life.
Your challenge is to think back in your life, from the earliest points possible to the present moment, and write a short narrative on two significant memories that have in common something you did well and enjoyed doing. Also, explain each of these memories as outlined below. If you have any questions about this, please ask, because this exercise largely influences our evaluation of every prospective employee.
Please follow these directions:
1. Name and describe the specific memory (i.e., experience, achievement, accomplishment, etc.) and your approximate age at the time.
2. State what you remember about the details surrounding this memory.
3. Each narrative should have in common that it was something that you did well and enjoyed doing. Both characteristics (did well and enjoyed doing) must have been present. Both are necessary because often in life we achieve significant accomplishments, but our heart really was not in it, and we really did not enjoy
doing it. Please pay careful attention to these criteria.
4. Describe why this event or accomplishment was so significant in helping you understand your strengths, talents and “gifts”.
5. Describe why it so enjoyable.
Below is a real life example from another person’s Lifetime Accomplishments.
An executive recalled one of her favorite memories as a child growing up on a farm. Apparently, one day she found a bird in the barnyard that had a broken wing. She remembered taking thread and wrapping it around the bird’s broken wing.
Over several weeks she nurtured the bird, both feeding it and ensuring that the wing was healing correctly. Her greatest joy came on the day when she was able to go in the barnyard, throw the bird up in the air, and see it fly away.
Do you know what this executive’s job is today? She is a highly skilled, corporate turn-around artist. She is an expert in fixing broken companies, restoring them to health, then letting them fly on their own. Her true gifts and abilities are found in her thrill for fixing broken companies, and yet those same skills would be skills that would be very harmful if she stayed in a company long-term.
1. Name and describe the specific memory (i.e., experience, achievement, accomplishment, etc.) and your approximate age at the time.
The first time I used the potty I was 2 years old and my mother thought it was the grandest thing ever. I remember mommy telling me I was ready for big boy pants..... mom kept looking in the potty telling me how wonderful it was.....
the way our world is heading. don't worry, in a few years they will just do a brain scan and check out every nook and cranny that way, it will be much easier.
I hate these kinds of questions. Yes I can BS with the best of them and that's all they are hiring for is BS artists. But most of the time companies asking these questions don't get the truth, they get a version of the truth that the employee wants the employer to hear. Half truths, omissions, lies, what ever looks and sounds good. I've taken a couple of these tests and I always seem to fail them because I never hear from the company again. My friend always fails them too. He's a pretty good worker and I'm a pretty good worker, we aren't crazies with felonies and office supply fetishes, yet we fail the tests. But the guy who glues cut-outs of supermodels to popsicle sticks and plays puppets in his free time, gets hired!!
Just to keep driving home my point of idiot HR and their psychobabble going out of control I was pursuing an analytical chemist position and was sent this. I was told to complete this before I would be submitted to the Hiring Manager. This just takes it to a whole new level. What do they think this is second grade?
Lifetime Accomplishments-Writing Assignment
It is the desire of [I haven't decided whether to include the company's name yet so I deleted it for now] to explore to the fullest degree possible a potential employee’s strength, weaknesses, talents and gifts. Furthermore, it is our belief that a person should be suited to a job in which they can use their unique strengths and gifts during the majority of their working hours.
A person’s strengths, talents and gifts have usually been consistently displayed in one’s life since early childhood up to present day. These unique characteristics are often best seen through the multiple significant accomplishments, achievements, events or situations in an individual’s life.
Your challenge is to think back in your life, from the earliest points possible to the present moment, and write a short narrative on two significant memories that have in common something you did well and enjoyed doing. Also, explain each of these memories as outlined below. If you have any questions about this, please ask, because this exercise largely influences our evaluation of every prospective employee.
Please follow these directions:
1. Name and describe the specific memory (i.e., experience, achievement, accomplishment, etc.) and your approximate age at the time.
2. State what you remember about the details surrounding this memory.
3. Each narrative should have in common that it was something that you did well and enjoyed doing. Both characteristics (did well and enjoyed doing) must have been present. Both are necessary because often in life we achieve significant accomplishments, but our heart really was not in it, and we really did not enjoy
doing it. Please pay careful attention to these criteria.
4. Describe why this event or accomplishment was so significant in helping you understand your strengths, talents and “giftsâ€.
5. Describe why it so enjoyable.
Below is a real life example from another person’s Lifetime Accomplishments.
An executive recalled one of her favorite memories as a child growing up on a farm. Apparently, one day she found a bird in the barnyard that had a broken wing. She remembered taking thread and wrapping it around the bird’s broken wing.
Over several weeks she nurtured the bird, both feeding it and ensuring that the wing was healing correctly. Her greatest joy came on the day when she was able to go in the barnyard, throw the bird up in the air, and see it fly away.
Do you know what this executive’s job is today? She is a highly skilled, corporate turn-around artist. She is an expert in fixing broken companies, restoring them to health, then letting them fly on their own. Her true gifts and abilities are found in her thrill for fixing broken companies, and yet those same skills would be skills that would be very harmful if she stayed in a company long-term.
And did she also write the Martina McBride song "Broken Wing".
And with a broken wing
She still sings
She keeps an eye on the sky
With a broken wing
She carries her dreams
Man you ought a see her fly
That question is the biggest load of steaming hot crap I've ever read.
Those with hiring authority will not take time to read it in any depth and yet prospectives will sweat over every minute detail trying desperately to make up the "right" story with the "right" details to prove that they are the "right" person for the job.
HR justifies that bunch of garbage by saying that these kinds of questions provide important information re: communication skills, analytical and comprehension skills, creative thinking, personal self-awareness, appropriate skill sets and on and on........and on.
It's a joke and we helpless minions are daily being beaten further into the ground as we tirelessly and tiredly jump through hoops such as responding to banal written assignments introduced to HR execs at their most recent HR/Risk Management Kumbaya Retreat Session. All in the hopes of being offered a job working a salary exempt fifty hours a week.
Ugh. I hate these essays. We teachers have to write them for every position we apply for. I usually have to write two, and they have to be in my own handwriting, no typing allowed.
And they definitely do NOT read them. I was in an interview and referenced something in my essay and they had no clue what I was talking about.
I failed my first personality test to work as a loan officer. I thought that since it was a financial institution they would want me to select all of the honest, would never steal, cheat, or lie questions. They were all set to hire me, then got the test results and said they couldn't offer me the position. They gave me one as a secretary. That year they ended up doing away with the personality test. I was eventually promoted to a loan officer and was number one in the district in one of the first months. Yeah, those tests are GREAT predictors.
Just to keep driving home my point of idiot HR and their psychobabble going out of control
Just curious but why the obsessive need to keep driving home the point? It seems that every post you write is a total negative where your career/HR/bosses/coworkers are concerned. I hope there's plenty of light too in order to balance everything out.
"I remember once when I was about 5 years old me and my brother and my cousin, who were 4 and 3 respectively, wanted to do a fun chemistry experiment to see what would happen. So we went into the kitchen and took everything out from under the sink and mixed it together and told my sister to drink it. My aunt came in the room just as my sister raised the cup to her mouth. So we never did find out what would happen, but it was so fun that I knew I wanted a career in science."
(This is a true incident. Young people of my close acquaintance did it. The ringleader is now a graduate of MIT and a highly successful scientist. He has not, to my knowledge, tried to poison his sister recently.)
LOL, I like where this is going. Time to mess with HR. See if they report you to the cops. Make sure you keep some evidence to prove you are writing it all as a test!
See I'm not creative enough to think of a specific example, but you're a chemist, you should be able to figure something out.
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