Yup. "Considered" is certainly ambiguous enough to be a failure in the context of a job application.
When I was working at IBM, a my manager introduced me in passing to one of his peers who was getting a huge promotion, about three levels up. Why such an unusual promotion? He'd noticed a way that 4 people could conspire to exfiltrate $25 million on a Friday and be in some non-extradition country before it was noticed. He had reported this flaw, and they were promoting him for alerting them. He had certainly "considered" quite deeply stealing from his employer, and was being rewarded for doing the right thing.
And, of course, an honest answer on his BestBuy app would have disqualified him.
We can quibble about the meaning, but this is an absolute fail on the job application, unless the goal is to filter out intelligent people who have naturally curious minds.
There is a huge difference between thinking about something and taking action to do it. You have brought us another great example of utter cluelessness in corporate HR.
> but this is an absolute fail on the job application, unless the goal is to filter out intelligent people who have naturally curious minds.
Not sure why you think this is a crazy goal for a retail job. If you can't figure out that you should say "no" to the stealing question, no matter what the truth is, then you're probably not a good fit to work retail.
In fact, I'd bet that most of the "yes" answers to this question are people who are curious but have poor social understanding. I imagine that someone who really would steal is also dishonest enough to lie on the question.
>>I imagine that someone who really would steal is also dishonest enough to lie on the question.
Bingo!
I do expect that there are attempts to filter out overly intelligent people for some jobs. There was a lawsuit in Connecticut by an applicant who scored too high on the police exam and was denied a job. He lost the case, and established the right for police to reject people for being too smart as they might get bored or something (sorry, I don't have a link on hand).
But, as you point out, this question filters out only the honest and intelligent people.
It leaves you with the pool of people who are either dull or dishonest. Classic HR fail.
My hunch is that this is a third of the reason why politicians give “politician answers” to things that most people believe are straightforward yes-or-no questions.
exactly the point — that nit falls well within the ambiguity of the wording
(and yes, if you're reasonably sharp and not a super-stickler, you should be able to suss out the screening intent of the question, constrain the current meaning of "consider", and answer "No" regardless of your previous thoughts and understanding of the word — it's not like thoughtcrime is prosecutable ...yet)
When I was working at IBM, a my manager introduced me in passing to one of his peers who was getting a huge promotion, about three levels up. Why such an unusual promotion? He'd noticed a way that 4 people could conspire to exfiltrate $25 million on a Friday and be in some non-extradition country before it was noticed. He had reported this flaw, and they were promoting him for alerting them. He had certainly "considered" quite deeply stealing from his employer, and was being rewarded for doing the right thing.
And, of course, an honest answer on his BestBuy app would have disqualified him.
We can quibble about the meaning, but this is an absolute fail on the job application, unless the goal is to filter out intelligent people who have naturally curious minds.
There is a huge difference between thinking about something and taking action to do it. You have brought us another great example of utter cluelessness in corporate HR.