posted 06-05-2003 08:44 AM            

Almost all of these stories involve an examinee who says that he was truthful regarding drug use or had never used drugs and involve a post test interview that ultimately disintegrates into a threat by the examiner that if the examinee doesn't come clean he'll never get a job working for the government.

Since this information is anecdotal, I don't know if my questions can be answered definitively,but I m interested in your opinions. Is someone teaching this type of post test centering around drugs? Is someone teaching that the "You'll never work in this town again" threat as a viable way to gain admissions? Are some examiners simply setting up a certain number of examinees to fail because of a personality conflict? Are they trying to make themselves appear valuable and important by being able to tell the boss "Hey look how many hiring mistakes I kept you from making last year."?

If we accept, based on the nature and source location of these posts, that this is a nationwide phenomena; then what is the common causation?

I have, and I'm sure many of you here on this board have, successfully tested people who have told this horror story and either reached NSR conclusions or gained admissions to drug use.

For the purpose of this discussion I would like to presume that the people who are voicing these complaints publicly actually did tell the truth on their examinations regarding drug use. I based this on the idea that someone who lied and got caught anyway would have nothing to gain by making a public complaint.

Please, your comments are important.

I think that the time has come to shine a little light on this issue.

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but then, that's just one man's opinion

posted 06-05-2003 12:27 PM            

Several years ago I had a young black applicant from back east somewhere. He told me that as a teen he joined an explorer program and had to take a test. I asked how he did and he got visibly upset saying that he had failed the drug question and had never used any type of illegal drugs. I asked him why he felt he failed and he said he knew that the examiner didn't believe him even before the test. The examiner, when told by the young man he never used any drugs, said "you're lying, you're a young black kid growing up in a bad neighborhood and I know you have used drugs". Well that obviously caused a problem. I told him we could work it out if he was just truthful. I told him I had never used drugs and people didn't believe me either. He did pass the test.

I think this kind of thing is common. I don't think most examiners are saying things like that to set people up for failure but I think it is their way of trying to get applicants to admit to things they, the examiner, feels the applicant might be holding back in order to help them pass the test.

Just my opinion, Jack

posted 06-07-2003 09:50 AM         

Drug use and the failure to disclose it, is a very common thing in pre-employment testing. Lets face it, we like to get admissions. That is what we do best.

It is very easy to get an applicant to change his "marijuana useage" from ten times to twenty. It happens all the time because the applicant low balls his numbers so we don't brand him as a druggie. Then he can't pass the test because he knows he is not being truthful. This should have been cleared up in the pre-test interview.

I have also encountered more and more people who in fact, have never used drugs. Pistol whipping them in the post test only makes us ALL look bad.

It is up to us as examiners to treat people correctly whether they pass or fail. I have never had an applicant fail one of my exams and not thank me and shake my hand prior to leaving. I have also never had a complaint from an applicant who failed (or passed).

The big problem is that we have pre-employment polygraph mills out there cranking out the exams. 10 per day is not uncommon. They work on volume and do a crappy job. With such limited time for an exam, the examiners resort to harsh post test interviews in order to get that quick admission.

The requesting agencies go to theses guys to save a buck. Shame on them! They aren't saving anything by disqualifying good people.

Agencies should do a background check on the examiner to make sure he is not doing too many exams per day. State law could easily rectify this as well but don't hold your breath!

I have heard stories about examiners who do tests out of their homes. I also heard about another examiner who wears sweat pants and a t-shirt at the office! These are the kind of things that agencies need to know about.

Ted

posted 06-07-2003 02:46 PM         

There is nothing wrong with a "professional" office in the home. The complaint I heard was the guy made the candidate wait in the car while his family finished dinner! They also told me the family dog was present during the exam!

posted 06-07-2003 04:57 PM            

Now I agree with you 100%

posted 12-30-2003 02:36 PM           

May I make a constructive suggestion regarding the pre-employment issue with drug use?

Here's what I do (and it seems to work for me):

If a person reacts strongly to illegal drugs on my mixed-issue screen, I then do another screen with all drug questions as the relevant questions...(example = did you lie to me about the last time you used drugs, did you lie to me about the amount of times you used drugs, did you lie to me about the type of drugs you used, did you lie to me about selling/making drugs, etc) for a better picture of what the problem area really is.

By narrowing the focus, I can do two things; first, I can more accurately state what the problem is more likely to be and second, it makes getting an admission from a deceptive subject much easier if I know what they are lying about.

Many people will react to a "general" drug question like "Did you lie to me about illegal drugs?" because they are sensitive to this issue. Yet, many of them won't react to any of the "break-out" drug questions.

For example, I tested an applicant who's brother died of a drug overdose. This was quite a shock to his middle-class family, none of whom even suspected that the brother used drugs. The brother (who was a good scholar and a collegiate athlete) was idolized by the applicant all his life and he was devastated when the brother died. As a result, he "hit" the drug question very hard. When I broke out every different aspect of drug use into separate mixed-issue tests, he showed NDI.

Sorry I got so long-winded here, but I've personally seen good people denied employment simply because examiners didn't spend a little more time running more charts.