3 ms·

I think it's a holdover from hiring more junior candidates: after a few years interviewing and sitting on HCs at Google, I hired for a tiny startup that had ton

I think it's a holdover from hiring more junior candidates: after a few years interviewing and sitting on HCs at Google, I hired for a tiny startup that had tons of trouble sourcing candidates. My interviews at the latter place eventually devolved into basic IQ tests. Simple coding problems are pretty ideal for this, since they also lightly test necessary domain skills. The problem is that this doesn't scale with talent and/or experience: I certainly wouldn't be better at coding interviews than I was out of college. People who aren't great at hiring take an approach that's valid at the low level and extrapolate it well beyond the bounds where it makes sense. On the other hand, this only works if the pedigree is recognizable and reliable. I can be pretty confident that I don't need to test basic coding literacy of someone who was an engineer at Google for four years, but I've interviewed people with ten years experience and great references who were clearly dumb as a brick during the interview. In one case, we hired the guy over my objection and spent the next year fighting the fires he'd set whenever he touched anything (the founder eventually found some relatively unimportant, isolated niche for him to keep busy in). It's a really hard problem, and most complaints I've come across are generalizing from their skewed view of what the candidate pool is like (usually assuming that most candidates are roughly as talented as they are, when the reality is that many candidate pools consist of some of the dumbest people you're likely to ever encounter) [1] ie, practically everyone

dcolkitt 7y ago
> My interviews at the latter place eventually devolved into basic IQ tests... The problem is that this doesn't scale with talent and/or experience. Industrial psychology has consistently found that IQ is a better predictor of job performance than experience. The reason being is that intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire knowledge and skills. Intelligent people literally learn faster than others. The skill acquired by a low IQ in five years is often surpassed by a high IQ person with a few months of experience. [1]https://www.jstor.org/stable/20182140?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/20182140?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...
- winter_blue 7y ago
  > Industrial psychology has consistently found that IQ is a better predictor of job performance than experience. If hiring managers are aware of this, then it might be a good idea to apply to Mensa. If you're able to get in, maybe putting "Mensa" down on your resume isn't that bad of a thing. (I've always felt it would make one come off as a douche, but maybe that's not so true.)
  - lmkg 7y ago
    Hiring managers should also be aware that in the United States, Supreme Court precedent makes the use of general intelligence tests for hiring legally fraught because they can produce racially-biased outcomes.
  - IshKebab 7y ago
    Definitely comes off as douchy. I wouldn't discount someone for it but it would definitely make me wary of them (probably a know-it-all who doesn't listen to other people and always knows best).
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    My opinion of Mensa was formed by someone who told me about how, when she was a hiring manager, she once had an applicant who made a point of belonging to Mensa and didn't seem to have anything else she was proud of or had accomplished. That doesn't mean I am necessarily on board with the fashionable view that IQ is meaningless, but I think to the extent there are people whose IQ is disconnected from their abilities/achievements, it's going to be the ones who are preoccupied with it. So I would think belonging to a high-IQ society would send the wrong message.
- blub 7y ago
  You cited a publication called "Intelligence Is the Best Predictor of Job Performance", but funnily enough there's also one called "Intelligence Is Not the Best Predictor of Job Performance", which one year later claims that the former one is flawed. There's also this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/, which says "Supporters of IQ testing have been quick to point to correlations between IQ and job performance as evidence of test validity. A closer look at the data and results, however, suggests a rather murkier picture." > The skill acquired by a low IQ in five years is often surpassed by a high IQ person with a few months of experience. This looks wrong to me, most things take more than a few months to learn.
perl4ever 7y ago
"the reality is that many candidate pools consist of some of the dumbest people you're likely to ever encounter" I think people genuinely experience this but are unwilling to consider that their pool is not the random sample they expected. Something subtle is filtering out (nearly) all the non-dumb people. Have you ever seen a personal ad with a long list of characteristics that are unwanted?

dcolkitt 7y ago

> My interviews at the latter place eventually devolved into basic IQ tests... The problem is that this doesn't scale with talent and/or experience. Industrial psychology has consistently found that IQ is a better predictor of job performance than experience. The reason being is that intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire knowledge and skills. Intelligent people literally learn faster than others. The skill acquired by a low IQ in five years is often surpassed by a high IQ person with a few months of experience. [1]https://www.jstor.org/stable/20182140?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/20182140?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...

winter_blue 7y ago
> Industrial psychology has consistently found that IQ is a better predictor of job performance than experience. If hiring managers are aware of this, then it might be a good idea to apply to Mensa. If you're able to get in, maybe putting "Mensa" down on your resume isn't that bad of a thing. (I've always felt it would make one come off as a douche, but maybe that's not so true.)
- lmkg 7y ago
  Hiring managers should also be aware that in the United States, Supreme Court precedent makes the use of general intelligence tests for hiring legally fraught because they can produce racially-biased outcomes.
- IshKebab 7y ago
  Definitely comes off as douchy. I wouldn't discount someone for it but it would definitely make me wary of them (probably a know-it-all who doesn't listen to other people and always knows best).
- perl4ever 7y ago
  My opinion of Mensa was formed by someone who told me about how, when she was a hiring manager, she once had an applicant who made a point of belonging to Mensa and didn't seem to have anything else she was proud of or had accomplished. That doesn't mean I am necessarily on board with the fashionable view that IQ is meaningless, but I think to the extent there are people whose IQ is disconnected from their abilities/achievements, it's going to be the ones who are preoccupied with it. So I would think belonging to a high-IQ society would send the wrong message.
blub 7y ago
You cited a publication called "Intelligence Is the Best Predictor of Job Performance", but funnily enough there's also one called "Intelligence Is Not the Best Predictor of Job Performance", which one year later claims that the former one is flawed. There's also this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/, which says "Supporters of IQ testing have been quick to point to correlations between IQ and job performance as evidence of test validity. A closer look at the data and results, however, suggests a rather murkier picture." > The skill acquired by a low IQ in five years is often surpassed by a high IQ person with a few months of experience. This looks wrong to me, most things take more than a few months to learn.

perl4ever 7y ago

"the reality is that many candidate pools consist of some of the dumbest people you're likely to ever encounter" I think people genuinely experience this but are unwilling to consider that their pool is not the random sample they expected. Something subtle is filtering out (nearly) all the non-dumb people. Have you ever seen a personal ad with a long list of characteristics that are unwanted?