Just imagine if your in tray tripled over night – Scary thought, huh?
Office in tray management is a big thing these days and many graduates are subjected to assessment centre exercises as part of the job interview process. One of the activities tends to include the in-tray exercise where you are given a hypothetical in tray which you then have to work your way through. With no definitive right or wrong answer, the objective is to assess the candidate’s ability to prioritse, work to a time frame and effectively determine actions to handle the information.
Thank goodness they hadn’t invented this when I went for my initial job interviews, as my uni degree certainly didn’t arm me with these skill sets for when I entered the work force.
Never encountered one of these tests myself… I wonder, though, how much is meant to evaluate the prospective employee vs how much is essentially free consultation. Imagine… you get some good ideas from how potential candidates process their inboxes during your test, and you propagate those findings around your company… then everyone is more efficient and you don’t need to hire anyone new after all.
I’m fine with some level of proficiency testing… but I’d draw the line I think at giving a prospective employer any free job-improvement tips unless they paid me for the service.
Funny you mention free consultation – that aspect never occurred to me. I know that when I was in the graduate interview program (I got involved in the interview program for graduates after I was first employees and that’s the year they changed the interview process to this in tray based system, amongst other tests). Believe you me, during this test, there was no opportunity to grab anyone’s efficiency/smart in tray management ideas. It was one big struggle for them to get through the emails, let alone decide what they had to do with them. 🙂
Yeah, I can see that… it would depend on how the test was conducted. I’m generally not confrontational, but I have learned over the years that my natural giving personality is subject to be taken advantage of… so as I get older, my ears perk up and I tend to question some things.
Like, as an artist, I would have a portfolio of things I’ve done professionally and things I’ve done for fun… but I wouldn’t leave copies of anything… and I wouldn’t draw something on the spot as part of a “test” to see if I could come up with an idea quickly. But if they wanted to generally question my process, I’d have no problems going over that.
I’m with you–thank goodness they didn’t do these things when I interviewed. All my interviews were pretty informal affairs. Minimal sweating and fretting involved. 🙂
It’s a very different world these days – some things are better, but there sure are things that are worse. I mean, I remember the good old days of managing an in-tray (physical one, made of wood or modern day plastic) and receiving all office wide memos. What fun they were.
I recall the one sent by facilities management informing all of the exciting news that we could not only have a pot plant on our desk, but that facilities management would provide us with a correctly spec’ed one for free. We were also given instructions on the type of plant we could have (prickly cactus a no-no, vines that take over the office, another no-no) and dimensions (no taller than xx cm). Boy, I wish I a copy of that memo still – priceless!
That sounds like a management team with far too much time on their hands!
Ah, Frank’s boss is a genius… an evil one at least. Not only is the boss putting more shackles on Frank, he is getting Frank to order them!
Good analogy.. makes me think I need to be kinder to Frank in his next cartoon.