Banks may put us to the test

To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I'm not sure I would ever be happy working for a company that would hire someone like me. Not if it had made me do a psychometric test to get the position.

If - God forbid - I should ever feel the compulsion to apply for a real job, I'd be terrified of having to undergo one of these tests.

I'm led to believe that there is no way you can prepare for them. And, even worse, the best approach is, apparently, to tell the truth.

I harbour all manner of personality foibles and failings that, as far as I know, only I am aware of. (My wife accuses me of many things, but these she mostly makes up.)

My shortcomings are not the sort of things that necessarily require medication, expert therapy or incarceration. In the greater scheme of things they are not anti-social character faults; just little things like relatively chronic procrastination and, well, to be perfectly honest, a slight tendency towards laziness. These are personal secrets I don't mind sharing with my 400000 or so best friends who read this newspaper, but I don't necessarily want the whole world knowing about them.

The procrastination thing has been a life-long affliction. I spent 12 years at school and only started paying attention and doing some proper studying in the last six weeks of my matric year.

Then I worked like mad and got a half-decent pass. The next year I carried on where I had left off at school and studied furiously at university. In my first year I studied so hard that I came within a whisker of getting academic colours.

And then I realised: what the heck, I was studying journalism and African Political Studies and I took my foot off the gas, coasting through years two and three to earn a degree which didn't require much more than turning up for the exams and having the ability to do joined-up writing.

(Whenever I have applied for, and been given employment - on three continents, I'll have you know - nobody has ever asked me to prove my claim to possess a Bachelor of Journalism and Media Studies degree from Rhodes University. For all the proving that I have had to do I should at least have awarded myself a masters.)

Which is the wonderful thing about what I do. No one cares whether you have a PhD from Cambridge or an MBA cum laude from Harvard. In my line of work (essentially, asking stupid questions and writing stuff), knowledge is not necessarily a bonus.

In fact, ignorance and curiosity are our stocks in trade. We ask people questions and then we write up what they say in as few words as possible. It's a wonderful way to earn a living, one that, as far as I know, doesn't require psychometric testing.

Next year I am going to have to work very hard at working harder because 2012 is going to be the year that my Killer Business Idea finally takes the world by storm.

I have squirrelled away a few bob to get the KBI started, but overnight worldwide domination will mean the very real chance that I shall have to approach a bank to lend me some money.

Now I read that at least one bank is making SME borrowers undergo psychometric testing. Basically, it is trying to figure out which borrowing entrepreneurs are likely to pay back their loans, which I suppose is understandable. However, if I was a banker I would never in a million years lend myself money. Not with all the dirt I have on myself and not if I had to undergo a psychometric test. All I know is I have never once borrowed money and not paid back every cent.

So I'm probably going to see the branch manager at a non-psycho-test bank, but the psychometric testing thing is something that I have to admit has merit.

There are tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of energetic South Africans out there with bright ideas and plenty of drive.

They just need to borrow a bit of money to get their dreams off the ground and to start creating jobs.

But they can't make any money because they don't have any money. They don't have collateral. If a little test will help them get the wonga they need, then I say why not? Rather them than me, though.