This morning I applied for a program supervisor position with a well-established Children's Hospital.
I hate filling out job applications to begin with, filling them out online is actually sort of worse because I CAN find jobs to apply to (for?) but that means I am constantly creating 'profiles' and filling out the same tedious nonsense over and over.
This morning's application to the Children's Hospital was by far the worst. Up front it told me it was a short 13-step process; what it didn't tell me was step 9 was essentially a personality/experience type test with 42 "windows" of questions, many of those with 10 hypothetical situation with various possible solutions with which I was to indicate relative degrees of agreement or disagreement. Most of it sounded like Communist Preceptor principals: you are working with your co-workers and one disagrees with you: What do you do? It was quite focused on figuring out how you would kiss ass in various situations, or maybe be creative without seeming too independent.
It was timed - I had 90 minutes to complete this onerous task.
I managed to do it in maybe 25 minutes: despite appearances - I'm reasonably intelligent and some of the questions DID deal with children's issues and since I never grew up (and have worked with children's issues for ages) those parts were easy.
And on a couple of interviews I have had recently, they insisted I fill out their useless little application, regurgitating ever word on my detailed resume and which I repeat verbally during the actual interview. It is a waste of time, rather demeaning, and more than a little pointless.
I mean, if I was applying for entry-level positions, that would be one thing; however I am applying for supervisory/director-type positions of some authority and it all seems incongruent with stated job descriptions and requisite qualifications (master's degree, several years of professional experience, licensure). It's not like I'm stocking shelves at the Dollar Store.
From the way I get interviewed, I often feel the need to make sure I arrived at the proper place.
I did manage to find a training video of the management techniques that I have recently encountered. It is a bit dated but, I assure you, nothing has changed.
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