Ethics...

Last week I wrote about a possible job opportunity, one in which the client was asking for someone who was good with psychometric tests, this past Tuesday I asked about it and since the job was external my boss didn't knew what it was exactly, so she decided to call the employer to tell her what was the job about.

Unfortunately the job was for a psychologist to instruct an intern worker (probably someone from Human Resources or an administrator) to apply said tests, review and interpret them. Doing this is against the ethics of any psychologist, it is almost as bad as psychologists prescribing medicine to our patients, even if we know what they do, how they work, how much would be the recommended dose and all that jazz.

Even if it isn't that hard to apply, review and interpret said tests, it isn't recommended to do it if you aren't trained for that, most people use them as factual data, which they are not, they are only a tool for us to use to confirm or deny something that could have been brought in the interview, and to complement our work.

That's why my boss told the employer to fuck off... well she didn't said that :P, but it would be awesome, she told him (or her) about what I wrote, that it is against our ethics and if they are interested in someone to do that job, we have people that know how to do it, and are willing to work in something like that. I suppose that they weren't interested since the call ended not too long after that.

BTW: Psychometric tests are instruments to measure certain aspects of a person, it can vary from intelligence to personality, sense of responsibility, dependability, if a person can be a liar, and many many more aspects of a person. All these tests are based on statistics and most of the times they can be trusted since they are updated regularly and are revised in different population (well, most of them), but as I wrote, they are just a tool, and should never be trusted as an absolute indicator of the person. They are to complement our work.