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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Plenty of companies administer IQ tests. The reason everyone doesn't is that it doesn't work well.

Nothing works well but IQ tests predict job performance better than anything else.

Do you have a citation?

Schmidt et al., 2016 The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 100 Years of Research Findings

Also, an explanation for why more companies aren't doing them given their effectiveness? They're extremely easy to administer.

Possibly legal and reputational risks, considering some groups do badly on IQ tests.

No, this is a message board canard. IQ tests are used at a variety of large companies with deep pockets for discrimination settlements. If there were real legal risks, that wouldn't be the case.

There are real risks for companies without deep pockets (for settlements or public relations). People I know, responsible for hiring, have told me they won't use IQ tests because of how it would come across, so the concern at least exists but how widespread is the question.

Your citation addresses it. Less than 1% of employment lawsuits are about selection criteria and employers win over 90% of them. They suggest GMA tests are _more_ defensible than other approaches.

The most interesting thing in that paper is that years of experience performed so poorly. It’s in the lowest cohort. Worse than “interests” or more general “biographical data”.

There is still the reputational risk of using selection methods with widely known disparate outcomes. Other methods also have disparate outcomes, but most of the criticism is directed at IQ tests. I've heard "IQ tests are culturally biased" but never "work sample tests are culturally biased", and I'll guess that's the experience of most hiring managers too.

Have you ever heard or read a newspaper article, or can you cite an actual example of any company actually suffering reputation harm for administering iq tests? Your citation suggests candidates view GMA tests _favorably_.

Most hiring managers believe experience matters in hiring as well, perhaps that’s the belief that keeps them from using iq tests.

For what it’s worth, IQ tests are biased (see duyme’ adoptive studies for a drastic economic impact). That largely is orthogonal to if they are predictive in the ways your citation outlines.

Somehow these reputational risks accrue to the median hiring company, but not to the global brands like PepsiCo and Proctor & Gamble that do GMA testing already. I maintain: this is a message board trope.

Surely you can understand that the hiring needs and reputational risk of a tech startup and Pepsi are different?

Can you cite Pepsi suffering any reputational risk based on the practice?

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