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Comment by jcoder | Hacker News Reader

I was in agreement with most of the article, but the final footnote came out of left field for me:

  7. I have a bunch of ideas around testing how quickly and how accurately people can type, or accurately transcribe text from a second screen, that I think could be decent predictors of job performance but I'm not sure are fair to test out in a professional context without academic research that could validate them at least a little bit.

Can anyone explain how including such a thing in an interview is relevant at all?

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This would be highly effective at filtering out people with physical disabilities that affect typing. For example, I have chronic issues with my joints. On my personal computer I use an ergonomic keyboard (Advantage2) which has keys in weird positions. My typing speed on this keyboard is much lower than it was earlier when I used a normal keyboard. Nowadays when I use a normal keyboard, my typing speed is also slow because I am used to typing on the ergonomic keyboard, not on a normal keyboard.

Attention to detail and recall, mainly, but again I don’t think you can justify screening for it at all without additional academic research.

Maybe the accuracy of the final work product would be a fine filter for attention to detail, but as a sibling comment points out, “quick and accurate” transcription is likely to just discriminate against otherwise fine candidates.

I assume the author thinks that would be a good proxy for some hard-to-measure quality, and is not actually aiming to hire the best typists because of their typing skills.

As for what that quality is, I don't see any hints there. It could be anything from general tech-mindedness to even basic diligence or who knows what.

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