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Facing the need to split people into two categories, fast, it would be wonderful indeed to be able to let all take a good test, tick a box and divide the folks. Like Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, kind of: people come with their qualities, each fit for a spot.
Why waste time for conversations, assessments, deliberations. Even so: what feels easy in an antiutopia, breeds errors in real life. With damaged organisational image the only outcome, hopefully, the situation might be fixed.
Sadly, in power structures, the outcome of false choices may be a lot worse – with people appointed to posts for which they are unfit.
For the sixth year running Defence Forces use a Thomas Test for dividing up recruits. A test which does not measure what it is supposed to measure. A test which angers soldiers, offends psychologists and costs €30,000 taxpayer money a year.
Both Defence Forces and Ministry of Defence stress this is just one tool, the actual decision being taken by squad leaders. These, however, take 79 per cent of their decisions based on the said Thomas Test which, as said, measures not what it is used to measure.
No other army on the planet uses the Thomas Test. There exists, however, a Canadian arbitrage court decision, in a labour dispute, stating the test may be used as an aid to an interview only. Quite ridiculously, national defence leadership is trying to appear as not hoodwinked.
For they claim that 79 per cent of those proclaimed fit for some post were actually appointed by their squad leaders. How wonderful. All this shows is the laughably low level of all Thomas Test fans in army and elsewhere in assessment of selection methodology.
For if recruits are indeed sent to training after the test, then, it is to be concluded, squad leaders have no one else to choose from than those falling to them by the test. To use this to claim the test works would be like being sincerely surprised, coming home from shopping: lo and behold, here we have the sausage I just purchased – and not all the other sausages of the world!
The Thomas Test thing raises many a question. First: how many other services and products may there be, purchased by the Defence Forces, unable to assess their quality and usability? Second: how many such cost, unexplainable and unproven, are there elsewhere in the public sector?
Praiseworthy, however, that Defence Forces have hired critical minded experts daring to confront the silliness disregarding the chain of command. This shines a ray of hope: with initial euphoria leading to errors of judgement, mistakes might yet get corrected.