Will corporate aptitude tests burst the higher education bubble?

[villageidiot1]

Originally Posted by Adhom

If corporations relied solely on an aptitude tests to determine who to hire, I can guarantee there will be wide scale complaints of unfairness. Anyone can have a bad day and imagine all your experience rendered pointless because you choked on a test.

You can have all the wide scale complaints of unfairness in the world but it doesn't matter unless the tests are discriminatory, and stupidity is not a protected class in this country.

If all things are equal, what comany doesn't want to hire the more intelligent person?

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

Probably true.

Also, those who test well can be flaky. I was good on tests and skated through school. Great short term memory. Like the guy in Stripes, I once learned a semester of geology in one night, and pulled the high score on the final in a huge lecture class. Six months later, I did not remember a thing about the topic, which shames me to this day. I did the bare minimum. It was not until about my last year of college that I realized I was just screwing myself be doing that stuff. Thereafter, I learned self-discipline and developed a work ethic (I still work on both to this day-laziness is always at the door!), which are much more useful qualities than test smarts, IMO.

So those who don't test well can't be flaky?

Any type of corporate apptitude test is going to measure things like logic, reasoning or knowledge that is necessary for the job. These are not tests that you can cram for that allowed you to skate through school. A test is simply a tool in the hiring process, but if two candidates appear equal, why would you hire the person who scored lower on an apptitude test?

BTW, I once had to answer an essay question as part of an interview. Assuming the question is on something realistic and practical, I think the response provides a lot of insight on a candidate for any type of job that requires communication.

[mark85]

Aptitude tests should be taken by all members of congress and the presidential candidates, not necessarily to ensure that those with the highest scores are elected or in office, but to identify those who are deficient and likely to be incompetent. To deter fraud, an electronic test could be administered live and televised, with real-time results. A randomly selected group of recent high school students could take the test simultaneously, for comparison.

[Aunt Maude]

Originally Posted by mark85

Aptitude tests should be taken by all members of congress and the presidential candidates, not necessarily to ensure that those with the highest scores are elected or in office, but to identify those who are deficient and likely to be incompetent. To deter fraud, an electronic test could be administered live and televised, with real-time results. A randomly selected group of recent high school students could take the test simultaneously, for comparison.

I suppose that you could start by publishing the SAT scores of Presidents.

While I somewhat sympathize with the arguments against testing by companies, most hiring practices are so haphazard (and combine the issues of being both arbitrary and 100% wrong about the candidate) that I don't think it would be any worse.

A pure play version of this would be for software engineers. I've seen very little difference through the years between hires that went to a top notch school vs. a middling school vs. no school at all. Natural ability, work ethic, and OJT seems to far surpass schooling.

It would be interesting to see Google's results from the various things they've tried given the data intensive nature of their internal practices. No doubt it's quite the company secret.