- HR professionals deal with a ton of shit, including assaults.
- First responders, obviously.
- Message board moderators?
- Customer service of any kind. (The Karen memes are irritating, and really, really mean, but I swear I recognize every one those interactions from my years in those kinds of jobs.)
- I was trauma-dumped plenty of times during my teaching career, as well as been loudly - even potentially violently - blamed (by students) for all of the problems they're having in class (or maybe even life, lol).
Maintaining professional aplomb in emotionally volatile situations is a critical part of jobs which deal primarily with people, rather than things - and is more relevant to engineering sorts of roles than many engineers realize.
Look, I'm not defending those particular questions - and far less the particular people asking them. I'm offering an alternate point of view about why they're being asked. It'd be great to see posters on this forum suggest some better ways to evaluate the traits at which they're aimed.
All of those things are made far worse if you’re actively having traumatic flashbacks, and do not benefit at all from having a traumatized childhood. The actual best things for the above is appropriate training and crisis intervention strategies.
Exactly. Which is the rationale for asking about past trauma in an interview. If the interviewee locks up in a traumatic flashback then they're clearly not prepared to do the job.
Again: I'm not defending the practice. It's a really gross metric, and a really gross (in the other sense) method. I just haven't seen this thread demonstrate much understanding of what's actually going on.
You're 100% correct about crisis intervention training. I had a few sessions - of dubious worth - while I was a teacher. I worked in a group home for troubled kids for a bit, and that one included learning physical restraints - which I did end up needing. My best mentor, however, was a grizzled old waitress who took a drag on a Camel (cigarette), shrugged, and said "you just gotta let them have their say". She was a wizard at de-escalation.
- HR professionals deal with a ton of shit, including assaults.
- First responders, obviously.
- Message board moderators?
- Customer service of any kind. (The Karen memes are irritating, and really, really mean, but I swear I recognize every one those interactions from my years in those kinds of jobs.)
- I was trauma-dumped plenty of times during my teaching career, as well as been loudly - even potentially violently - blamed (by students) for all of the problems they're having in class (or maybe even life, lol).
Maintaining professional aplomb in emotionally volatile situations is a critical part of jobs which deal primarily with people, rather than things - and is more relevant to engineering sorts of roles than many engineers realize.
Look, I'm not defending those particular questions - and far less the particular people asking them. I'm offering an alternate point of view about why they're being asked. It'd be great to see posters on this forum suggest some better ways to evaluate the traits at which they're aimed.