My First Psycho Test! And a total disaster... :-(

So today I went to my first psycho test ("Psikotes" in Indonesian) for a job I'm applying for. Tee hee, "psycho" test. It's actually a psychological test that employers use to..... no, not to find out if you're psycho, but to profile if you're managerial quality or subordinate, which area to best place you, and also to find out if you actually are stable enough to perform consistent, under-pressured tasks.

My friend Anne and I joked around that they really should design a test to discover job seekers that have latent psycho talents. IF they have that, maybe it'll reduce postal worker cases in the US.

The good news is, usually when a company asks you to take the test, your foot's at least at the doorstep, because the test ain't free (and I heard pretty expensive). The bad news is, I think I totally flunked the test.

It was HARD!! I had no problem during the personality test (EQ test), but there was an IQ test segment and I was caught totally unprepared. The people whom I've talked to days before all told me that I have nothing to worry about, and that there's nothing to study... it's a psychotest. They wanna profile your psychology and your personality more than anything, so the only advise I got was, "Make sure you use your common sense. If they ask you if you find money on the ground at the office and whether you should surrender it to HR or keep it for yourself, well... you know the answer." And so I slept peacefully the night before.

I got there at 8am, and I started the test by filling out endless paperwork. They ask things that would be totally unthinkable in the US, such as your religion, age, birthdate, race, height, weight, parents and sibling's names, ages, and occupation; your wife's names, the date you got married, your kids' names, age, education, and occupation; and finally your complete educational history starting from... elementary school. I used my ten fingers plus my toes to calculate back all those years. THEN I filled out standard job interview questionnaire that ask things like, "What are your strengths? Weaknesses? Failures in the past? Things you like most about your last job? Why did you leave your job?" etc, etc. It was 3 pages long, and all written in.

Then came the IQ test, and alas, I think they put the math and logic part at the last section on purpose, to test your endurance. The first section were easy breezy, with synonyms (find similar words) and antonyms and general knowledge. Then it became progressively hard, with scrambled words that you have to rearrange into the correct orders (this required concentration), then adding simple numbers in long columns (I'm talking about one page long, 4 columns deep), quantitative proficiency (If a car travels at 50kmh and reaches town A in 75 mins, how many mins will it take if the car travels at 100 kmh?), and logic (If A = B and B is not C, what is a part of D that equals B?).

The last section, Attention To Details, was the true killer. I had to find missing images (cat missing its left whiskers), spatial abilities (mirror images, rotated images, disintegration), climaxing in the part that tasked me with re-arranging scrambled, poorly drawn cartoon panels into a story line that make sense. At this point, my brain was boiling. I was mentally tired, I was hungry, and hot air from the computer's vent blowing into my face only served to aggravate the situation.

Luckily, it was over soon, and personality test was the next section. Although it was 125 questions, but I breezed through them. The thing that made the IQ test hard for me was the time limit. Most sections have only about 25 - 50 questions, but with only 10 mins or so time limit. That really made it challenging, especially when I had to deal with the Attention To Details section. All of the problems were super easy - only basic math abilities needed - but speed and accuracy were prime factors of success.

For all its worth, though, I do see psychotest's huge advantages in aiding employers making better hiring decisions. You do need to be somewhat intelligent, and you do need to possess certain rigors to be able to get through the test. I, for one, will go back to the drawing board and buy myself a book on this subject. Never again will I underestimate psychotests. I have another one coming up on Thursday, so better get started.

Psychotests seem to be the norm here. Just as background checks and drug tests are used in the US as preconditions for employment, Pyschotests are additional filters companies large and small throughout Asia employ, and I imagine in Britain and Germany as well. In a way, psychotests provide the perfect litmus test for employers to obtain a sort of a standard for all of their employee hopefuls.

Introduction

Hello! Greg here. You pretty much know me as the guy who lived in the US for 12 years, had a blast, but then got laid off and decided to look for better opportunities in Jakarta, Indonesia. Yeah, I know how that sounds. But the job situation in the US really is dire right now, and my hearts go out to all my friends and family who are affected by this malady. Hang tough guys, we all know things will get better soon.

I've decided to re-start my blogging because I've noticed that employers these days increasingly want some sort of proof or assurance that I'm technologically-and web-literate. Over the past 3 weeks, about 40% of interviewers asked me, "So, what do you know about Web 2.0? Anything to show for it?" Usually I just mumble that I'm active on Facebook, Flickr and YouTube but nothing else to show for. I actually had a blog service that ran from 2001 thru 2004, then I left it for dead on a 5 years hiatus. When I came back, all of my old posts were gone. I guess either Google erased all my files for non-activity or something happened when they migrated everyone to Google in 2006 - I don't really care. Those posts were just figments of my bored, tormented souls back when I was a poor, starving students. It was all emo, and it was disgusting when I think back of what I wrote. Google had better really erased it!!

So anyways, seeing that I'm looking for a job now, it can't hurt that I have this. I'm hoping that some people would be kind enough to read this, and even *gasp* help me by following this blog, so that employers think that I write good stuff.

In return, I'll try to post interesting topics and educamation materials, ranging from food, arts and culture, music, movies review, pop culture, and general random stuff. I promise I'll make it as interesting as possible, like that day when I saw someone on foot crossing the 60 km/h toll road in Jakarta and actually made it across.

So... without further ado, here's some basic info about me and my blog: My name is Greg Haradiran, and I live in the city of Jakarta, Indonesia. Previous to this, I lived in the beautiful state of California, in the great country of the United States of America.

You may wonder why I chose the display name "Greggiepooh." When you're done supressing your impulse to throw up, allow me to explain. This was a pet name that was given by my ex-coworkers at my last job, AL and SR. These people are very dear to me, and therefore the pet name that they gave me is precious memory. Later on, ML and another AL started adopting the name and everyone else calls me by that name. I miss them much. When I came to the job, the four of them, AL, SR, ML and AL were the youngest people at the company, bored and greatly outnumbered by everyone else who were, let's just say, not very young. There wasn't much excitement in terms of what they were able to do with people with similar minds and interest (by interest I mean "Happy Hour" - I cannot disclose too much of it, but suffice it to say that it was plenty "happy). We were all in the same Marketing department, and we very quickly bonded together and became the rebels of the company. We laughed together, suffered together, ate together, traveled together, and hung out together. Those were the good times, and it was ours, and no one can take it away from us. Things are obviously not the same today, but the sweet memories stay with me forever. I thought I'd honor the memories by using the pet name they've given me.

And the blog title "Nighthag?" Well, I always stay up late when I do things like this, and the last 3 words "hag" are really "H.A.G." that stands for my full name. If you know me, you can pretty much guess what those are.
So, that's it! I'll continue more tomorrow. I hope you come visit back soon.