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Applying to some of the most common customer and food service jobs in the country now requires a long and bizarre personality quiz featuring blue humanoid aliens, which tells employers how potential hires rank in terms of “agreeableness” and “emotional stability.”
If you’ve applied to a job at FedEx, McDonald's, or Darden Restaurants (the company that operates multiple chains including Olive Garden) you might have already encountered this quiz, as all these companies and others are clients of Paradox.ai, the company which runs the test and helps them with other recruiting tasks.
Judging by the reaction on Reddit, where Paradox.ai’s personality quiz has gone viral a couple of times in recent weeks and bewildered many users, most people are not familiar with the process. Personality quizzes as part of an application for hourly work isn’t new, but the Paradox.ai test has gone repeatedly viral in recent weeks presumably because of the bizarre scenarios it presents applicants with and the blue humanoid alien thing. Other clients included on Paradox’s website include CVS, GM, Nestle, 3M, and Unilever.
“Man I just want a dishwasher job,” was the title of one thread on Reddit in a community of food service workers. The post shared a screenshot for “assessment Instructions” for part of the hiring process at Olive Garden. The instructions tell the applicant to “go with your gut and answer honestly,” and that “there is not one right answer.” They then include an image of a blue, humanoid alien they introduce as Ash, “who will represent you in each image.”