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San Francisco VC firm required job applicants to take online IQ test

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Re: San Francisco VC firm required job applicants to take online IQ test

#31
People are focusing on the IQ test, but how stupid does an employer have to be to look at results of a Myers-Briggs personality quiz to filter applicants?

I'd personally put more weight on "what's your Hogwarts house" from Buzzfeed than both of these.

Re: San Francisco VC firm required job applicants to take online IQ test

#32
post #4

IQ tests aren't illegal by themselves, but it's up to the employer to show that IQ is an important part of the job. E.g, leetcode tests in FAANG interviews are defacto IQ tests since interviewers are told to evaluate the candidate for "general cognitive ability" when asking leetcode questions, but they are still used for FAANG interviews because the companies realized that they correlate to job performance. I don't k…

> formal MBTI studies MBTI’s Wikipedia page says it’s “criticized as pseudoscience and is not widely endorsed by academic researchers in the field. The indicator exhibits significant scientific (psychometric) deficiencies”, so I think hoping for formal studies by anyone other than the company that hypes it is unlikely

On the contrary, there are literally thousands of formal studies of MBTI. Here, look: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=mbti...

It is very well-studied in psychology. To say that most academic researchers don't "endorse" it is silly— it's not the job of a researcher to endorse a particular survey instrument, but rather to dispassionately study the mind using the best instruments available. That said, the Big-5 personality scale is certainly a more standard survey instrument in psychology, and it really doesn't matter too much which survey instrument you use, because they all correlate together. They just differ upon where you draw the coordinate axes in the space of personality; but they're all measuring essentially the same space of personality.

Re: San Francisco VC firm required job applicants to take online IQ test

#33

I get "aptitude" tests for specific roles and abilities, but the concept of IQ as a standardized and reliable method to test a persons "intelligence" is far from proven, standardized or reliable.

If it doesn't work why ban it? All sorts of inane BS is allowed and ubiquitous in hiring. Why not IQ?

> If it doesn't work why ban it?

Precisely because, as you said, "it doesn't work." There's not a good amount of evidence that IQ tests (which vary wildly, BTW) are a valid measure of cognitive ability or an indicator of aptitude toward a task (perhaps other than mental arithmetic or something). It only causes people who may be bad at rotating shapes in their mind or whatever to be discriminated against.

Re: San Francisco VC firm required job applicants to take online IQ test

#34
post #31

People are focusing on the IQ test, but how stupid does an employer have to be to look at results of a Myers-Briggs personality quiz to filter applicants? I'd personally put more weight on "what's your Hogwarts house" from Buzzfeed than both of these.

Really reveals a cargo cult culture at work.

Re: San Francisco VC firm required job applicants to take online IQ test

#35
post #31

People are focusing on the IQ test, but how stupid does an employer have to be to look at results of a Myers-Briggs personality quiz to filter applicants? I'd personally put more weight on "what's your Hogwarts house" from Buzzfeed than both of these.

They weren't filtering people based on MBTI.

MBTI is quite commonly used to characterize what types of jobs an individual might take on. If you understand a person's personality, it gives you a way of imagining how you might work with them. It's also popularly used in romantic dating, for the same reason.

Re: San Francisco VC firm required job applicants to take online IQ test

#36
post #35
post #31

People are focusing on the IQ test, but how stupid does an employer have to be to look at results of a Myers-Briggs personality quiz to filter applicants? I'd personally put more weight on "what's your Hogwarts house" from Buzzfeed than both of these.

They weren't filtering people based on MBTI. MBTI is quite commonly used to characterize what types of jobs an individual might take on. If you understand a person's personality, it gives you a way of imagining how you might work with them. It's also popularly used in romantic dating, for the same reason.

> MBTI is quite commonly used to characterize what types of jobs an individual might take on. If you understand a person's personality

...it's not through MBTI.

Re: San Francisco VC firm required job applicants to take online IQ test

#37
post #7

"...a 1971 Supreme Court ruling that decreed IQ tests and other tests unrelated to the job to violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964..." Plenty of programming screens and interviews involve all sorts of brain puzzlers that are never used in actual programming. Does that mean they are racist too?? An IQ test would be inappropriate for an occupation that does not involve heavy analytical skills, but if that VC firm posti…

You seem fairly upset over this. Have you considered organizing like-minded individuals and forming a campaign to raise awareness on the issue until they apologize to you for apologizing for being inept bigots?

Re: San Francisco VC firm required job applicants to take online IQ test

#38

I get "aptitude" tests for specific roles and abilities, but the concept of IQ as a standardized and reliable method to test a persons "intelligence" is far from proven, standardized or reliable.

It is not “standardized”, to be sure, but IQ tests are very reliable, and are just about as “proven” as anything else in psychology (in fact, more so, as psychometry has been one field that has not suffered from the replication crisis).

For a summary of the mountain of research done in the field, I recommend “Intelligence: All That Matters” by Stuart Ritchie:

> There is a strange disconnect between the scientific consensus and the public mind on intelligence testing. Just mention IQ testing in polite company, and you'll sternly be informed that IQ tests don't measure anything "real", and only reflect how good you are at doing IQ tests; that they ignore important traits like "emotional intelligence" and "multiple intelligences"; and that those who are interested in IQ testing must be elitists, or maybe something more sinister.

> Yet the scientific evidence is clear: IQ tests are extraordinarily useful. IQ scores are related to a huge variety of important life outcomes like educational success, income, and even life expectancy, and biological studies have shown they are genetically influenced and linked to measures of the brain. Studies of intelligence and IQ are regularly published in the world's top scientific journals.

> This book will offer an entertaining introduction to the state of the art in intelligence and IQ, and will show how we have arrived at what we know from a century's research. It will engage head-on with many of the criticisms of IQ testing by describing the latest high-quality scientific research, but will not be a simple point-by-point rebuttal: it will make a positive case for IQ research, focusing on the potential benefits for society that a better understanding of intelligence can bring.

Re: San Francisco VC firm required job applicants to take online IQ test

#40
post #35
post #31

People are focusing on the IQ test, but how stupid does an employer have to be to look at results of a Myers-Briggs personality quiz to filter applicants? I'd personally put more weight on "what's your Hogwarts house" from Buzzfeed than both of these.

They weren't filtering people based on MBTI. MBTI is quite commonly used to characterize what types of jobs an individual might take on. If you understand a person's personality, it gives you a way of imagining how you might work with them. It's also popularly used in romantic dating, for the same reason.

If you put "are you pregnant?" as a required field on a job application and then say "oh we were just using it to know to get you a gift!", you really think anyone is buying it?
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