3 ms·

see my comment below. I'm not planning to ask them to take a full blown iq tests. Just those "iq games" that i find are empirically good in classifying the smar

see my comment below. I'm not planning to ask them to take a full blown iq tests. Just those "iq games" that i find are empirically good in classifying the smart from the non-smart

run4yourlives 19y ago
Good luck to you. Seriously, it already appears that you have made up your mind and don't need any more of our advice. 3 separate people have pointed out why IQ test are a bad idea, yet you are still not convinced. There is not much else to say except good luck.
- keiretsu 19y ago
  ok fine. if iq tests are such a bad idea, what verifiable tests are there that can be used to classify a good employee and a bad employee? I'm sorry but gut feel just doesn't cut it.
  - abstractbill 19y ago
    The belief that there could be a universal test that maps a person onto some scalar value ranging from "good employee" to "bad employee" says a lot about the belief's holder. Sorry if that sounds snarky - it's just the way I feel.
    - keiretsu 19y ago
      it's called probability. It just depends on how you define a good employee and a bad employee and based on that definition, you can prepare a hiring program and test if that program works. Almost all successful companies have some sort of verifiable hiring programs. facebook has their puzzles as a screener test. It is not a universal test but it helps. If you are able to solve the puzzles, there should be a higher probability that you are a better employee to the company than someone who can't solve the puzzles. All they need to do is verify if those puzzles are good at screening good hires. If yes, well done then. They've got themselves a great hiring tool. I'm not asking for the one almighty test that can screen if an employee is good or bad. I'm asking for tests that can help in increasing the probability of hiring good employees. For eg. for a sales job, you absolutely have to do a personality test. If the test indicate that you are introverted and have bad people skills, that you are not likely to be a good hire. Is the personality test a universal test? No, it's not. But it helps.
      - run4yourlives 19y ago
        Do you know what those tests are designed to do? Those tests are designed to narrow 3000 resumes to 300. That's it. After that, you still need to find your person from a pool of 300. With a hot job market and hiring from (I presume) a no-name startup, you'll be lucky to get 300 hires to sift through. Even more important, those test eliminate some high quality performers. Facebook has a management staff already, and enough money that this is less of a concern. You on the other hand, would do well to keep every door open. You can't afford to miss that diamond in the rough.
        keiretsu 19y ago
        er. that's the point of this topic. i'm asking for tests to narrow down the pool of interviewees and screen out the bad ones so i do not have to waste my time to interview them. why wouldn't they want to join my company when i'm going to pay them 50% above market rate?
        cwilbur 19y ago
        Because they realize that there's more to happiness than money, especially in a job where you spend at least 1/3 of your waking time?
        nostrademons 19y ago
        Umm, that's exactly the approach that I wouldn't use an IQ or other standardized test for. If you screen based on IQ or SAT or whatever, you will miss out on good candidates, often candidates who might be critical to the success of your business. If I have 5 candidates who all have the relevant skills, useful work experience, a strong track record, cultural fit, etc, then I might be willing to differentiate them by test score. If one of them scored 1600 on his SATs and the others were 1200-1300, sure, I'll take the perfect guy. They're probably all qualified anyways, no harm in taking the one who's more qualified. But I absolutely would not institute a minimum test score and only accept applicants above that level. Because too many of the best programmers I know had SAT scores in the 1200-1400 level, and too many folks with perfect SAT scores turn out to be terrible workers. I wouldn't be selecting for anything relevant to my business, I'd just chop out many candidates who might've been a good choice. If you want to narrow the pool, include a programming problem with the application. Throw out everything that doesn't compile, run, or give the correct answer - that'll cut out most of the chaff right there. Look through the solutions and only invite the people whose code is clean and elegant for an interview. That'll give you far more relevant results. Plus, the very fact that you have an interesting programming challenge tends to attract top developers. One of the defining characteristics of a top developer is that they like challenge. Hell, you could even make it a part of the application form and check the results automatically. No manual intervention required.
  - run4yourlives 19y ago
    "I'm sorry but gut feel just doesn't cut it." Actually, it does. Read Blink: http://www.gladwell.com/blink/ http://www.gladwell.com/blink/ by Malcolm Gladwell for a better idea of this. I can understand that you're looking for something more cut and dry, but it just doesn't exist. If you've got a problem trusting your instincts, you are probably going to have issues with business decisions in the future as well. If you want my advice, your first hire should be someone with a track record of making good gut calls, to balance out yourself. That's all I'd look for really - well, besides the need to work well with you. Let him/her hire the people you need, and stick with the analytical stuff that he'll probably hate to do. :-)
    - nostrademons 19y ago
      Actually, that wasn't the central thesis of Blink at all... The point of Blink is that gut calls are remarkably accurate when made by an expert with significant pre-existing knowledge and experience in the field. By letting your unconscious make the decision, you can tap into all the knowledge that just doesn't fit in your conscious mind. The brain's basically a massive pattern-recognizer: gut calls are effectively patterns bubbling up into your subconscious that rely on some deeply hidden information. Gut calls fail terribly when made by people with no expertise in the subject. Blink gave the example of Warren G. Harding: he fit everybody's preconceived notions of what a strong leader should look like, but he was an idiot. George W. Bush is a more modern example. Every time you suffer buyer's remorse after an impulse purchase, it's your gut letting you down. Every entrepreneur needs to realize that hiring is inherently a low-information process. You don't know anything about the person applying for the job. You can convince yourself by gut call that he's a good fit, but you're as likely to be wrong as right. The real best way to hire is to have the person work for you for about 3-6 months as a contractor or intern first. Then you go based on your intuition. After 3 months, you've got a stock of information to make a good gut call. You've worked with them daily. But you can't just expect your intuition to magically work in your favor, no matter what.
      - run4yourlives 19y ago
        That's a good point, but even in hiring someone for 3 months, you are turning away others. You need to make the call. Although Blink does present the dangers of gut calls, you seem to agree there is really no other alternative when it comes to hiring. As an entrepreneur, almost every call you make is made with an element of inconclusiveness. Almost every call is a gut call. Some gut calls do fail terribly, but when the only way to get the experience and pre-existing knowledge to make the call is to make a few mistakes, you're SOL. Catch 22, I guess! :-)
  - danielha 19y ago
  - danielha 19y ago
    1) References 2) Experience 3) Accomplishments you can see
  - davidw 19y ago
    One of my favorites: "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" Unbeknownst to me, there are even answers, on the internet: http://www.paradiseawaits.com/Tree.html http://www.paradiseawaits.com/Tree.html

see my comment below. I'm not planning to ask them to take a full blown iq tests. Just those "iq games" that i find are empirically good in classifying the smart from the non-smart

run4yourlives 19y ago

Good luck to you. Seriously, it already appears that you have made up your mind and don't need any more of our advice. 3 separate people have pointed out why IQ test are a bad idea, yet you are still not convinced. There is not much else to say except good luck.

keiretsu 19y ago
ok fine. if iq tests are such a bad idea, what verifiable tests are there that can be used to classify a good employee and a bad employee? I'm sorry but gut feel just doesn't cut it.
- abstractbill 19y ago
  The belief that there could be a universal test that maps a person onto some scalar value ranging from "good employee" to "bad employee" says a lot about the belief's holder. Sorry if that sounds snarky - it's just the way I feel.
  - keiretsu 19y ago
    it's called probability. It just depends on how you define a good employee and a bad employee and based on that definition, you can prepare a hiring program and test if that program works. Almost all successful companies have some sort of verifiable hiring programs. facebook has their puzzles as a screener test. It is not a universal test but it helps. If you are able to solve the puzzles, there should be a higher probability that you are a better employee to the company than someone who can't solve the puzzles. All they need to do is verify if those puzzles are good at screening good hires. If yes, well done then. They've got themselves a great hiring tool. I'm not asking for the one almighty test that can screen if an employee is good or bad. I'm asking for tests that can help in increasing the probability of hiring good employees. For eg. for a sales job, you absolutely have to do a personality test. If the test indicate that you are introverted and have bad people skills, that you are not likely to be a good hire. Is the personality test a universal test? No, it's not. But it helps.
    - run4yourlives 19y ago
      Do you know what those tests are designed to do? Those tests are designed to narrow 3000 resumes to 300. That's it. After that, you still need to find your person from a pool of 300. With a hot job market and hiring from (I presume) a no-name startup, you'll be lucky to get 300 hires to sift through. Even more important, those test eliminate some high quality performers. Facebook has a management staff already, and enough money that this is less of a concern. You on the other hand, would do well to keep every door open. You can't afford to miss that diamond in the rough.
      - keiretsu 19y ago
        er. that's the point of this topic. i'm asking for tests to narrow down the pool of interviewees and screen out the bad ones so i do not have to waste my time to interview them. why wouldn't they want to join my company when i'm going to pay them 50% above market rate?
        cwilbur 19y ago
        Because they realize that there's more to happiness than money, especially in a job where you spend at least 1/3 of your waking time?
        nostrademons 19y ago
        Umm, that's exactly the approach that I wouldn't use an IQ or other standardized test for. If you screen based on IQ or SAT or whatever, you will miss out on good candidates, often candidates who might be critical to the success of your business. If I have 5 candidates who all have the relevant skills, useful work experience, a strong track record, cultural fit, etc, then I might be willing to differentiate them by test score. If one of them scored 1600 on his SATs and the others were 1200-1300, sure, I'll take the perfect guy. They're probably all qualified anyways, no harm in taking the one who's more qualified. But I absolutely would not institute a minimum test score and only accept applicants above that level. Because too many of the best programmers I know had SAT scores in the 1200-1400 level, and too many folks with perfect SAT scores turn out to be terrible workers. I wouldn't be selecting for anything relevant to my business, I'd just chop out many candidates who might've been a good choice. If you want to narrow the pool, include a programming problem with the application. Throw out everything that doesn't compile, run, or give the correct answer - that'll cut out most of the chaff right there. Look through the solutions and only invite the people whose code is clean and elegant for an interview. That'll give you far more relevant results. Plus, the very fact that you have an interesting programming challenge tends to attract top developers. One of the defining characteristics of a top developer is that they like challenge. Hell, you could even make it a part of the application form and check the results automatically. No manual intervention required.
- run4yourlives 19y ago
  "I'm sorry but gut feel just doesn't cut it." Actually, it does. Read Blink: http://www.gladwell.com/blink/ http://www.gladwell.com/blink/ by Malcolm Gladwell for a better idea of this. I can understand that you're looking for something more cut and dry, but it just doesn't exist. If you've got a problem trusting your instincts, you are probably going to have issues with business decisions in the future as well. If you want my advice, your first hire should be someone with a track record of making good gut calls, to balance out yourself. That's all I'd look for really - well, besides the need to work well with you. Let him/her hire the people you need, and stick with the analytical stuff that he'll probably hate to do. :-)
  - nostrademons 19y ago
    Actually, that wasn't the central thesis of Blink at all... The point of Blink is that gut calls are remarkably accurate when made by an expert with significant pre-existing knowledge and experience in the field. By letting your unconscious make the decision, you can tap into all the knowledge that just doesn't fit in your conscious mind. The brain's basically a massive pattern-recognizer: gut calls are effectively patterns bubbling up into your subconscious that rely on some deeply hidden information. Gut calls fail terribly when made by people with no expertise in the subject. Blink gave the example of Warren G. Harding: he fit everybody's preconceived notions of what a strong leader should look like, but he was an idiot. George W. Bush is a more modern example. Every time you suffer buyer's remorse after an impulse purchase, it's your gut letting you down. Every entrepreneur needs to realize that hiring is inherently a low-information process. You don't know anything about the person applying for the job. You can convince yourself by gut call that he's a good fit, but you're as likely to be wrong as right. The real best way to hire is to have the person work for you for about 3-6 months as a contractor or intern first. Then you go based on your intuition. After 3 months, you've got a stock of information to make a good gut call. You've worked with them daily. But you can't just expect your intuition to magically work in your favor, no matter what.
    - run4yourlives 19y ago
      That's a good point, but even in hiring someone for 3 months, you are turning away others. You need to make the call. Although Blink does present the dangers of gut calls, you seem to agree there is really no other alternative when it comes to hiring. As an entrepreneur, almost every call you make is made with an element of inconclusiveness. Almost every call is a gut call. Some gut calls do fail terribly, but when the only way to get the experience and pre-existing knowledge to make the call is to make a few mistakes, you're SOL. Catch 22, I guess! :-)
- danielha 19y ago
- danielha 19y ago
  1) References 2) Experience 3) Accomplishments you can see
- davidw 19y ago
  One of my favorites: "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" Unbeknownst to me, there are even answers, on the internet: http://www.paradiseawaits.com/Tree.html http://www.paradiseawaits.com/Tree.html