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 thos

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.