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Comment by EliRivers | Hacker News Reader

If they give you an IQ test or similar, run.

That's interesting; it conflicts with one of the few pieces of evidence I have about successful correlation in recruitment. I don't have the study to hand, but I'm sure its conclusions were that people who do well at IQ tests (although they might have been more general intelligence tests rather than specifically IQ tests) tend to make better technical employees (or indeed, almost any kind of employee), and that's it's one of the few actually reliable indicators. As a strong rule of thumb, smart people are better at technical jobs.

What's the thinking behind taking it as a sign of a bad employer?

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Hypothetical situation.

Let's say you're an experienced developer. You have an impressive work record, open source contributions, and ace the technical interviews.

Then your potential employer asks you to take an IQ test.

Legality aside (and it may be framed as a "general aptitude test" or somesuch), this may be very insulting to some people, who feel their contributions and achievements should stand on their own without bullshit tests. It signals to them "we don't care what you've done, and you can prove you can do, or your years of experience or education, you getting the job depends on an arbitrary test we're going to throw at you". You're not going to be treated as an individual, but rather a set of points on a score sheet.

Now you may be right or wrong as to whether these tests are indicative of ability, but for a lot of applicants they would be a red flag.

In my opinion, what you've done there is create a straw man. The original assertion was that an IQ test is a reason to run. What you've done is turn that into something else entirely, where it quite clearly is a bad sign. I believe that your hypothetical situation isn't addressing the original simple assertion.

The original assertion was not "If you've done very well at a series of interviews and proved your ability already, and then they want to give you an IQ test, run."

So your argument is that IQ tests are only good in lieu of experience/proven ability?

My argument is that you presented an invalid straw man argument.

How about "you get an IQ test instead of a series of interviews and a chance to prove your ability"

So what's an example of a situation where an IQ test would not be a bad sign?

Open source contributions aren't as useful for a hiring decision as you imply. Did the candidate spend several days working on a small change? Does the candidate only do quality work when it's something that is personally interesting to them? If yes to either of those then they might still be a bad hire.

Don't get me wrong, I love to see open source work, it is a plus and it definitely helps paint the picture of what the candidate is passionate about. But just having impressive open source work alone is not enough to make the technical interview unnecessary.

> and ace the technical interviews

If there's an IQ test after they ace the technical interviews, then that's a really weird order to do the interview, but I don't think that's the situation that the above comments were talking about.

> Did the candidate spend several days working on a small change?

Open source is usually a free time pursuit, so quite possibly they did spend several days on a small change because they had better things to do. Or the small change was the result of several days of tracking down a difficult bug.

My point was however that whether or not IQ tests are effective, making experienced developers sit through them (or indeed junior developers who may have verifiable academic or other accomplishments) could be seen as insulting or degrading. If your goal is not to unnecessarily piss off good candidates who may then bad-mouth you to their friends or bring up the issue on Glassdoor, then IQ tests - even discarding the legal implications - are perhaps not such a great idea.

Experience, mostly.

I have a high IQ (so I'm told) and when I work at companies like these, they're managed like absolute hell. Metrics for miles and using technology rather than proper management to manage people.

Building social skills to identify intelligence is much more effective and significantly more personal. Yes, it can be gamed, but so can intelligence tests. The last one I took had 50% questions similar to, "If you rotate this paper 120 degrees and flip it, where does the dot end?" You bet your ass I took that test with a piece of paper in hand.

So you cheated on an IQ test? How did the test administrator not catch you or worse, allow you to do this?

Because sometimes they excuse themselves after leaving you with the test script. Some don't bother sitting through with you the entire session, especially if he or she is just a HR personnel and is simply tasked to administer the test.

It was at home and during a time when I was more interested in learning to interview than getting hired. Also, having legit ADHD, makes those sorts of tests utter hell, especially considering it was timed and that I have a comical lack of spatial intelligence.

I'm not saying what I did was right, just that there was some justification to it.

Well, if they leave you at home to do the test (especially timed). They must expect you to use any means at your disposal to solve it. It's likely that some people would still not be able to do it.

I've read from tokenadult (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3807363) that the IQ tests are indeed one of the few reliable tests that you can use.

Well, I believe IQ tests during an interview process is illegal in the US.

Anyway, I would say it's not necessarily a good way to consider a candidate as the results can be subjective and doesn't indicate what to do if the best coder in the area sucks at taking tests while under pressure.

> as the results can be subjective

As opposed to all the other completely objective ways of evaluating a candidate?

Good point, I guess I should have said it's a subjective result that too many treat as if it were an objective pass/fail result.

I dunno, I think this would be self-regulating.

By the way, in Europe very few companies do IQ tests of employees. However.. the thought that it might be illegal to qualify potential employees based on IQ tests would simply not occur to us. I guess you guys in the US have a more, eh, colorful history for good and bad.

Yes indeed, many used them in the past to deny minorities jobs.

> Well, I believe IQ tests during an interview process is illegal in the US.

Only if they can't show it's materially related to the ability to do the job.

When I first started working for the IBM LTC, IBM had an online aptitude test as part of their application. The results directly determined both whether you got hired and how much you got paid.

The short answer is probably but not definitely, e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/

There is pretty clear relationship between, say, SAT scores and measured performance in college but that correlation is easier to accept intuitively. (Given that college GPA depends to a large degree on performance on tests.)

According to a psych test research program, I have a very high IQ. Not sure what it is until the program's over, but apparently I beat all of the doctors and grad students involved. Not bragging, just making some anecdata.

That said, apparently I'm very difficult to manage. When managed properly, though, I do really good work (so I'm told). When managed badly, it's a completely different story - and usually at places that require IQ tests ;).

All an IQ test does is gives you a reason NOT to hire someone. Why not work on building the social skills required to identify smart candidates if you're trying to hire smart candidates?

Given how psychological experiments work, what's more likely - that you have a higher IQ than everyone else involved in the program, or that one of the things they're studying is the effect of believing you have a higher IQ than everyone else involved in the program?

That's definitely a possibility. :)

That relationship may not be as strong as you think and it certainly doesn't hold true for all standardized tests. LSATS often are negatively correlated to grades (which surprised my professor when he was the dean of the law school).

It's possible they are referring to these tests that companies are giving now in order to weed out certain types of people. They're not exactly IQ test, but rather tests for cultural fit. They can be quite good at weeding out minorities, women, older people, and people with disabilities.

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