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You still need to be smart to be a good salesperson, and what this article is claiming is that you can't really compare grades at one highschool or college to g

by dsil 18y ago

You still need to be smart to be a good salesperson, and what this article is claiming is that you can't really compare grades at one highschool or college to grades at others, but the SAT is one universal test given the same way across the country. Its biased and imperfect, but at least its comparing apples to apples. That said, I'd also like to see research on SATs as a predictor of job performance, either way. You say they aren't...do you have a link to some research finding that?

Brushfire 18y ago
Unfortunately, I dont have any easily referenced research in front of me or easily found. But I did take a significant number of HR classes, and I remember those professors railing against industry for horrible, unscientific decision making metrics across the board. Unstructured interviews are by far the worst predictive methods, but SAT and IQ are very poor predictive measurements. They measure intelligence, sort of. In fact, they don't really even measure intelligence that well, becuase you can heavily study for them. Even setting that aside, intelligence is also a bad metric for job performance in most fields. Motivation, Past Job/Work Experience or Work Sample tests, and Psychological factors are much more predictive. Anecdotally, I'm sure most people that can think of very intelligent people that are very bad employees. And also some that are very good employees. And plenty that are average employees. --------- EDIT: After digging out my books, I'm dead wrong. :) Willing to admit it. I think my memory was confusing job satisfaction with job performance. From one of my textbooks, as a summary: Mental ability tests, and those been called intelligence, or IQ, tests are the same type of tests. The term mental ability makes explicit that these tests measure various cognitive abilities of the applicant. That is, these are abilities that primarily indicate the individual's level of mental manipulation of words, figures, numbers, symbols, and logical order. Following from this, it is fairly easy to understand the strong relationship between mental ability test scores and academic performance. Formal education primarily stresses cognitive exercises and memorization of facts, and these are the components that make up a large part of most mental ability tests. This however, does not mean that mental ability is useful only for academic selection. Many jobs in organizations demand the use of mental abilities, including managerial, technical, and some clerical jobs to name but a few.....Only one of these devices, work sample tests, has a higher validity than does mental ability tests.... What can we conclude from all these data about the use of cognitive ability tests in selection? Two factors must be taken into account when answering this question. The first is that evidence seems to be overwhelming that these tests are among the most valid of all selection tests for a large number of jobs, some selection specialists would say for all jobs. The second factor is the evidence that these test exhibit adverse impact...among demographic groups. But becuase these tests are also valid, there is a good chance that their use in selection could be defended against claims of discrimination. Therefor, some have thought that cognitive ability tests should be used extensively in selection. ("Human Resource Selection", Gatewood & Field, 2001) I stand corrected, by myself. :) Unfortunately, the research I'm reading through doesnt specifically address SAT as a method, just 'intelligence tests' in general, and has some industry-specific mental/cognitive ability tests. For those interested, this category includes things like the Wonderlic, the Minnesota Clerical Test, and the General Aptitute Test Battery. I'm still curious about how well this translates into Sales, but that will be a personal research project for later date.
- strlen 18y ago
  Both IQ and SAT are time constrained and prohibit the use of third party reference materials and other people. That's very different from work environment: you can stay after hours or come in earlier and most importantly you work with other people and with all sorts of reference materials available.
- Brushfire 18y ago
  After looking into this for about 15-20 minutes, using basic google scholar and some other academic sites, this appears to be something that is actively being debated in academia -- whether intelligence testing is valid as a predictor or not, and there seems to be competing recent research in both directions. Unfortunately, without access to the full articles, its pretty hard to gauge anything since abstracts are pretty trivial.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  Work Sample tests I've always liked hiring processes that involve producing a sample of actual work. I usually fare well in such processes when I'm seeking jobs I would enjoy. Alas, some jobs are harder to boil down to a sample than others.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  After digging out my books, I'm dead wrong. Commendable of you to say that here on HN. That's a good example, one I will have to follow whenever occasion demands. I had thought that there was some supporting research for the idea that cognitive tests are a reasonably well validated job screen, but I didn't have references at hand, so I'm glad you went to the trouble to look it up.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
- JeremyChase 18y ago
  I applaud you for your restatement. It is very surprising to me that scoring well on tests is in an indication of job performance. Maybe it has less to do with intelligence, and more with the desire for conformity. After all people who do well on standardized tests are often driven in a very conventional path.
ewjordan 18y ago
As an ex-SAT tutor (horrid job, but while in school it seemed like a good idea...), my take on the matter: high SAT scores don't mean a damn thing, I've seen absolute fools hit high 700s across the board, but low scores can be telling, especially in math (verbal is a lot more variable, from what I've seen, and also easier to game through prep; math is harder to "fake"). Someone going into a technical field should be able to do well on the math section, and I would not want to work (programming, at least) with someone that could only manage a 450. I've never met a person that couldn't get at least five or six hundred points on the math section that I would consider even remotely qualified to go into a science, math, or programming. Frankly, the best people should (and usually do) do even better, at least on math. The material is just too close to what you've spend years doing in school to use the "bad at tests" excuse - if you have any aptitude for quantitative reasoning at all, you will not do poorly. Most of the smartest people I know (granted, mostly acquaintances from physics, so it's a biased sample) hit 800 with ease. So overall, I can see some use for the SAT as far as trimming bottom of the barrel candidates. But the difference between a 650 and a 700, or even a 750 and an 800? Meh...that's maybe three or four questions. A person's score varies by that much between different tests, so it's utterly irrelevant as a fine discriminating factor. The difficulty level of the test is _far_ too low anyhow to discern a good candidate from a great one.

by dsil 18y ago

Brushfire 18y ago

Unfortunately, I dont have any easily referenced research in front of me or easily found. But I did take a significant number of HR classes, and I remember those professors railing against industry for horrible, unscientific decision making metrics across the board. Unstructured interviews are by far the worst predictive methods, but SAT and IQ are very poor predictive measurements. They measure intelligence, sort of. In fact, they don't really even measure intelligence that well, becuase you can heavily study for them. Even setting that aside, intelligence is also a bad metric for job performance in most fields. Motivation, Past Job/Work Experience or Work Sample tests, and Psychological factors are much more predictive. Anecdotally, I'm sure most people that can think of very intelligent people that are very bad employees. And also some that are very good employees. And plenty that are average employees. --------- EDIT: After digging out my books, I'm dead wrong. :) Willing to admit it. I think my memory was confusing job satisfaction with job performance. From one of my textbooks, as a summary: Mental ability tests, and those been called intelligence, or IQ, tests are the same type of tests. The term mental ability makes explicit that these tests measure various cognitive abilities of the applicant. That is, these are abilities that primarily indicate the individual's level of mental manipulation of words, figures, numbers, symbols, and logical order. Following from this, it is fairly easy to understand the strong relationship between mental ability test scores and academic performance. Formal education primarily stresses cognitive exercises and memorization of facts, and these are the components that make up a large part of most mental ability tests. This however, does not mean that mental ability is useful only for academic selection. Many jobs in organizations demand the use of mental abilities, including managerial, technical, and some clerical jobs to name but a few.....Only one of these devices, work sample tests, has a higher validity than does mental ability tests.... What can we conclude from all these data about the use of cognitive ability tests in selection? Two factors must be taken into account when answering this question. The first is that evidence seems to be overwhelming that these tests are among the most valid of all selection tests for a large number of jobs, some selection specialists would say for all jobs. The second factor is the evidence that these test exhibit adverse impact...among demographic groups. But becuase these tests are also valid, there is a good chance that their use in selection could be defended against claims of discrimination. Therefor, some have thought that cognitive ability tests should be used extensively in selection. ("Human Resource Selection", Gatewood & Field, 2001) I stand corrected, by myself. :) Unfortunately, the research I'm reading through doesnt specifically address SAT as a method, just 'intelligence tests' in general, and has some industry-specific mental/cognitive ability tests. For those interested, this category includes things like the Wonderlic, the Minnesota Clerical Test, and the General Aptitute Test Battery. I'm still curious about how well this translates into Sales, but that will be a personal research project for later date.

strlen 18y ago
Both IQ and SAT are time constrained and prohibit the use of third party reference materials and other people. That's very different from work environment: you can stay after hours or come in earlier and most importantly you work with other people and with all sorts of reference materials available.
Brushfire 18y ago
After looking into this for about 15-20 minutes, using basic google scholar and some other academic sites, this appears to be something that is actively being debated in academia -- whether intelligence testing is valid as a predictor or not, and there seems to be competing recent research in both directions. Unfortunately, without access to the full articles, its pretty hard to gauge anything since abstracts are pretty trivial.
tokenadult 18y ago
Work Sample tests I've always liked hiring processes that involve producing a sample of actual work. I usually fare well in such processes when I'm seeking jobs I would enjoy. Alas, some jobs are harder to boil down to a sample than others.
tokenadult 18y ago
After digging out my books, I'm dead wrong. Commendable of you to say that here on HN. That's a good example, one I will have to follow whenever occasion demands. I had thought that there was some supporting research for the idea that cognitive tests are a reasonably well validated job screen, but I didn't have references at hand, so I'm glad you went to the trouble to look it up.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
JeremyChase 18y ago
I applaud you for your restatement. It is very surprising to me that scoring well on tests is in an indication of job performance. Maybe it has less to do with intelligence, and more with the desire for conformity. After all people who do well on standardized tests are often driven in a very conventional path.

ewjordan 18y ago

As an ex-SAT tutor (horrid job, but while in school it seemed like a good idea...), my take on the matter: high SAT scores don't mean a damn thing, I've seen absolute fools hit high 700s across the board, but low scores can be telling, especially in math (verbal is a lot more variable, from what I've seen, and also easier to game through prep; math is harder to "fake"). Someone going into a technical field should be able to do well on the math section, and I would not want to work (programming, at least) with someone that could only manage a 450. I've never met a person that couldn't get at least five or six hundred points on the math section that I would consider even remotely qualified to go into a science, math, or programming. Frankly, the best people should (and usually do) do even better, at least on math. The material is just too close to what you've spend years doing in school to use the "bad at tests" excuse - if you have any aptitude for quantitative reasoning at all, you will not do poorly. Most of the smartest people I know (granted, mostly acquaintances from physics, so it's a biased sample) hit 800 with ease. So overall, I can see some use for the SAT as far as trimming bottom of the barrel candidates. But the difference between a 650 and a 700, or even a 750 and an 800? Meh...that's maybe three or four questions. A person's score varies by that much between different tests, so it's utterly irrelevant as a fine discriminating factor. The difficulty level of the test is _far_ too low anyhow to discern a good candidate from a great one.