I do a lot of recruiting and interviewing of mid-level and senior candidates. By the time someone’s been out of school for several years, if they’re truly outstanding they’ve usually established a reputation for excellence in their industry. They certainly should have a record of accomplishment.
Honestly, it would never occur to me to ask a CEO candidate for their SAT scores. I really think most senior people would be disturbed (or even insulted) by the superficiality of the question and would begin to wonder if they wanted to join a place that factored SAT scores into the hiring decision. How many SAT points does having built a $500 million business translate into? Gotta be at least 3000 out of 2400
al - it wouldn’t just take a CEO candidate to be insulted, if I were a junior level person with strong accomplishment for 2-3 yrs, I’d question that organization’s values as well…
To be fair, I think some of us are having a hard time believing that this stuff is really true in Canada either.
I’m not saying that standardized testing scores are useless. However, this is the first time that I have ever even heard of the SAT/ACT being used for post-college admissions before. I don’t think it’s a best practice anywhere in their world. It might be used by three or four companies but I don’t think it’s a standard even in Canada.
(I realize that testing of this nature will become more and more popular over the years as people become eager to forfeit more and more of their judgment and critical thinking skills to numbers. But even so, I don’t think that companies who do this have any real advantage over companies that prize professional achievements, interpersonal skills, and technical/industry knowledge.)
Considering that Canadian universities do not require the SAT for admissions for their domestic applicants (due to much greater standardization of courses and curricula in high schools), it is hard to believe that use of SAT scores for employment is any more common in Canada than in the US.
It’s never appeared to be a US vs Canada thing for me, it’s been the difference b/w the rest of the world and a tiny microcosm of “elite” organizations such as Bain, BCG and McKinsey that can’t seem to get over how well they all did on SATs so they still use them as a recruiting tool post-college to continue comparing themselves. It’s not enough that they also happen to be high achieving graduates of the nation’s elite universities (because those are the only places they recruit), but for some reason they leave SATs in the mix as an indicator of intellect. I mean obviously they need to find other measures for their recruits who are Phi Beta Kappa at HYPS-type schools because that alone is not enough of an indicator of intellect or ability, they need to cross reference that against their HS SAT scores!!
You miss my point completely. Universities with large math and physics faculties are almost by definition large and academically strong. I think you are much more likely to find your best candidates there than in institutions where the undergrad college is small and where as much as 60% of students have hooks. I am not suggesting that you must hire physics majors for the advertising department. That is silly.
If you are a consumer of popular media, you will find that when the topic is cognitive ability, disinformation abounds. Often the view expressed is diametrically opposite to empirical evidence we already have. Any institution wise enough not to be taken in by popular opinion, however popular, is astute, in my definition.
I wouldn’t either. I would, however, like to see them tested on psychopathy. Remember Al Dunlap? There must be a lot of people not doing their job for him to get that far and to do that much damage. Mr. “chainsaw” was not an isolated case, as far as I can tell.
FYI: Where I live, we don’t do SAT. Our schools admit pretty much by the numbers, and try to keep average grades in large classes around a C to C+. Your grades, in short, depend a lot on the quality of your classmates.
Our employers generally know about the reputation of the different schools, but are unlikely to know about the quality of individual programs. So, I think an exit exam would be helpful here as well.
Canuck, banks love to recruit at Swarthmore and Wellesley, two colleges whose math and physics departments are greatly dwarfed by virtually any state college/university. Your logic about using the size of the math and physics department as a proxy for the quality of the other students seems fallacious. And many strong math/physics schools (some state flagships) actually have thousands of students majoring in subjects with weak academic standards and a “lowest common denominator” attitude intellectually.
Canuck, I suspect Canadian employers know much more about the quality of individual programs than you think. My experience hiring actuaries was brief - but I was expected to get up to speed on the five top actuarial departments in the US within two weeks when I was given responsibility for that area. None of the five were U’s where I’d ever led a recruiting effort. I ran a recruiting initiative for corporate lawyers in Eastern Europe at one point- had to brief management on the top 20 law schools in Europe, what constituted “honors” (equivalent of the US Order of the Coif or law review), what the credentialing looked like for patent/IP vs. M&A vs. litigation, how many years of practice in Poland would be required at a firm for an Associate to be considered for partner, etc.
I can’t imagine that the folks who lead recruiting initiatives in Canada show up at a university without bothering to validate the quality of the programs from which they hire. This seems like a stretch to me. Recruiting is expensive- do you really think that large Canadian corporations don’t know where they are sending their people?
You’ve previously mentioned SAT scores should be among the most important hiring criteria and more important than major, yet colleges with the most math and physics majors are often not the ones where students tend to have the highest SAT scores. For example, according to IPEDS, Penn State is one of the two colleges that are top 4 for both the largest numbers of bachelor’s degrees granted in math and the largest number of bachelor’s degrees in physical sciences, so it should be near the top of your recruiting list. While Penn State is a great college that is popular with employer recruiters, their 25th/75th percentile summed SAT score are ~1600/~1900… not what most on CC would call high.
Laszlo Bock Sr. VP of People Operations at Google speaking at the Commonwealth Club of CA. To hear the broadcast click on audio link on top right of page. He talks quite a bit about the hiring process (beginning about 30 minutes in.)
That was just an idea and I don’t mind being wrong. To maximize efficiency, would you not still go to one of America’s great state universities where you can pick up accounting majors who can speak X language and fine art majors who are intimately familiar with Y culture in one single trip? This is the other “size” part of my equation.
While I understand that your average business school grad is not that sharp, this can not be true for those graduating from Penn, Berkeley, Indiana and the like. Is there any reason you don’t want to hire those?
You are right. The large recruiters most definitely do. As I said in an earlier post, I was looking at this from the perspective of a small employer. I don’t think many of them are that aware of specific programs.
Anyone hiring on the basis of opinion and not empirical evidence is not astute.
Btw, I was thinking of using tests like the GRE general as a college exit exam. They are good tests of cognitive ability. If they can be made more difficult, it would be ideal. Employers who are looking for specific technical expertise can test for that separately, and I think many do.
Penn State, in fact, is a top pick for recruiters: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060
You have not fully digested the “size” part of my equation. The beauty of a large school is that you can find just about everything there in one trip. There is no reason why a recruiter can not focus his hiring on only the top 10% of the graduating class, is there?
I suspect “loyalty” and “reasonable” salary expectations are some of the benefits of hiring grads from state schools; the risk/reward calculus usually plays a role there somewhere.
I can figure out if people are bright by interviewing them. Do you actually ever talk to people or do you just assemble numbers? School attended, major, grades are merely supporting materials to the interview. I care not if someone has a 2400 and a 4.0 from Harvard if he doesn’t impress me at an interview.
"The beauty of a large school is that you can find just about everything there in one trip. "
Yes - and many companies do that. I don’t know what you’re trying to address or what problem you’re trying to solve. First you’re enamored with how McKinsey / BCG recruit and now you’re telling us that big state schools are good sources which people already know.
“Canuck, banks love to recruit at Swarthmore and Wellesley, two colleges whose math and physics departments are greatly dwarfed by virtually any state college/university. Your logic about using the size of the math and physics department as a proxy for the quality of the other students seems fallacious.”
Absolutely.
It seems that you WANT, for whatever reason, recruiters to recruit using criteria that you personally find important. Because you can’t think any way but in numbers, you want them to do it too.
I think you have a very, very high opinion of yourself.
I don’t see any contradiction, do you? Furthermore, the firms studied by Rivera clearly don’t think the big state schools are a good source at all.
As long as we are governed more by our biases, emotions, and egos than by reason, empirical evidence, “numbers” if you will, is the best way to minimize the impact of our human foibles.
You obviously have not read the Harvard Business Review or the Tetlock article I posted earlier.
Here is a Tetlock passage I find particularly delicious:
“In one study, college counsellors were given information about a group of high-school students and asked to predict their freshman grades in college. The counsellors had access to test scores, grades, the results of personality and vocational tests, and personal statements from the students, whom they were also permitted to interview. Predictions that were produced by a formula using just test scores and grades were more accurate.”
I prefer to allow empirical evidence to inform my beliefs, you apparently don’t.
Fastidious in analysis, and cautious in diction… remember?
I feel we’re being baited. We know business is not entirely a machine operating in a vacuum. The very nature of the recent argument proves why interactive skills matter. It’s not all about stats, theory, some study. The “whole” has to function.
