Posted on 06/06/2024 8:51:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Although Thomas Edison was awarded 2,332 worldwide patents as an inventor, one of his lasting contributions to modern society was not proprietary: the job interview. Edison was not just a prolific inventor — he was also a businessman in charge of an industrial empire. His corporation, Thomas A. Edison, Inc., employed more than 10,000 workers at dozens of companies. Edison wanted employees who could memorize large quantities of information and also make efficient business decisions. To find them, he devised an extensive questionnaire to assess job candidates’ knowledge and personality.
Edison began using tests for candidate assessment in the late 19th century, but the questions he asked then were very specific to open positions he needed filled. Over time, he expanded on the idea, including questions that were not directly related to the job. While interviewing research assistants, for example, Edison served them soup to see if interviewees would season the soup before they tasted it; those who did were automatically disqualified as it suggested they were prone to operate on assumptions.
In 1921, Edison debuted the Edison Test, a knowledge test with more than 140 questions. Questions varied depending on the job position, but all interviewees were asked about information outside of their areas of expertise. The queries ranged from agricultural in nature (“Where do we get prunes from?”) to commercial (“In what cities are hats and shoes made?”) to the macabre (“Name three powerful poisons”).
After a copy of the questionnaire was leaked to The New York Times, Edison had to change the question bank multiple times to ensure applicants took the exam without any outside assistance.A score of 90% was required to pass, and out of the 718 people who had taken the test as of October 1921, only 32 (just 2%!) succeeded. The test was difficult, to say the least.
Edison’s own son Theodore failed it while a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). More famously, Albert Einstein failed the exam because he forgot the speed of sound.
The 1920s saw an upswing in college-educated people in the workforce, leading to increased competition for skilled labor, and thus more applicants for employers to choose from. Edison’s strategy of questioning candidates to assess their personality and aptitude was innovative at the time, and is still standard practice today — though employers are more likely to ask about someone’s greatest accomplishment than the origins of prunes.
Thinking that you know the seasoning proportion in every bowl of soup already and always will, is why Edison would not hire you for a researcher.
Untrue. I prepare soup with 125% the lethal dose of salt.
gotta ask Rickover, one of his standard questions... 8^)
Sorry, No intent to call you that; the quote struck me with the thread theme.
Enjoy your day!
Well ... my answer is that I’m not a slave.
How would you know what seasoning it needed before you taste it?
he might have accepted that answer, he was trying to get a rise and how it’d be handled
with one guy, first thing out of his mouth was
“Piss me off.”
the guy cleared his desk off, he got the position
How would you know what seasoning it needed before you taste it?
How many seasonings do you figure Edison had on his interview table?
That’s not really the concept of the job interview.
And the Chinese mandarin exam system long predated this gentleman.
Would Edison flunk you for your double post? LOL
I passed. "Decide" was, I think, the operative word.
It absolutely does. Both of what I listed are real world examples. I was the pepper junky until I got into my 20s and discovered salsa and Chinese and Indian. I like my food hot. Unless I know it’s a spicy dish I’m going to hit most things with pepper, because if it ain’t listed as spicy it’s not spicy enough for me. And if it turns out it was spicy and I added pepper anyway, fine by me, now it’s more spicy.
And my grandmother had the muscle memory thing. Every time she sat down to eat, 2 shakes of salt, 2 shakes of pepper. It was just part of eating for her. After having some she might go for more salt or pepper, but that routine could not be broken.
Edison was absolutely making an assumption. He assumed they assumed while not recognizing that everybody is different and the same action could be done for many many reasons.
First off, seasoning a bowl of soup that a potential employer is serving you without having any idea what is in it as far as seasoning is the very type of thing he was looking for as someone not suited to be a researcher of the unknown, calling it muscle memory just makes it sound more stupid and unthinking.
As far as liking seasoning, what does that have to do with an unknown bowl of soup? You don’t know how spicy it is, or if it is too spicy already, or how much additional spice it might need.
Edison was weeding out people who bull through with habit and assumptions rather than examination, all he was looking for was for you to taste first to see what the situation of the soup was.
What makes you think he wasn’t serving an already overly seasoned soup just to reinforce the reject’s mistake in presuming things?
Nine
First off thinking someone you gave soup to should just accept it without change is the very type of thing a toxic boss would do. And we know this because Edison was a tyrant.
It has a lot to do with an unknown bowl of soup. The fact of the matter is a bowl of soup is NOT a black box. You can see into it. You actually can tell a lot of the ingredients just by looking. If you’re not seeing spicy stuff and you like spicy stuff you probably should add spices without even trying any. And if you over spice it, well survive. And if you don’t you add more.
Edison was weeding out people who didn’t automatically assume he had the voice of God.
And here again you show that Edison, and you, made assumptions. Define over spiced? Until I hit my 50s and my stomach lost some of its tolerance for acid there was no such thing as over spiced for me. I love food that fights back, bring it on.
The simple reality is that it’s a dumb interview “question” because it actually tells you nothing about the person. It’s right up there with “what kind of tree would you be”. It’s just pointless and stupid and anybody making their hiring decisions based on it is somebody you really don’t want to work for anyway.
“”””First off thinking someone you gave soup to should just accept it without change is the very type of thing a toxic boss would do.””””
He didn’t do that, and don’t ever let a fine chef see you not even tasting his food before you start seasoning it.
You sure are upset about this, but you have convinced me that you start sprinkling food with salt and pepper before you even think to taste it.
“”””And here again you show that Edison, and you, made assumptions. Define over spiced?””””
The point was you don’t know what was in that soup, and yes food can be oversalted, especially a bowl of test soup for idiots.
He absolutely DID do that. It’s right there, if they added spice without tasting it no job. That is definitely thinking they should just accept it without change. And as for the fine chef, he needs to suck it up.
I’m not upset about anything. I’m pointing out reality. Edison was wrong on this. And so are you.
Not salt, I’m not into salt. Pepper often. Or other spicy stuff. I know what I like. I almost always want more wasabi on sushi than they put on. I don’t need to eat a piece of dim sum first to know I’ll like it better dipped in chili oil. I want salsa spread on or in my burrito. They put the spices on the table for a reason, and people don’t always need to try the food before using them. If they know themselves. If they know how the dish is normally prepared. If they use their eyes. If they use their nose.
There are a million perfectly valid reasons for somebody to add spice first. Declaring it automatically invalid is an exercise in foolishness.
Edison didn’t care what their ideas about seasoning were, or how much they liked to season food, or their taste buds, or what they did to the soup or how much salt and pepper they added to it, or anything else about their tastes.
He was watching to see if they tasted it first to see if it needed anything, or how much of anything if it did, were they researcher material or oafs that were unsuited for that work.
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