Should You Test? The Dangers of Job Testing

Should You Test? The Dangers of Job Testing

THE HISTORY OF JOB TESTING: For a brilliant and entertaining peek into the history of various kinds of intelligence testing, listing to the Radiolab podcast, “Radiolab Presents: G“.

The podcast chronicles the controversial history of general intelligence – especially IQ – testing, and the racial and cultural biases of those tests. One of the more disturbing pieces of intelligence test history, is the way that the eugenics movement helped create such tests, and that the Nazis were so taken with the American tests that they modeled some of their exclusionary policies after them, as a part of their appalling efforts to create a more perfect race.

LEGAL JOB TESTING PROBLEMS: While most organizations today don’t use general IQ tests as a part of their interview process, many still use other kinds of intelligence and personality tests – most of which have not been validated. From a legal point of view, it is discriminatory to use tests unless you can show they have a real relationship to resulting job performance. In my experience, many organizations have not thought through the consequences of using some tests.

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES: Most modern cognition researchers have agreed with the concept of multiple intelligences. Someone may, for example, have an innate ability to solve math problems yet need an incredible amount of training and coaching to give an effective speech in front of a live audience. Conversely, I tend toward high verbal intelligence, yet flounder when I need spatial intelligence. Visualizing what a house would look like from a blueprint, for example, or remembering directions to some place I have been many times before, remain challenging tasks for me. I am eternally grateful to the technology wizards for creating MapQuest and other directional tools so that I don’t spend all my time driving in circles!

And now we have emotional intelligence, social intelligence and even relational intelligence. Many experts agree that these kinds of strengths may predict someone’s success much more accurately than sheer IQ.

What Should You Do?

MAKE SURE THAT ANY TESTS YOU USE ARE VALIDATED AND JOB RELATED: If you require any kind of tests as a part of the interview, promotion or other job advancement processes, make sure that you can prove or “validate” that such skills or abilities lead to job success.

QUESTION BIASES AND PREJUDICES: I once consulted with an oil company, for example, who was integrating women into the group of workers who drove their fuel tanker trucks. Previously, the positions had all been held by men. Many of the men grumbled that the organization was “lowering” its standards by accepting women, especially because the organization was considering a change in the requirement that job applicants be able to lift a certain number of pounds. The reason they wanted to know that applicants would be able to lift 75 pounds, the company argued, was that they wanted assurance that employees would be able to lift the heavy hoses used to fill the tanks on the trucks. Yet when someone bothered to weigh the hoses, none of them weighed more than forty pounds. Many children that the women had been hauling around for years weighed more than that.

CONSIDER SCENARIOS OR BEHAVIOR-BASED INTERVIEWS INSTEAD: Tech companies, some airlines and others now use real life scenarios to test how applicants would handle challenges on the job.

“Tell me about a time when”, for example, “you handled an angry customer. What did you do?”

Some tech companies who need to hire developers or coders give them real life problems they are trying to solve to see how applicants rise to the challenge. These kinds of job or promotion assessments are more likely to survive legal challenges, as well as leading to more successful hires.

For other suggestions about how to hire more successfully, read:
Do You Know What Hiring Technique Really Works? 

Do You Know Why You Should Hire Optimists? What the Research Shows

What Do You Think?

What expectations do you have around conflict? Call or write: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com