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Comment by throwaway9i2wmP | Hacker News Reader

I am a recruiting manager for a start-up.

I remember we received an application from a person whose resume promiscuously explained that he was a Mensa members, "an association for superior IQ people".

Their resume overall was not bad (not top-notch either for the position), but the mention alone of Mensa drove me away from ever wanting to work with such kind of persons that look so full of themselves.

I finally declined to interview this person. The question "Is it discrimination?" was always popping into my mind and I felt uneasy about it for about a week or so.

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Every decision, on any basis, to differentiate between candidates is discrimination.

Whether it's illegal discrimination is another question (discrimination against people mentioning MENSA membership on applications probably has some measurable differential impact by race or some other protected class, and so could easily, without the evidence necessary to demonstrate business necessity and overcome the presumption of illegality, constitute adverse impact discrimination, but is not otherwise directly prohibited in US employment anti-discrimination law.)

On the other hand, from your description, it does sound a decision that was more self-indulgent than made in faithful service of your employer, which at a minimum is unprofessional in hiring, even if it manages to avoid being illegal.

> it does sound a decision that was more self-indulgent than made in faithful service of your employer

I don’t know about that. A bad culture fit can end up taking a lot of value away from a team. Being self-satisfied enough to join Mensa, and then put it on your CV looks like a big red flag to me.

Unbearable people are not a protected group. You did fine.

> "Is it discrimination?"

Yeah it is. It's legal discrimination.

So you can do it without repercussions.

The question you should be asking yourself is should you discriminate that way?

I guess it depends on if you got a desirable outcome.

It is legal to discriminate on IQ as long as you apply it to everyone equally.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-court-ruled-you-can-be-too-...

That reasoning doesn't really make sense to me. One could also justify discriminating in a racist way with that. I.e. the rule "If your skin is darker than this, you are out." could also be applied to every candidate equally.

Years ago I saw versions of this kind of test at retailers where one of the going concerns is that people above a certain level of intelligence are eliminated not because they are likely to steal but because if they decided to steal from the company they would do so in a way that might not be as easily detected.

Of course it is discrimination. Your job is to discriminate.

I probably would have reacted similarly. I don't work well with arrogant people in general, and the only times I've really not worked well with others was times when the person was more arrogant than their knowledge or experience should have allowed for.

That they were a Mensa member on a resume wouldn't have turned me off... explaining what it was explicitly would definitely do so.

I find it entirely appropriate that recruiting managers wear their biases on their sleeves, in this manner. As representatives of the organization, you put its core values and culture at the forefront. You represent what the owners are really all about. It is important for those with the ability and inclination to be part of "an association for superior IQ people" to not be placed in an unsuitable role, at an unsuitable company, given their rarity. Better for all involved, I would say.

Did you mean to write “promiscuously” explained?

It's not discrimination on multiple levels. Firstly IQ in general is not a protected category; and high-IQ certainly isn't. There might be good reason to assume that an intelligent person might be a poor fit for many jobs (insert joke here).

Furthermore, what you were turned away was how that person presented themselves, and not their actual IQ. Including Mensa membership and framing it in those terms shows poor judgement.

> IQ in general is not a protected category

On the other hand, IQ was one of the direct methods of discrimination used in the flagship case establishing the doctrine of adverse impact discrimination (leading to a popular myth that IQ discrimination is itself entirely illegal), and the cases where IQ discrimination (high or low) in employment has been found to not be illegal have invariably involved the employer presenting the kind of business necessity evidence needed to overcome the presumption of adverse impact discrimination that occurs when discrimination has a negative differential impact on a protected class without direct targeting, so discrimination based on IQ (or, for the same reason, factors indirectly associated with IQ that don't happen to completely negate the negative differential impact without transferring it to a different protected class) isn't generally legally safe even though it isn't directly prohibited.

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