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Job application asked for my SAT scores

mrmarket.lol

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Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#191

Post by aprdm »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #179
aprdm wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You basically described Canonical's hiring process !

No only sat scores but specifically they ask for the percentile band of your high school maths and hard sciences scores. Not even kidding. I’ve been in a staff level+ role at 3 of the 5 faang. Applied to canonical because their products are interesting. I’m ~30 years past high school and i get hit with ‘what are your high school maths scores’. I answered the online form honestly and got a rejection email immediately…

lol I know, I applied for them around 4-5 years ago and thought it was a joke... I did the first part which was some gimmic IQ tests and then I had to write an essay (which I didn't) !

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#192

Post by hammock »

WalterBright wrote: post #146
delichon wrote: post #28

Last month 2,400 University of California faculty asked for admissions to resume using the SAT "to ensure foundational fluency." Of course many employers want to ensure that too, especially when college degrees don't anymore. The widening abilities gap followed the 2020 elimination of the SAT/ACT, a temporary measure that has now become a permanent vulnerability. This outcome was explicitly predicted by the Academic…

I always enjoy the advocates who claim that students have mastered their subjects, but "don't test well". Would you want a pilot on your flight who flunked flying school exams, but somehow "really knew how to fly!"?

> Would you want a pilot on your flight who flunked flying school exams, but somehow "really knew how to fly!

Sure, just not in the cockpit

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#193

Post by dataviz1000 »

amazingamazing wrote: post #5

Company is Alpha Vantage: https://beaverhand.com/apply/alpha-vantage-gtm-team-various-...

> Low ego: There can be significant economic upside to this role as things progress, but the nature of this role day-to-day may involve things that can be less exciting / more mundane (it's a job, after all!)

What does this mean?

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#195

Post by hammock »

WalterBright wrote: post #183
andrecarini wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is you're equating `failing a test` to `lacking the relevant skills and knowledge to do a certain task competently`. The reality is sometimes tests in academia are just not very well made and don't really test what they are supposed to be testing, and that's usually due to multiple reasons like misaligned incentives, staffing shortages and maybe lack of resources / funding. I don't think the comparis…

I don't buy the notion that tests do not test relevant skills. In my long career I've noticed a strong correlation between SAT scores and academic performance as well as job performance. > I don't think the comparison to flight school is relevant enough in this context because it's a too different of a world to traditional academia. My dad kept his flight school tests for flying all sorts of airplanes. They bear a lo…

> I don't buy the notion that tests do not test relevant skills. In my long career I've noticed a strong correlation between SAT scores and academic performance as well as job performance.

SAT tests intelligence (aptitude), not skills. Which is why it correlates with job performance, where intelligence can (over some time) matter as much or more than a starting point of relevant skills.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#196

Post by pmontra »

> similar-to-me bias (I like you because you're me!).

My first boss in the 90s eventually told me why he hired me.

"I assume that everybody at their first job with a CS degree have more or less the same level of technical competence [which is not much IMHO] so I ask which are the last books they have read. You told me a few, I usually get none, so I hired you because I hoped that talking with you would be interesting."

At least a similar-to-me bias builds a pleasing work environment because of homogeneity.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#197

Post by Maxatar »

fsckboy wrote: post #175
Maxatar wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it plays out in practice. There is overwhelming evidence that students who otherwise excel academically score fairly mediocre SAT scores on their first attempt and then jump substantially after weeks of targeted practice and/or tutoring, even though they didn't learn anything new in the classroom. If attention in class were all it took then that improvement couldn't happen. What changed was familiarity…

I'm not aware that there is any method to dramatically increase SAT scores (and neither IQ test scores). could you point me to your sources?

Straight from the College Board themselves:

https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/osp-technical-re...

That report also references another study showing that each hour of tutoring was associated with an increase of 2.34 points on the SAT score which unfortunately is behind a paywall:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282492223_Preparing...

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#198

Post by phyzome »

jedberg wrote: post #82
OptionOfT wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please note that we will also rely significantly on both solicited references (where you introduce us) as well as unsolicited or "back-end" references (where we do our own). For the latter, please rest assured that we will never contact a current employer without first getting your permission. References already give me goosebumps. Having them reach out to people who haven't given you permission to be a reference s…

Every job does that, whether they tell you or not.

Sorry, no. That might be a thing you've personally experienced, but it's far from universal.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#199

Post by Balgair »

cm2012 wrote: post #30

I would never ask for them since its so cringe. But SAT scores correlate to IQ at .81, and IQ is one of the few things that strongly correlates to knowledge work performance positively. There is probably a lot of alpha from knowing candidates SAT scores. Its more useful than knowing the college they went to.

That's r = 0.81 right? so R2 would then be ~.66. Meaning that 66% of the variation in IQ scores can be statistically explained by variation in SAT scores.

It's really high for psych stuff. If you even get r=0.5, you've got a great result there.

But it is important to note, I feel, that SAT maps to only about 2/3 parts of the IQ score, and IQ score is also a quite fuzzy measure here for things like knowledge work job performance.

I do agree though, you get quite a bang for your buck just reporting these numbers.

But, if you explicitly tie money and compensation to the SAT score, man, that is setting up some very perverse incentives around it. If it adopts widely to do so, then you're gonna get some really strange interaction effects there.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#200

Post by WalterBright »

Maxatar wrote: post #157
WalterBright wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always enjoy the advocates who claim that students have mastered their subjects, but "don't test well". Would you want a pilot on your flight who flunked flying school exams, but somehow "really knew how to fly!"?

Not really comparable... the overwhelming majority of flight tests involve flying an aircraft. There is no meaningful way someone can be excellent at flying an aircraft but can't pass a test which involves flying an aircraft. The same can't be said for many other tests. If the test involves the practical application of the very skill being tested, then that test has direct relevance to he competency of said skill. Bu…

They are never going to let you into a cockpit until you pass ground school, which involves a lot of math.

> A teacher can be brilliant in the classroom yet stumble on a standardized certification exam full of pedagogical jargon.

A teacher that cannot explain how calculus works cannot teach it to anybody.

> a coding interview that relies on whiteboarding algorithms from memory can easily fail an excellent engineer who builds great software every day but doesn't recall the optimal solution to some puzzle on the spot.

I've seen too many coders using bubble sort because they don't know enough to look for a better algorithm.

In any case, the purpose of leet coding tests is to quickly filter out the utter frauds. I have a programmer friend who wanted a job at a major software corp. He knew he'd have to pass the leetcode in an early stage of the interviewing. He figured it would take 6 weeks or so to study that material. I suggested that, since he was applying for a $250K job, that would be the most productive studying he'd ever done. He agreed, did the 6 weeks of studying, aced the leetcode test, and got the $250K.

So ya, there is a point to those tests, in filtering out the frauds and the ones who aren't willing to do what it takes to get those jobs.

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