About 3 weeks ago I posted about a new service from Chandler Macleod called CMyPeople, following the post Roger Christie from Sefiani Communications Group called saying that he had read the blog post and arranged for me to go into Chandler Macleod to complete the full survey before the official release. Not only did he arrange for me to take the full survey but also have Kevin Chandler (yep the Chandler part of Chandler Macleod) walk through the results with me.
So I rocked up to the Melbourne Chandler Macleod offices to take the test really not sure what to expect. I was told the test takes 90 minutes and it did, mainly because certain parts are timed. As I went through I took a few notes which I am going to share.
Technically the tool is built in Flash version 9. The user interface is not bad, nothing over the top which would retraction from the test but at the same time it still looks a little 1990’s.
The test is broken into 6 portions with a mixture of timed and untimed sections:
- Section 1 – Training on the tool and user interface
- Section 2 – Basic demographic and job information is collected, including your PC expertise
- Section 3 – Covers verbal reasoning in 15 minutes using the ACER Higher Test WL. I found this test quite easy until the last question which I did not finish in time.
- Section 4 – Covers numerical reasoning in 20 minutes using the ACER Higher Test WQ. The last 5 questions in this were tough and I didn’t get to finish the last 2 questions at all due to time.
- Section 5 – General reasoning in 20 minutes based on the Ravens Standard Progressive Matrices Classic, with 5 different subsections each with their own time limit. I completed all questions except the last one where I ran out of time.
- Section 6 – Looked at my temperament based on the Humm-Wadsworth Scale and was untimed covering 164 questions.
I left the assessment with a 10 page report outlining my key strengths but without much of an understanding what they meant. I was not surprised as usually a participant is given immediate feedback on their results.
Two days later Kevin Chandler called me while I was sitting under a tree in Sydney’s Hyde Park just by the War Memorial, we had a good chat for almost 45 minutes. I was expecting only about 15 minutes. A bit about Kevin. His background is as a programmer and then psychologist where he has either been Chandler Macleod’s Chief Psychologist or had them reporting to him.
Kevin explained the the basis for the new tool was his belief that personality is the primary driver for job performance. This means that recruitment and selection needs to start with looking at the person, who they are and then do they fit the job vs does the job fit the person. Working with the Australian Government they have defined 8 primary competencies and 30 detailed competencies which can be mapped to any role. These competencies have been mapped to the 1,200 standard occupancies in Australia and New Zealand. for organisations who have roles that dob’t match the 1,200 mapping of new jobs can be done in about an hour. The CMyPeople tools is based on the joint Chandler Macleod/ Australian government initiative called Employability Skills Profile (ESP). ESP was built for the Job network and which placed between 1/3 & 2/3’s of people who had been unemployed for greater than 12 months in roles.
The tool is aimed at the top 400 organisations in Australia and will be monetised through a per survey cost and ongoing storage of results.
Following the background discussion Kevin took me through my results. This part was quite surprising. Kevin spent about 5 minutes feeding back to me my strengths, weaknesses and personality outlining what I liked to do and disliked. It was as if he had knew me and we had worked together for years, when in fact we have never met.
From the intelligent tests I am in the top 10% of the population in my verbal reasoning, top 2% numerical and top 7% for abstract thinking. Well above the averages for university graduates. In general terms this means I am smart, but not a genius so no Mensa for me.
So what job can I do? In general he stated I was intellectual and could basically do any job I wanted as long as it held my interest. To determine the best job Kevin reviewed my key interests from a list of key words, based on these I have a 98% fit for a Web Development type role. While he felt I could do any role there were a few he indicated I would not be as good at as others: General Manager, CEO, Magistrate or Medical Scientist. Finally my personality is one of a high degree of self control.
My overall feeling is as a career guidance test it is good with the results seeming surprisingly accurate. Will it revolutionise recruitment and selection processes, probably not. In fact other than use with the long term unemployed I fear that the tool like many others will just add to the time it takes people people to apply for jobs.
(These are my notes I made during the discussion I hope I have not miss-represented anything.)
Michael Specht 
Hi, just wanted to thanks for posting this – was very helpful in preparing for my testing. It looks like they must’ve updated the system since you were put through it… I was put through this testing as part of an application process for a job (mining engineer). After section 5 (Ravens Standard Progressive Matrices Classic) they have added in one more 10 minute section, unfortunately I didn’t write down what it was called.
With the new section (it comes before humm-wadsworth) you get 10 minutes to finish about 40 questions of shape perception (I only made it through around 25). You get presented with about 3-5 pieces of a broken shape, and then you get 4 answers of what they might produce once put together. Sounds simple, but you have to image them in your head and rotate, re-arrange and attach them around and take note of sizing, edges, etc to be able to come up with the final shape (about the same level of difficulty as some of the final sections in the Ravens test). To make things a little more difficult, instead of just saying ‘hurry as quick as possible’ – they add in a note which is along the lines of ‘any incorrect answers will lead to point deductions’ (so pretty much, if you guess lots, and lots are wrong, you may as well not do the test).
Overall the test was not too difficult (makes sense as the ACER Higher Tests are given to 15yr olds) – I went in thinking id be facing many difficult math questions without being allowed to use a calculator (I had been practicing on aptitude tests from other companies, some of them had decimal number multiplication that had to be done without a calculator under time limits (e.g. 35.6 * 2.43). The math problems mainly consist of number patterns, problem solving (some jotting may be helpful). The questions were about the standard of a year 8 test. There are no questions that require great arithmetic skills (probably because they allow you to use a calculator, and that would make it pointless). Most of the problem solving questions are easy such as “you have X fruits, and half as many oranges than apples, but three times as many pears than oranges, how many pears do you have?”….. The questions involved in the ravens test were more difficult in my opinion as they were graphical pattern recognition (see http://wilderdom.com/intelligence/IQExampleTests.html for one of the *simple* examples).
Also the humm-wadsworth test section is no longer 164 questions, it is now 318 questions. For those who don’t know what to expect, they ask things about stealing, tendencies to break laws, whether you are a liar or truthful, a lot about how you perceive your friends, and how they perceive you (or how you think they do), whether you are a suspicious character, whether you are a loner or a fun loving person, whether you have an steady or ever-changing personality. I guess its not much of a surprise considering it is a personality test.
I was quoted 3 hours for the test, about right as I started at 8:50 and finished at 11:40. I also had to do a ‘safety’ survey/test after the CMYPeople test though, which would have accounted for 30 minutes of the 3hrs (I don’t think everyone has to do this). Anyone who needs to do this test – i’d advise to take something to drink and have some caffeine before you go. Also take a writing pad and pen for note taking/making and working out thinking problems. You are allowed to go for toilet breaks between tasks, as you finish one timed task, you don’t start the next until you are ready (its all software, there is no instructor there with a stop watch to tell you when to start or stop). Oh and read a book of English phases, many of the phases presented to me in the verbal interpretation tests I’d never come across before.
Although the testing process was painless, it’s a bit daunting to think that it could all come down to a personality test to allow a potential employer decide on whether or not to hire you. They claim to use your test results alongside your previous experience information in the decision making process – I hope that’s true, because from trying out the sample personality test here: http://www.chandlermacleod.com/JOBSEEKERS/WHATPERSONALITYTYPEAMI/tabid/473/Default.aspx I am already in the wrong industry.. (I am not able to obtain my test results form the proper test until a decision has been reached whether or not I get the job).
I hope this helps anyone to be facing the testing process in the future. Hopefully I didn’t give too much away – just trying to make an emphasis on the fact that there is no need to stress over how difficult the test might be (as it turns out to be not that difficult for a person with an average IQ’).
Thank you so much for your postings I feel a lot more comfortable now, I go for it tomorrow.