All the hand wringing aside , can anyone tell me how to game such a test if I encounter the misfortune of having to pass one ?
Err on the side of psychopathic. Seriously.
This post sums it up well: http://melbel.hubpages.com/hub/Unicru
He got 1%, we can't hire him
311–320 of 594 posts
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#312There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person. HR people are valuable in a company. But their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers, and to take care of all the stuff like W-2 forms and whatnot nobody wants to deal with, not make…
> There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate.
I can think of one. If they are responsible for doing a criminal background check, and have found serious criminal activity in the prospective employee's past.
That's not to say that some prospective hires can't be rehabilitated; but in certain cases, hiring someone with a criminal background is just too much of a risk, and it's not unreasonable for HR to have a final say on this.
Other than that, yeah, you're right.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#313There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person. HR people are valuable in a company. But their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers, and to take care of all the stuff like W-2 forms and whatnot nobody wants to deal with, not make…
I understand why you think that way, but there are reasons HR-related folks get involved in these types of things. Note that I cannot speak for this particular company or their processes, but I can speak generally.
Properly validated psychometric tests are valid predictors of job performance (by which I mean objectively and factually correlated with actual work performance), and a properly constructed work-relevant test will be on the whole will be more valid than subjective judgments from most technical professionals. Of course there will be hits and misses, but the consistent application is the key to its use. If you don't consistently apply it, it becomes worthless.
But, let's throw that out of the window for a second because in this particular anecdote I don't think it's relevant. This test they were using seems more like a cultural fit, specifically a person-organization fit test. These tests are less about predicting job performance than they are about predicting organizational commitment and ultimately tenure [1]. Surely we can agree that those things are important too.
But, let's again say that this candidate's aptitude is so impressive that we don't mind an increased statistical chance that his or her tenure may short. The real issue is that legally you are obligated to apply the same set of criteria all of your employees for a given role (not necessarily the exact same position, but comparable positions). If the company is applying cognitive testing, personality testing, drug testing, person-org. fit testing, etc. to one group of applicants, you now cannot fail to adhere to that criteria because it is an invitation for legal liability, however seemingly-spurious.
Having said that, it's important that your selection processes have been validated previously, or at least are in the process of being validated (which provides some protection). I also have a big concern with the linked situation because: 1) it's a cultural-related test, which means the possibility to show cultural-related bias is high and 2) they were unwilling to make language accommodations, which seems unnecessarily rigid when native-level English skills are likely not a core component of the job. Point #1 can be accounted for in some shape or form (at a minimum through a low cutoff score), but Point #2 is more problematic.
Anyway, there is a reason companies adopt "Big Corp" characteristics as the scale. The primary reason is for legal compliance through standardization of process, and the other is that data is supportive of the validity of objective predictors of job success relative to subjective judgments.
I realize I may be opening myself up to some criticism and scorn from HN crowd for seemingly representing "Big Corporate" or acting like a Bob from Office Space, but so be it. Despite what it may seem, there are often smart people using evidenced-based processes driving seemingly asinine HR processes that drive you crazy. And sometimes there aren't, and it's just a big pain in the ass for poor reasons.
--
[1] PDF of meta-analytic findings about person-job/org fit: http://nreilly.asp.radford.edu/kristof-brown%20et%20al.pdf
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are there good HR departments? That depends. Are they staffed by psychologists? If yes, then no. Psychology and psychological testing are losing credibility very rapidly right now: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201305/the-...
Not all psychologists see eye-to-eye on the tests issue. In the case mentioned in the article, even a professional that truly trusts the tests should have taken into consideration: 1) make his own assesment and check against the test score, 2) realize that the test is supposedly validated against a sample, and if the candidate falls out of that sample (non-native english speaker), the test should probably be disregar…
> Not all psychologists see eye-to-eye on the tests issue.
But psychologists don't see eye to eye on anything -- that's one of the obstacles to turning psychology into a science.
> In the case mentioned in the article, even a professional that truly trusts the tests should have taken into consideration:
> 1) make his own assesment and check against the test score,
On the contrary, if psychology were a science, a clinical psychologist administering a standardized test should produce the same high correlation with reality as a clinical doctor administering a standardized test. But this is certainly not the case, and one of the reasons for this discussion is that psychologists are often married to the outcome of a test that isn't a reliable measure of its subject. A psychologist's confidence in a test's unreliable results is an obvious theme in the linked article.
> Carefull when disregarding a whole field based on preconceptions.
Tell that to Thomas Insel, director of the NIMH, who recently and reluctantly decided to abandon the DSM, psychiatry and psychology's standard diagnostic manual, on the ground that it's becoming less scientific with each new edition:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201305/the-...
My point is that, when a field's opinion leaders disregard a whole field, it's no longer a preconception.
> All fields have different branches and disagreements.
When a medical doctor says you have cancer, it's 99% certain you have cancer. When a psychologist says you have Asperger Syndrome, the reliability of the diagnosis is so unreliable and divorced from reality that the diagnosis has been reluctantly abandoned after an epidemic of phony diagnoses.
The same pattern applies to most other psychological diagnoses and decisions -- they are very subjective. Tom Widiger, who served as head of research for DSM-IV, says "There are lots of studies which show that clinicians diagnose most of their patients with one particular disorder and really don't systematically assess for other disorders. They have a bias in reference to the disorder that they are especially interested in treating and believe that most of their patients have."
> I think it's because of it being a young field ...
Psychology and psychologists have been around making pronouncements since before the U.S. Civil War. That makes psychology one of the oldest fields that has scientific pretensions.
> it's hard to agree on what the standards are to measure good/bad practice.
Yes, true, which is why psychology is now being replaced by neuroscience -- the latter can produce more objective results.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#315There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person. HR people are valuable in a company. But their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers, and to take care of all the stuff like W-2 forms and whatnot nobody wants to deal with, not make…
> There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. I can think of one. If they are responsible for doing a criminal background check, and have found serious criminal activity in the prospective employee's past. That's not to say that some prospective hires can't be rehabilitated; but in certain cases, hiring someone with a criminal background is just too much of a risk, a…
Even in that case, HR can identify the risk paramters (likelihood of risk manifesting, expected cost if it manifests, overall expected cost taking all of that into account, etc.) but they can't weigh the cost against the expected benefits.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not all psychologists see eye-to-eye on the tests issue. In the case mentioned in the article, even a professional that truly trusts the tests should have taken into consideration: 1) make his own assesment and check against the test score, 2) realize that the test is supposedly validated against a sample, and if the candidate falls out of that sample (non-native english speaker), the test should probably be disregar…
What are you talking about psychology is awesome i am quite interested in the field however HR's use of psychology by just ticking boxes is not correct. They don't understand it so they are unable to apply it without ticking boxes. That form is completely useless in London for example where about 50% of the population is a non native English speaker.
> What are you talking about psychology is awesome i am quite interested in the field however HR's use of psychology by just ticking boxes is not correct.
I think you should ask yourself some hard questions about psychology. It's true that psychology's current practices are rather unreliable, but it's not obvious how to solve that problem, given the field's subject, the human mind. If the target were the brain, that would be different, but the mind is not the brain.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think there is a need to "respectfully disagree" to a disrespectful comment. Just like there are terrible dev teams there are terrible HR departments, and this sounds like one of them. But as you mention, if developers were to handle everything related to hiring, firing, sick reports, vacation, benefits, contracts, compliance etc. that HR does, I doubt there would be any profit.
The problem with HR is that they do tasks they are not qualified to as a mission . It's the role that's broken, note the teams.
> The problem with HR is that they do tasks they are not qualified to as a mission.
That's only true if the people defining the mission of various departments -- i.e., executive management -- is not competent at their job.
Reforming or eliminating HR will not fix that problem.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#318There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person. HR people are valuable in a company. But their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers, and to take care of all the stuff like W-2 forms and whatnot nobody wants to deal with, not make…
I understand why you think that way, but there are reasons HR-related folks get involved in these types of things. Note that I cannot speak for this particular company or their processes, but I can speak generally. Properly validated psychometric tests are valid predictors of job performance (by which I mean objectively and factually correlated with actual work performance), and a properly constructed work-relevant t…
> Anyway, there is a reason companies adopt "Big Corp" characteristics as the scale. The primary reason is for legal compliance through standardization of process, and the other is that data is supportive of the validity of objective predictors of job success relative to subjective judgments.
I can't speak to your second point, but as to your first point, I should note that law firms themselves definitely do not use such HR-driven hiring processes.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#319We don't have HR at my company. What does HR do in a well run company? What is their role?
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#320There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person. HR people are valuable in a company. But their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers, and to take care of all the stuff like W-2 forms and whatnot nobody wants to deal with, not make…
I understand why you think that way, but there are reasons HR-related folks get involved in these types of things. Note that I cannot speak for this particular company or their processes, but I can speak generally. Properly validated psychometric tests are valid predictors of job performance (by which I mean objectively and factually correlated with actual work performance), and a properly constructed work-relevant t…
Properly validated psychometric tests are valid predictors of job performance (by which I mean objectively and factually correlated with actual work performance), and a properly constructed work-relevant test will be on the whole will be more valid than subjective judgments from most technical professionals.
Do you have any support for this where the employees are both technical and creative? I'm obviously thinking about software development, but it should apply to any kind of engineering or technical job where the employees need to have a deep technical knowledge, know how to apply that knowledge practically, and have to use that knowledge to create new solutions to new problems.