Opinion: Provide a resume, cover letter and access to your brain? The creepy race to read workers’ minds

Once workers are hired, new wearable devices are integrating brain assessment into workplaces worldwide for attention monitoring and productivity scoring on the job. — Dreamstime/TNS

Modern workers increasingly find companies no longer content to consider their résumés, cover letters and job performance. More and more, employers want to evaluate their brains.

Businesses are screening prospective job candidates with tech-assisted cognitive and personality tests, deploying wearable technology to monitor brain activity on the job and using artificial intelligence to make decisions about hiring, promoting and firing people. The brain is becoming the ultimate workplace sorting hat — the technological version of the magical device that distributes young wizards among Hogwarts houses in the Harry Potter series.