Muddyfunkster: A Word to the Unwise

In the latest stage of my job hunting hell I sat a psychometric test yesterday and it was bloody difficult. 3 separate multiple choice tests: verbal reasoning, diagrammatical reasoning and syntax reasoning. The verbal reasoning was pretty standard stuff, random passages and ambiguous questions – I might as well just pick all A’s. The diagrammatical reasoning was slightly more difficult. In fact it was the most difficult exam I've done since 3rd year Electromagnetics (where even the professor teaching the course didn't understand the answers).

Basically, it was transformations. A flow chart of symbols affected a stream of letters, so say ABCD goes through 2 symbols on the way down – each symbol transforms the letters in it’s own way – and DCB comes out at the end. So obviously one of the transformations swaps the letters around and another either removes the first or last letter (depending on the order). Now imagine that where there are 6 symbols, 4 input strings and 8 different paths through the flow. It then becomes a nightmare equation of letters. I had to answer 40 questions in 35 minutes and it was grim.

The last one, syntax reasoning, was more straight forward – making sure that lines of code in an imaginary language followed the correct rules given. Not hard, just tricky and I only got half way through.

Altogether not what I needed either on my birthday or after the weekend I’d had. The experience made me really quite down so I had a quiet birthday night with a Pizza Hut Meat Feast and an episode of Spooks. I've now got to go and finish the Screening Document for a different job application, 50 questions on why I’m the man for the job/company. Joy.