Situational Judgement :(

As I sat down for what felt like the zillionth Situational Judgement test in the midst of job applications, the fear of the unknown washed over me. What answer was right or wrong?

As a child, adults tend to be quite strict ion the idea of right and wrong. It’s right to say please and thank you. It’s wrong to hit someone because you’re angry. These lessons are important in children understanding how society works and how they will be expected to behave as adults. 

And for the most part, this attitude can be agreed upon. But when the child becomes a teenager, and then an adult, they realise how much in the world is not right or wrong, but up to opinion. There is so much that is not white and black, but grey. How do we know what the “right” decision is? Do we base it off our own experiences? The experiences of others? Or experiences we wish we had? 

And when sitting this Situational Judgement test, I wondered if the company wanted me to give them answers they wanted, rather than what I believed. A lot of these questions tend to be generalised or vague, about how much of a team player you are vs how much you’d go to help others. I don’t believe there is a right or wrong to this because everyone has a multitude of opinions and will behave differently in scenarios. I may state, for example, that I prefer working in a team, but it does depend on what kind of people are in this hypothetical team. 

Getting older reminds me of how grey things can be, and how several complexities need to be considered in effective decision-making. 

Perhaps Situational Judgement is scary because you’re made to choose between perspectives without accounting for an explanation. And in this day and age, I feel it is more important than ever to learn why people believe and think the way they do, instead of dismissing notions based on popular impressions. 

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