Comments on hiring practices

Here’s a story about how Leprino Foods (which sounds like some kind of food distribution company that hires a lot of low-prole type of workers to move stuff aound the warehouse, load trucks, and that sort of thing) paid a $500,000 fine and had other sanctions for using an ability test to hire workers (thanks to Gucci Little Piggy for finding this link).

First of all, let’s point out that the reason why companies can’t do this is not because of the Constitution, but because of statutes passed by Congress, statutes that Republicans themselves collaborated on, unfortunately.

The next important point is that when companies get in trouble for discriminatory hiring based on objective tests, it’s nearly always about giving tests to blue-collar workers. I’ve never heard of a company losing a lawsuit like this because they used a computer-programming test to hire computer programmers, or something like that. (In fact, quizzing job applicants on computer-programming trivia is the norm when hiring those types of workers.) The belief of the liberals who control the Department of Labor is that ability to do well on written tests has nothing to do with being a blue-collar worker, but there is more leeway granted to hiring white-collar workers.

The DoL of course, is 100% wrong. There is a pretty good correlation between ability tests and any type of job. Anti-test people will argue that work ethic is more important than score on a test, but the reality is that there is a very powerful correlation between higher IQ and other good behaviors such as showing up to work on time, and doing what the boss tells you to do.

Any hiring practice that gets you better workers than just random choice is going to discriminate against NAMs, and especially against blacks, but there are many types of hiring practices that no one ever gets sued for, most notably:

Criminal background checks
Drug tests
Educational credentials

There are also a lot of companies that look at grades in school as an important evaluative factor, and I never heard of any company getting in trouble for doing that.

I know that there are a lot of people reading my blog who have this false belief that most companies know that they want to hire high IQ people and wish to give IQ tests, and settle for college degrees knowing that it’s the best they are allowed. But the real truth is that most companies are pretty clueless about all of these things, and the HR people at these companies are a bunch of liberals who have the exact same beliefs as the people who work at the DoL. At a major company I am involved with, the hiring managers are very strongly encouraged to hire “diverse” employees and get dinged when they don’t meet these goals. But HR is completely unconcerned if any of the new hires are actually smart. But this company is also a monopoly, so they don’t need to be especially good at what they do to make profit.

I believe that any company which uses scientific hiring practices based on real research and HBD principles has a huge advantage over the other 95% of clueless companies. I think that the early success of companies like Microsoft and Google had a lot to do with this. (But today, I think that Microsoft has gone away from that and now just loads up on a lot of mediocrities from India. Perhaps a reader who works at Microsoft would have some insight on that?)

* * *

Also, very importantly, there’s a very high correlation between IQ and future-time orientation. Which means that even if the higher-IQ person is not inherently conscientious, he is more likely to do what is necessary to not get fired because he’s more likely to care about the negative consequences of getting fired.

Comments

[Black_Rose]

"but the reality is that there is a very powerful correlation between higher IQ and other good behaviors such as showing up to work at time, and doing what the boss tells you to do. "

I do not think there is any correlation between g and conscientiousness, or maybe the correlation declines on the right-half of the Gaussian distribution.

[Peter A]

"the HR people at these companies are a bunch of liberals who have the exact same beliefs as the people who work at the DoL"

Exactly right.

[JP Law]

I'm rather conscientious and very high g.

I'm going with HS on this one.

[Black Death]

In Griggs vs Duke Power, the Supreme Court ruled:

As such, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment tests (when used as a decisive factor in employment decisions) that are not a "reasonable measure of job performance," regardless of the absence of actual intent to discriminate. Since the aptitude tests involved, and the high school diploma requirement, were broad-based and not directly related to the jobs performed, Duke Power's employee transfer procedure was found by the Court to be in violation of the Act.

....

This opinion was written by Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger, a Republican appointed to the Court by Richard Nixon. Seems like deja vu all over again.

[Eugenick]

Naming your food company ("Leprino") as a diminutive for a diseased person ("Leper", i.e. the person sick from leprosy) is most definitely indicative of low IQ.

Even if Leprino is the actual surname of the boss.

[Steve Johnson]

"I know that there are a lot of people reading my blog who have this false belief that most companies know that they want to hire high IQ people and wish to give IQ tests, and settle for college degrees knowing that it’s the best they are allowed. But the real truth is that most companies are pretty clueless about all of these things, and the HR people at these companies are a bunch of liberals who have the exact same beliefs as the people who work at the DoL."

That's on the surface. The next step is to realize that if it were made legal to hire based on ability testing then some company would start doing it and gain a huge advantage over its competitors who would then be forced to follow suit.

You can believe stupid things all you like if there's no reality check to stop you.

[Black_Rose]

No you don't JP Law...

You admitted you play video games in class; that's low conscientiousness.

Academically I have low conscientiousness, but I am those people who can limit caloric intake to 1200-1600 per day and exercises regularly.

[Dan]

Companies can make the test job related and then it is okay.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricci_v._DeStefano

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of a bunch of white firefighters that did better on a test that was all about firefighting, even though it had a disparate impact.

If you are a large employer, surely you can devise a test that is about knowledge that is related to the job.

I work at a government agency (Patent Office) and you have to take a test on patent law to advance to GS-13.

[DaveinHackensack]

For those kinds of jobs, it's not a bad idea to recruit military veterans with honorable discharges, who left at an appropriate rank for their time in service. That way, you'll end up with workers of above-average intelligence and discipline. Avoid anyone with anything other than an honorable discharge.

[AE]

Fascinating that you should mention Leprino Foods; my father worked there when I was younger before he changed careers. He was a microbiologist at the time. I'm sure they also hire a bunch of people to move their products around, but they also have a giant laboratory around the Denver area.

[anonymous]

I was reading the google autobiography of employee 59 and clearly remember him talking about SAT being a measure of intellectual capacity and GPA is your ability to execute that potential. No wonder google had such a massive advantage in hiring.

Google book quote:
http://books.google.com/books?id=zdlZ2rrcZWEC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=google+employee+59+GPA+and+grades&source=bl&ots=SCONXc_NoU&sig=mqsE1NeVCafwzMS3FpmJWJ2UcY8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YXMRUODgEuWN6AGzw4FY&sqi=2&ved=0CFwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=google%20employee%2059%20GPA%20and%20grades&f=false

[jaakkeli]

"There are also a lot of companies that look at grades in school as an important evaluative factor, and I never heard of any company getting in trouble for doing that."

An uncommonly realized side of this is that in a lot of situations you might get negatively evaluated for having too good grades. And I don't mean that the manager at McDonald's is going to look at your grades and conclude that you're too smart for the job.

When I was younger and still thinking of going into science for a career, I had a professor advice me that I should absolutely not go for perfect grades except in the few courses leading into what I would specialize in. He thought having good grades across the board was a sign of clueless students who don't know what they want to do while good grades in one area and just barely passing marks in others will give an impression of someone who knows he wants to focus on something and who isn't willing to waste time on other stuff.

I doubt most businesses are as cynical about the meaning of grades than university professors, though...

[not too late]

All tests are legal, until they cause disparate impact.

Just as adversity doesn't create character, but reveals it, so tests do not create disparities, they reveal them

[Doug]

The people I know with currently at or with a history at Microsoft are pretty much on the same level as Google people. I think the current Microsoft isn't a lack of raw talent, but a deep institutional and organizational problem. Particularly having to support 20 years of bloated legacy systems and backwards compatibility.

Think of Microsoft today like a Soviet science program. It has some exceptionally talented people, but the institution is fundamentally broken. Hence it produces little to nothing innovative.

[Florida resident]

May be somebody can answer the following unrelated question below.

A person got mark 38 (out of 45) on 2012 Medical College Admission Test (MCAT).

Is it possible to make an estimate of that person's IQ from this information ?

Let me repeat, _estimate_; no way one can make quantitative conclusion; I am not expecting it. So, please, do not try to explain to me, that quantitative conclusion is impossible --- I know it.

Percentiles for 2010 MCAT are presented in Wikipedia. and in assumption of Gaussian distribution, score 38 in 2010 sample, judging by percentiles, yields interval between
+2.3 x SD to +2.6 x SD.
But those are the percentiles with respect to those only, who did both of acts below:
1) took the test, and
2) did not refuse (at the last 5 minutes of the exam) to be graded at all, in fear of bad grade on the record.

So, the median IQ of the sample is not necessarily 100, and probably somewhat higer. By how much ?
No info about standard deviation in the sample.

Respectfully, Florida resident.

[ay]

"When I was younger and still thinking of going into science for a career, I had a professor advice me that I should absolutely not go for perfect grades except in the few courses leading into what I would specialize in. He thought having good grades across the board was a sign of clueless students who don't know what they want to do while good grades in one area and just barely passing marks in others will give an impression of someone who knows he wants to focus on something and who isn't willing to waste time on other stuff."

I second this advice and corroborate it with my own experience in STEM research with top professors. A post on this topic would be useful, because it seems counter-intuitive that "perfect grades" would count against somebody in admissions judged by the most highly accomplished people in the grade-assigning business.

Bad grades can only hurt you, but good grades won't help you. What professors care about is publications. If you publish, they don't care if your grades are weak, because even if you grades suggest that you cannot publish paper, obviously you can publish papers because you did.

In fact, one of the most common traps in graduate school is "doing well in class" which, if you look deep inside yourself, is actually "procrastinating doing research" because you only have so much time and energy during the day which you are spending on classwork and not research. I have never heard of anybody not earning a graduate degree by failing to accomplish the required course work. The barrier to success is always the first author published paper.

[asdf]

Black_Rose,

The studies don't support your POV.

[Black_Rose]

"Also, very importantly, there’s a very high correlation between IQ and future-time orientation. Which means that even if the higher-IQ person is not inherently conscientious, he is more likely to do what is necessary to not get fired because he’s more likely to care about the negative consequences of getting fired"

I would argue that it is not only possible, but logically justifiable for a high-g person to have low "future-time orientation". Some argue that my experience as an undergraduate indicates that I have pathologically low "future-time orientation", but I still adamantly believe that my apathy was a rational response to social circumstances, and merely the result of an innate lack of conscientiousness. A better interpretation was that I let my rational mind acquiesce to my "natural" low-conscientious proclivities. Since I am a far-leftist (Marxist-Leninist), I generally assign culpability to structural macroeconomic flaws (inherent to the neoliberal capitalist political economy) rather than a failure of individual will or agency when I hear anecdotes about one's adversity in this economic climate.

Ironically, some HBDers argue that James Holmes' actions were mostly a consequence of his circumstances (such as living in NAM-infested neighborhood), but blame NAM criminality on their defective NAM genes.

In order to have "future-time orientation" one must believe that their present actions and decisions have significant future consequences, and that through exercising their personal judgment and self-restraint, one can positively influence personal outcomes. This capacity requires the ability to envision one's self as an abstract entity in the future, and then analyzing the possible pathways in order to actualize a beneficial outcome or to avoid a negative outcome. Presumably, that capacity to think abstractly and somewhat accurately about a hypothetical future requires general intelligence; thus, general intelligence is a necessary condition for high future-time orientation.

Again, another necessary condition is the belief in one's efficacy to alter one's beneficially future, which I did not possess as undergraduate, since I did not believe my academic performance at my "bogus" undergraduate institution would impress anyone or that a career track in the biological sciences was alluring. I believe I had no future, and "future-time orientation" academically would not be an asset; it would just an inhibition that preventing me from indulging in extracurricular intellectual pursuits in ethics, political philosophy, and history in the university library.

Half Sigma vindicated this belief by saying a similar college (UCR) was "bogus".

To the contrary, a high-future time orientation can be detrimental, especially if one considers themselves as special and not merely a statistic. For instance, many law school applicants do believe that they have some unique attribute that allows them to outperform students with a similar LSAT/GPA profile both in law school and in careers (despite not being admitted into a top 14). As for myself, I am cognizant of and acknowledge my mediocrity.

http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/05/special-snowflake-syndrome-and-spirit.html (link of special snowflake syndrome in law school applicants)

[Black_Rose]

http://www.psytech.com/Documents/Conscientiousness%20and%20Intelligence%20-%202004.pdf

This study shows that conscientiousness and general intelligence are negatively correlated (although I remember some studies showing a mild positive correlation).

I just consider C and g to be independent traits (since I am too lazy to a meta-analysis of the psychometric literature), while in a selective, academic environment, C and g tend to be negatively correlated.

[HS: Future-time orientation creates the ILLUSION of conscientiousness because people with high future-time orientation behave better. If IQ predicts good job behaviors, that's all that matters.]

[Anonymous]

How are all these (presumably) white male commenters getting federal jobs?

[jtollison78]

@Florida resident

When I see SAT/GRE estimates, people adjust the mean of the test up since the population of test takers is above average. I'd guess the MCAT population is similar to the GRE pop which I believe is about +1SD. But I'm no expert, just my WAG.

[jtollison78]

"To the contrary, a high-future time orientation can be detrimental, especially if one considers themselves as special and not merely a statistic. " -Black Rose

This is interesting. I am very future orientated. I also come from a rural area (2 stop lights; 100 person senior class), which caused me to overestimate my ability or underestimate the competition. So far, the results have been less than spectacular. A little perspective would've done me well I think.

[dearieme]

Minor rewrite, Siggie.

The belief of the WHITE-COLLAR WORKERS who control the Department of Labor is that ability to do well on written tests has nothing to do with being a blue-collar worker, but there is more leeway granted to hiring white-collar workers.

[Tanizaki]

"But the real truth is that most companies are pretty clueless about all of these things, and the HR people at these companies are a bunch of liberals who have the exact same beliefs as the people who work at the DoL."

True. Our firm "info sheet" for potential hires is a fill-in-the-blank form that asks about educational background and the like, and it supplements the resumes I get when I am occasionally asked to interview attorney candidates. There is a blank for LSAT score that is *never* filled in, so I asked HR about it and they said we never ask candidates.

I explained this foolishness to a new hire recently and asked, "what do LSAT scores matter? They aren't relevant." Well, he got an earful from me. (I don't suppose he got out of the 150s)

[ay]

@Black_Rose

Have you ever read "Notes from the Underground"?

[asdf]

Black_Rose,

The correct response to your situation isn't neccessarily to do nothing, but to do things that maximize benefits to mediocrities. HS has made posts before about the kind of fields that are good for mediocrities to get into (accounting, nursing, etc). At least some of these are a lot easier to get into if you start down that path in college.

[thordaddy]

"I believe that any company which uses scientific hiring practices based on real research and HBD principles has a huge advantage over the other 95% of clueless companies."

And because our "highest" collective value is "equality" then that 5% must be "taxed" so as to bring equality to the equation:

95% clueless companies = %5 SUPERIOR companies + GIANT TAX

[ksm]

"Any hiring practice that gets you better workers than just random choice is going to discriminate against NAMs, and especially against blacks..."

This is true. And yet blacks were specifically brought here to work. I've never understood that. They didn't barge in here uninvited, they were brought here as workers. And not by government bureaucrats, but by entrepreneurs. No matter how much I think about it, it doesn't make sense.

[HS: They were brought here as slaves. In fact, if one were superstitious, one might believe that our NAM problem today is cosmic payback for the evil of slavery.]

[RandomMedStudent]

Florida Resident,

I took MCAT in 2008 so I am familiar with the test. It is not a very accurate measure of intelligence, because it tests knowledge of biology, physics, and chemistry in addition to verbal reasoning. Even a super intelligent person would not do well unless he knows the material, except in the verbal section.

My guess is that the physics section is correlated most strongly with quantitative IQ and the verbal reasoning section is a good measure of verbal IQ. The verbal section of MCAT is significantly more difficult than the verbal section of the SAT.

I was not able to find any formal study on the correlation between MCAT and IQ. However, at a pre-med discussion forum, there was an informal poll on SAT score and MCAT. Here's the regression equation that they found (http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=48033&page=3):

MCAT = 15.9 + 0.0134 SAT

38 on the MCAT would correspond to 1649 on the SAT! Of course, the SAT cannot go above 1600, so we can assume that the person who got 38 on the MCAT is very intelligent.

This makes sense because 38 is the top 1.5~0.9 percent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCAT) of MCAT takers, whose average intelligence is already much higher than the general population.

[Black_Rose]

"When I see SAT/GRE estimates, people adjust the mean of the test up since the population of test takers is above average. I'd guess the MCAT population is similar to the GRE pop which I believe is about +1SD. But I'm no expert, just my WAG."

I think one should just add 60-80 points on the GRE verbal and subtract 50 points on the math. The graph shows the GRE math is inflated relative to one's SAT score.

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/sat/sat_gre_math.pdf
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/sat/sat_gre_reading.pdf

There are a lot of education and nursing majors taking the GRE domestically, and those tend to pull the average down. I don't think the mean domestic GRE student is +1SD, more like +.4 SD.

[Black_Rose]

I said before, I don't want to do anything considered "vocational": I rather be slothful loser than a prole.

[Florida resident]

Dear "jtollison78" !
Thank you very much for your considerations re
estimating IQ from MCAT score.
I accept them with gratitude.

Your truly, Florida resident.

[Florida resident]

I am grateful to "jtollison78", to "RandomMedStudent", and to "Black_Rose" for making kind efforts to answer my question.
Thank you, dear friends.

Very much obliged, your F.r.

[Black_Rose]

"[HS: Future-time orientation creates the ILLUSION of conscientiousness because people with high future-time orientation behave better. If IQ predicts good job behaviors, that's all that matters.]"

I understand the distinction between future-time orientation and conscientiousness, although it would seem that conscientiousness contributes to future-time orientation. Intelligence is another facet of future-time orientation as it allows one to envision themselves in an abstract future and see how their present actions affect their future; it appears that the exercise of intelligence merely allows one to evade potentially harmful situations and desist from making decisions with disastrous consequences such as exposure to illicit drugs, consuming copious amounts of alcohol and operating a motor vehicle with diminished competence, being involved in criminal gangs, and premarital (unprotected) intercourse. To me, this is effortless. My decision not to smoke does not reflect any conscientiousness: I simply understand the biological and financial consequences of this addiction, and I do not want to incur them in the future.

This comment from prolemadegood illustrates the role of intelligence in future-time orientation:

"Truly prole average IQ popular white kids end up doing a whole lot of stupid low-time preference stuff around HS graduation / right after that. They've always made poor decisions, but the opportunity to really fuck your life up emerges around that time. These guys and girls end up strung out on drugs, with children out of wedlock, all sorts of criminal offenses, etc. Sometimes they figure it out and head to trade school in their mid-late 20s."

However, conscientiousness is not merely the facile capacity to evade harmful situations, but it includes the ability to persevere and exert effort in order to achieve difficult, long-term goals. Low C/ high g people such as myself, do not like to work and use their intellects studying things that are personally interesting, often with little academic or practical value. (This can also explain Half Sigma's pioneering discovery that verbal intelligence is negatively correlated with earnings when educational attainment is controlled.) I guess low g, low C and high g, low C people find different things fun, and often for the low C people, fun activities often have an element of danger.

[someone]

let me throw this question out there

let's say I'm looking to hire people for various positions in my new business. I want to take advantage of my knowledge of the correlation between IQ and general worker ability (i.e. the bell curve). On the other hand, I don't exactly have the funds to lure Stanford grads away by offering a great salary.

Where would I be able to find high IQ people who would be interested in say, a part-time job (until I have the funds to hire them outright)?

My initial thoughts are MENSA. But are there other groups out there?

Say, for example, I'm looking to hire someone to write grants. I don't have a lot of money to offer the grant writer. MENSA may just have a bored writer who could learn about grant writing and give it a shot. And would require less compensation than a recent ivy league grad. Any other resources out there besides MENSA?

[HS: There are lots of unemployed people in their twenties willing to work cheap.]

[Scarlet Knight]

I'm not superstitious, but we brought the NAM problem on ourselves by bringing them here against their will.

Of course, we could have just sent them all back to Liberia in 1865.

[John]

"When I was younger and still thinking of going into science for a career, I had a professor advice me that I should absolutely not go for perfect grades except in the few courses leading into what I would specialize in. He thought having good grades across the board was a sign of clueless students who don't know what they want to do while good grades in one area and just barely passing marks in others will give an impression of someone who knows he wants to focus on something and who isn't willing to waste time on other stuff."

Interesting advise, but it runs counter to what I've run across. I was talking to a science prof who said that when he is looking at potential grad students, what he really looked for is a high verbal GRE.

Intelligence researchers call it the "worst performance rule": however you do on the worst part of an intelligence test is a better predictor of g than how you do on your best part. You can do well on one part of a test (say the math section) if you have a particular talent for that skill, but to be good at everything, you have to be genuinely smart. I would strongly hesitate to hire a scientist who got D's in English (or a lawyer who got D's in math).

[Bekenstein]

I don't think morality and IQ are positively correlated past a certain threshold.

Intelligent people are more likely to understand that there is no such thing as Hell or Karma, and therefore that there is no risk in breaching law or normally accepted behavior besides being caught by society.

[Camlost]

"Where would I be able to find high IQ people who would be interested in say, a part-time job (until I have the funds to hire them outright)?

My initial thoughts are MENSA. But are there other groups out there? "

Just give your interviewees the Wonderlic test.

The results will give you a strong indication of who has the highest IQ.

[ay]

"Interesting advise, but it runs counter to what I've run across. I was talking to a science prof who said that when he is looking at potential grad students, what he really looked for is a high verbal GRE."

That's probably because the student didn't have publications and everybody aces the math GRE in STEM graduate school. Then the only differentiating score between CVs would be the verbal GRE score.

[tony]

You should look into Epic, the healthcare software company. They heavily test all employees. In fact, even groundscrew and accountants take the programming tests offered to the technical people. There are tons of other tests as well when you actually get hired, to make sure you know the information well enough. What this means is that not only is the company full of bright young people, it's also full of people from the most random majors and interests (though there are tons of engineering students - surprise surprise). It also means that NAMs are nearly non-existent. The company puts a huge focus on having the ability, then provides their employees with the resources to succeed. They are #1 in healthcare software right now, and get a lot of attention for being a crazy company that lives by what the CEO says and doesn't follow conventional business practices. While this may sound awesome, the workload and increased government mandates causing the industry to boom make it an extremely tough environment to work in. A surprising number of employees hate it there, but it pays well for people who have little chance of making as much as quickly in their specific field.

[jtollison78]

"'Interesting advise, but it runs counter to what I've run across. I was talking to a science prof who said that when he is looking at potential grad students, what he really looked for is a high verbal GRE.'

That's probably because the student didn't have publications and everybody aces the math GRE in STEM graduate school. Then the only differentiating score between CVs would be the verbal GRE score." -ay

Yes, the GRE has a bizarrely high verbal ceiling relative to math. 94% of test takers max the math out, but verbal hits 99th% in the low 700's...

I've wondered why. The ceiling is too high to help girls directly.. it selects for jews? politicians? I guess the low math does select against guys and asians.

WHOA, or maybe not? How did I miss the total GRE overhaul last year? Did any quantitative HBDer's cover it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Record_Examinations

Apparently, the verbal ceiling has been lowered (and further compressed at the top) and the math ceiling has been raised. As I remember it, they were planning on redoing the GRE in '05 when they redid the SAT, but decided that'd make it worthless. Now, after years of nu-SAT, I guess a graduate level SAT-I looks good.