Second job woes

How it works is that they take down some basic identification information, ask several limited questions regarding your experience and availability, and then go into a behaviour/personality survey. The latter bothers me. It asks a lot of tricky questions that potentially influence you to answer as they want you to answer, and you have to wonder what impact answering a question a particular way has on your application. Here are a few examples:


Who can answer yes to that question? No one. There isn't a soul alive who's never told a lie. You'd think that answering yes to that question would flag you as dishonest. On the other hand, I don't want taking the question at face value to indicate that I don't always strive to tell the truth at my job (which I do). Still, I have a hard time not honestly answering "no" to that question.

Yet, some questions are even murkier:


Here's the issue: I agree that "Mary" handled this situation poorly. Responding in such a matter is extremely poor customer service. Customers are your company's lifeblood, and you must be willing to go out of your way to please them. But, her manager can't dock her a week's pay for reacting in this way! That would be illegal. Does he have grounds to fire her? I'm not sure... that would depend upon labour laws I'm not familiar with. I know employees cannot be refused a lunch break after having logged a certain number of hours, but if this was a paid break voluntarily offered by her employer, she likely can be instructed to let her work duties take priority over it.

And I know I'm way overthinking the question, but do you see my point? How the heck are you supposed to answer that? How does Best Buy want you to answer it? Heck, maybe they want to hire employees who are ignorant of their rights, and are kept in line by fear of horrible punishments.


This is similar to the "do you always tell the truth" question. Have I ever thought about ways to rob a bank? Sure... I watch movies. I have an imagination. Would I ever seriously consider robbing a bank, in real life? No! Not whatsoever. To be more practical, have I ever considered dipping into the till at a previous job, without actually doing it? Seriously considered? No. Have I, while daydreaming, ever wondered whether I could get away with it? Possibly. I can't honestly remember. But I wouldn't think that it would be wrong to do so, if I did.

Our legal system can't punish anyone for thoughts, or even intentions (unless you have even preliminarily acted on those intentions). It can only punish actions, with the possibility of intentions determining the degree of punishment. Do your thoughts say something about you as a person? Most definitely. But you can't judge someone on one thought alone. Many things float through our minds that we would never honestly consider enacting.


This is a morally complex question, and it's incredibly difficult to give a yes/no question. If I discovered that my child had stolen an item from his or her workplace, would I instantly dial up his or her supervisor and risk the possibility of my child being sent to jail? Probably not. I would first attempt to correct their behaviour myself, and force them to make reparations. Is that somewhat hypocritical, considering that I believe thieves should be punished, and probably wouldn't give a stranger the benefit of the doubt? Probably. But it's a human and truthful answer.

Bear in mind that we're not told who this family member is, nor whether they've stolen fifty cents once, or embezzled thousands of dollars on numerous occasions. Nor can we specify whether an answer of "no" indicates that we support their behaviour. Is a criminal act a criminal act? Yes. But does our legal system believe that all criminal acts should be dealt with identically? No.

Now on the other hand, in my hypothetical situation, if I could not correct the behaviour of my family member, I think I would report them rather than let them cold-heartedly get away with theft. But I don't get to communicate any of this in my yes/no answer, do I?


Now, it's obvious that I've gone way overboard, here. I get that Best Buy is just trying to preselect candidates who will be best for its company. But is this really a good way to do it? To let some team of business psychologists decide who gets an interview using an extremely narrow-minded and ambiguous questionnaire? This is the only way for me to get my foot in the door as a prospective employee, and I have no idea how close I am to giving them the answers they want no matter how honest I am in my responses. Yet, I know that I would be a good employee, and an honest employee. I'm just extremely frustrated that I have no way to demonstrate this. If I don't pass their test, I have no chance to advance to the next level. I'm nowhere near being able to shake someone's hand and introduce myself.

The other thing that bothers me is that is pretty much all there is to the application process. There's no option to submit a resume, or include a cover letter. You can't even detail your previous experiences. I can accept that for a corporation of this size, it isn't efficient to have a person or even a computer sort through hundreds of submitted resumes. It's just that this survey being pretty much the only determining factor when it comes to granting interviews reinforces my fear that it's important to succeed on it, and I have no idea how to do that.

Additionally, they only let you apply for one position at each location, even though the original drop-down menu may list as many as fifteen positions. At the end of the assessment they ask you if you want to apply for additional positions at that location, but you can't--once you apply once, that location will be removed from the queue. I called the technical support number (which is for the company that administrates the application process, not Best Buy itself), and was told that I had to call each individual store's hiring manager and let them know any other positions I was interested in. Trouble is, even if I do take the time/figure out how to do that, I can't recall what the other positions were, nor do I necessarily know what they entail or if I'm qualified for them, as the only way to get a description is to select that position during the original application (and you can't go back).