I'll post to this thread because this is very relevant for the hiring companies. Hunter and Schmidt did a meta-study of 85 years of research on hiring criteria. [1]
There are three attributes you need to select for to identify performing employees in intellectual fields.
- General mental ability (Are they generally smart)
Use WAIS or if there are artifacts of GMA(Complex work they've done themselves) available use them as proxies.
Using IQ is mostly illegal[2] in the US, so you'll have to find a test that acts as a good proxy.
- Work sample test. NOT HAZING! As close as possible to the actual work they'd be doing. Try to make it apples-to-apples comparison across candidates. Also, try and make accomidations for candidates not knowing your company shibboleth.
- Integrity. The first two won't matter if you hire a sociopath.
There are existing tests available for this, you can purchase for < $50 per use.
This alone will get you > 65% hit rate [1], and can be done inside of three hours. There's no need for day long (or multi-day) gladiator style gauntlets.
Like any input that statistically creates a disadvantage for any group defined by a protected criteria, it will, if challenged as discriminatory, require the user to demonstrate that there is sufficient evidence establishing that it is a reasonable predictor of job performance.
There is a pervasive myth that IQ tests specifically are "mostly illegal" in the US stemming from an early employment discrimination case in which the particular use was determined to be illegal, but its worth noting that in that case the IQ test was applied widely, it was part of a set of policies that were direct replacements for a policy of explicit racial discrimination (adopted once the company was subjected to nondiscrimination rules), and there was no evidence that could be offered linking it to performance in the jobs for which it was used. [0]
(It's perhaps worth noting that the case also addressed educational requirements -- the specific one at issue was a high-school diploma requirement -- which was found illegal in the particular use for the same reason as the particular use of the IQ test was, but for some reason no one has gone from that to adopting the idea that specific educational attainment requirements are generally illegal.)
> Quibble about my word choice all you'd like, but use a direct IQ test at your own peril.
Insofar as its true that such a peril exists, the same peril applies for any "test that acts as a good proxy" for an IQ test, since if it does so it will have the same unequal racial impact (because if it didn't, it wouldn't be a good proxy) and, therefore, require the exact same evidence of predictive power with regard to job performance as a "direct IQ test". So the substitution you suggest achieves nothing.
Protecting against the "peril" associated with a "direct IQ test" isn't a matter of choosing a "good proxy" instead (since that does nothing to reduce the "peril"), its a matter of documenting the business justification -- the evidence that the test is a good predictor of job performance.
There are existing tests available to test for being a sociopath...
this is super dehumanizing.
how about, do the work sample test and a few phone calls with somebody smart. You're going to scare off a lot of very picky people if you seem like you're going to be an irritating test focused person - yes lots of us do well on tests, I really don't want to talk about it every day.
Yes I'd certainly add attitude and openness. Except I don't have any quantitative research to back that up, so you're just winging it at that point. Which ends us back exactly where we started.
GMA, work sample and integrity however DO have quantitative research to back them up.
[1] http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...
[2] The illegality comes from IQ tests disadvantaging certain minority groups.
[3] Yes, I'm currently taking freelance work.