Companies that use pre-employment tests to screen applicants should, at the very least, make sure that the skills being tested are those skills that the position requires. Holding a Survivor-like contest to determine who will be recommended for a promotion to regional manager does not pass this test. Not even a little bit. Indeed, tests that are more job-related have been found to have a discriminatory impact on applicants in protected categories.
Take, for example, the Dial Corporation. Earlier this year, the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a $3.4 million jury verdict for Dial’s use of a discriminatory “work tolerance test” that asked applicants to carry a 35-pound bar back and forth between two frames for seven minutes in front of an occupational therapist. If that cost $3.4 million, imagine how much Dunder Mifflin is on the hook for after using fire walking, hot dog eating, and sumo wrestling as tests for becoming the regional manager of a paper company.
That being said, if there is a job out there for which fire walking, hot dog eating, and sumo wrestling are legitimate measures of necessary job skills, can you let me know? I might want to apply.
I’m always fascinated by workplace “exercises” that are intended to be either team-building measures or some kind of “alternate skills” assessment. Inevitably, these things tend to melt down and go nowhere. But they can actually be fun/funny for the people forced to participate. OR they can be lucrative if you have a good lawyer!