Circulating in the 1980s
Over the years the problem of finding the right person for the right job has consumed thousands of worker years of research for high technology organizations where talent is scarce and expensive. Recently, however, years of detailed study of the finest minds in the field of psycho-industrial interpersonal optimization, have resulted in the development of a simple and fool-proof test to determine the best match between personality and profession. Now, at last people can be infallibly assigned to the jobs for which they are truly best suited.
The procedure is simple: each subject is sent to Africa to hunt elephants. The subsequent elephant hunting behavior is then categorized by comparison to the classification rules outlined below. The subject should be assigned to the general job classification that best matches the observed behavior.
CLASSIFICATION GUIDELINES
Mathematicians hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not an elephant and catching one of whatever is left.
Experienced mathematicians will attempt to prove the existence of at least one unique elephant before proceeding to step one as a subordinate exercise.
Professors of mathematics will prove the existence of at least one unique elephant, and then leave the detection and capture of an actual elephant as an exercise for the graduate students.
Computer scientists hunt elephants by exercising algorithm A:
1. Go to Africa.
2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
3 work Northwood in an orderly manner, traversing the continent, alternatively east and west.
4 during each traverse pass:
a. Catch each animal seen:
b. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant;
c. Stop when a match is detected.
Experienced computer programmers modify the algorithm a by placing a known elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate
Assembly language programmers prefer to execute algorithm A on their hands and knees