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He got 1%, we can't hire him

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Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#461

Post by lambdasquirrel »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #452
mindcrime wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real role of HR people is tax forms and health insurance, and little else. Well said. And their role definitely should not include administering bullshit voodoo science "psychometric evaluations" and making any decisions based on them.

Psychometric evaluations are not voodoo science. Honestly, as a PhD psychologist, they are the only useful (i.e. scientific) part of psychology. For example, see Hunter and Schmidt (1998) http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%... . This (and if you've been around here a while, you've probably seen this) is a meta-analysis of the utility of particular selection procedures for jobs. That is psycho…

Which is why we screen people for submission to authority? I don't doubt that they "work" for certain easily-measurable traits of personality. I'm also certain that (1) the tests will be abused and (2) HR people are screening for attributes that are probably more useful in a factory setting.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#462

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

lutusp wrote: post #419
Fuxy wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're trying to say psychology is not an exact science I agree. You can't use psychology to make exact predictions of how people will behave however the more you learn about psychology the better you get at figuring out people and make a educated guess what motivates them. For instance i find myself using MBTI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator ) a lot when meeting new people and tailorin…

> If you're trying to say psychology is not an exact science I agree. It's not a science at all. Sciences make observations, then craft generalizing theories to explain the observations, then test the theories in unrelated contexts, then discard those theories that fail. This is certainly not how psychology works. In psychology, it's commonplace to see a therapy for a disease whose existence hasn't yet been establish…

You appear to be suffering from a misapprehension.

Psychology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology

Psychiatry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatry

Note the not to be confused with introduction on Wikipedia.

They are quite different, and while I agree that DSM-5 was a disgrace, that was somewhat inevitable given the commercial pressures involved.

Its worth noting that I agree with your major point, but it applies to psychiatry (more specifically, the DSM) rather than to psychology.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#463

Post by munin »

meowface wrote: post #409
noir_lord wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was younger I applied a few places that had those McDonalds type tests, they are so completely trivial to subvert. The questions basically where a thinly veiled attempt to figure out how pliable and compliant you where. They should have just had one question "Do you like having a roof over your head?" because lets be honest you don't work those kinds of jobs because you enjoy them. All this psychometric stuff…

To be fair, they likely get a lot of applictions, and some portion of those applicants may be mentally ill in some way, possibly on drugs, or may otherwise be truly abysmal employees who don't care about anything. Tests like those can weed out people who clearly shouldn't be considered. They have no place at a serious company hiring for a technical position, though. Usually 10 or so minutes of face-to-face talking is…

the problem is discrimination lawsuits.

an old person contests a no-hire decision with "I wasn't hired because I was old"

option A: Hiring manager says "well I just thought you were a jerk"

option B: An objective and universally applied test scores the applicant as being 95% jerk, which is above the 60% cutoff that the company uses globally

which would you rather defend yourself with?

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#464

Post by omegaham »

snake_plissken wrote: post #287
georgemcbay wrote: post #211

Oh god, I am shocked and horrified to hear that these sorts of tests may now be making their way into the tech industry. I've never encountered one of these personally, but my then-girlfriend who was a recent nursing school graduate looking for her first job ran into them and failed the first few of them. After reading about them online I'm convinced the only way for you to "pass" these tests is to be slightly psycho…

lolo I like: "It is maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free >> SA" Yeah, what is the point of having a court of law anyway, because the test taker knows all.

This is disturbing on many levels to me. Someone who is "maddened" when a guilty criminal goes free demonstrates clear ignorance of the justice system as well as a tendency to be instigated by demagogues.

On the other hand, this test as a whole seems to be selecting for someone who is pliant and believes whatever he is told to believe, the sort of person who actually believes the HR indoctrination and the like. In this regard, I think the question is very revealing - someone who would answer "Disagree" to this question reveals that he understands that our judicial system is not perfect and reacts with skepticism whenever he is told by the media not to value human rights. Such a person would be more likely to stand up for himself in the workplace when his rights or the rights of others are violated.

It's actually rather clever if you're looking at it through the eyes of an asshole.

By the way, your username cracks me up.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#465

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

GFischer wrote: post #161
lutusp wrote: post #145

Earlier 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-...

There are some psychologists that actually try to be scientific (my GF is doing a postgraduate degree in neuropsychology). Unfortunately, they're overwhelmed by the majority, which are full of pseudoscience. Maybe the more rigorous ones should change their titles, not to be associated with standard "psychologists" anymore?

They could call themselves, cognitive scientists, or behavioural economists, or something!

\snark.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#467

Post by ignostic »

Most of the top comments are restating a common belief among technical workers: HR managers (or all of HR) is worthless, especially when they try to be more than paper-pushers. Lumping all HR people into a single category is foolish and unfair.

I admit that most HR managers are just paper pushers who are simply not knowledgeable enough to make hiring decisions. And shame on the manager who allowed such a useless position and department to persist. If these people are not qualified to help make hiring decisions, why would you even trust them to find and filter candidates?

I've worked places where the HR personnel understand the business, know the team, and were aware of heaps of research on hiring and keeping people happy. Their feedback on hiring processes was extremely valuable, and they made contributions to the culture and environment. They were the first to attack "corporate bullshit" as it sprung up. In short, they knew how to build and foster a productive, creative environment better than anyone, and we listened. That, in my opinion, is what HR should do.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#468

Post by mindcrime »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #452
mindcrime wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real role of HR people is tax forms and health insurance, and little else. Well said. And their role definitely should not include administering bullshit voodoo science "psychometric evaluations" and making any decisions based on them.

Psychometric evaluations are not voodoo science. Honestly, as a PhD psychologist, they are the only useful (i.e. scientific) part of psychology. For example, see Hunter and Schmidt (1998) http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%... . This (and if you've been around here a while, you've probably seen this) is a meta-analysis of the utility of particular selection procedures for jobs. That is psycho…

I won't question that some psychometric evaluations may reveal something interesting about the person taking it. I have much less confidence in the ability of anybody (HR or otherwise) to accurately map those results to anything related to a hiring decision. I lack ALL confidence that the results of such a test should trump the determination of a group of co-workers who interact with the candidate face to face for a period of time and cover a broad ground of topics.

Unfortunately, much of the bullshit surrounding the particular psychometric tests used by HR departments has thoroughly debased a discipline that invented cross validation.

Yeah, that's the rub, innit? The times I've worked for companies that did this stuff, and when I've seen results from them, I've seen nothing that leads me to believe in the utility of the tests. Unfortunately I can't recall the specific name-brand of the ones I've been exposed to or I'd criticize them specifically.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#469

Post by scott_s »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #453
scott_s wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this an accurate description of what you mean by a cognitive ability test? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Abilities_Test If so, under which circumstances are they used? For a graphic designer, the natural "test" would be for fellow graphic designers and potential managers to look at an applicant's work samples, or to ask them to produce one. This method directly tests the applicant's ability to do the type…

Yes, in essence. When I refer to CATs I'm talking about measures testing g ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_intelligence ). And I know it's hard to believe, but g-centric tests like cognitive ability test do a better job than other seemingly more relevant selection measures like work sample tests and assessment centers. The benefit of work sample tests, assessment centers, integrity tests, etc. is that their validity…

The difficulty I have with that article is that I don't know how the jobs in these studies map to engineering or research jobs. I'm thinking of jobs where one has accumulated close to a decade's worth of knowledge before starting.

Related to this, I think it's important to consider that this correlation between g and job performance is conditioned on the fact that the person applied for the job. That sounds trivially true at first, but it means that the applicant felt like they were competent for the job (in the best case; in the worst case, it meant they felt that they had a chance of appearing competent at the job). In other words, what we're saying is, "Of the people who thought they could do the job, the smartest ones tended to do the best."

But if our candidate pool was everyone, I'm skeptical that g would still hold as a good predictor. I think I'm a bright guy, but I'm pretty sure I'd make a terrible nuclear engineer. And with that in mind, we may need to keep the non-g related selection around to prevent such a situation.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#470

Post by Daniel_Newby »

noir_lord wrote: post #387
HelloMcFly wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been personally involved in validity testing for graphic designers, and while the validity coefficients were reduced they were still of practical significance, and had incremental validity over cognitive ability testing (which is always the best predictor, but tends to show racial bias). I will see if I can find any published research as I've not seen any and am now curious myself.

> cognitive ability testing (which is always the best predictor, but tends to show racial bias). I'm intrigued, is the "bias" because the test is unfair to one racial or more racial sub-groups or because the test is "fair" and that is how they actually perform or is it a language thing. I do reasonably well on standardised IQ tests but I suspect if I did a German one I might struggle.

The latter. The races perform differently on "fair" cognitive tests.

How do we know the tests are fair? For a given test score, life outcomes like income and criminal conviction rate are the same.

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