Posts by wasabicube
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Nixon's resignation. We were driving from North Wales to Yorkshire to stay with my Grandpa during the summer holidays. I can visualise us rounding a roundabout as the news came on the car radio.
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Access: The Blue Inhaler, in reply to Russell Brown,
I'm another Ventolin kid (I'm still a kid, I guess) and still have the Ventolin on hand even though I rarely need it these days. I went through the 'joy' of Intal capsules in the 'spinhaler'. I also enjoyed the palpitations and shakes from Boehringer Ingelheim's Berotec (Fenoterol) inhaler.
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Perhaps there's a time-limited model around showing recently broadcast television versus perpetually archived seasons. The time-limited model is the one in which TVNZ and MediaWorks currently dwell, for overseas content. So, I don't see them as direct rivals to the likes of Netflix and Hulu. SkyTV has made a long-term play to hoard rights and make them available in dribs and drabs and at a high fee. Maybe Neon changes that. I guess I'm looking at Spark and wondering what their business plan was for going off piste and setting up a rival to Netflix?
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Speaker: We don’t make the rules, we're…, in reply to Russell Brown,
When they show a return on their $35 million, perhaps then you could argue that the model had worked. Until that time, I'd suggest they're wandering into TiVo and Igloo territory without an up-to-date map.
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Thank you for summing up this sad state of affairs. Great post.
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Hard News: The shaky ground of…, in reply to Danielle,
I’m not entirely sure it's just hoop-jumping though I admit we all like to put our best side forward at interview. My point is more towards deliberately gaming the personality assessment by attempting to project the personality you think is the one being sought. This involves second-guessing the mapping between questions and traits and the weights typically put on those responses. Competent assessment report interpreters can see through this behaviour in the results of the assessment and will check with referees for confirmation.
Our focus has been on fit within organisations and teams and we feel we bring good success by seeking to understand the way people operate and tailoring their roles and management accordingly. It’s very rare to find the perfect candidate but understanding their motivations and behaviours can help produce a good outcome for both candidate and employer. This is starting to sound like marketing patter; I guess I’m playing my own little part with a straightish face.
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My opinion is psychometric assessment results should not be taken in isolation. Rather, they should be combined with interviews, reinforced with referees’ opinions and taken with any other available evidence of the person’s suitability for a role.
Assessments exist on a scale of effectiveness ranging from, frankly, pop quizzes with no validity whatsoever, through those that are popular (read: cheap and, apparently, easy to digest) right through to those with solid scientific studies to back their construction and use.
There are common misconceptions, both on the side of the candidates completing the assessments and those commissioning them, as to what is being sought with a psychometric instrument. Often people will want to know what they can do to “pass” the test. Similarly, some employers will be looking for a “yes/no” answer or a box to put the candidate within. This is naive and dangerous. The better psychometric assessments will present information that reveals the complexity of the human condition and present insights into the way the candidate learns and operates. Essentially, a good psychometric is a means to help determine a candidate’s fit within an organisation or role. Unfortunately, this is not a trivial “yes/no”, INTJ, or other short answer, problem. Experience and skill in interpretation should be brought to bear by suitably qualified people.
It’s also worth noting that most people’s ability to judge character is much worse than they credit themselves, especially in interview situations. The legality of interview questions and techniques are not considered in determining the future of someone’s employment. Neither is the legality of the opinion-laden annual performance review, which is often touted as another measure of someone’s suitability for a role.
As an aside, it is interesting to observe the level of duplicity exhibited by some commenters on this subject. Clearly misrepresenting yourself to your prospective or current employer whether through a psychometric assessment, interview or otherwise is something that should be of concern.
By way of disclosure, I develop software for a New Zealand company developing and promoting the use of psychometric assessments in the New Zealand market. I am not a psychologist but we employ registered psychologists in the development and interpretation of our tools.
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Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen was also under suspicion when she swam the final length of her 400m medley faster than Ryan Lochte. The suspicion was raised not so much because she was faster than a man, but because the time was a statistical outlier.
The BBC take a look at the statistics of Ye Shiwen's world record here and conclude there is no statistical smoking gun.
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Congratulations! Pleased to see there's still room for stimulating conversation and intelligent argument on our screens.
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I've been disturbed by the US definition of "war" in the context of Iraq for years. They still talk about being "at war" when, surely, they're dealing with the aftermath of a war [they created], which in most theatres should tend towards "peacekeeping". Similarly, in the video, a voice claims those on the ground should not have brought children to a "battle". Again, the word is overloaded. The "battle" was signally one-sided and visited upon the ground from armoured armchairs at a height and distance. I guess that's the definition of asynchronous warfare. Sad.