Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion IQ phobia

Organizations that are selecting for high IQ often pretend they are not. Is there a difference between "general cognitive ability" and IQ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html
How to Get a Job at Google
by Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times
FEB. 22, 2014

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — LAST June, in an interview with Adam Bryant of The Times, Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google — i.e., the guy in charge of hiring for one of the world’s most successful companies — noted that Google had determined that “G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don’t predict anything.” He also noted that the “proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time” — now as high as 14 percent on some teams. At a time when many people are asking, “How’s my kid gonna get a job?” I thought it would be useful to visit Google and hear how Bock would answer.

Don’t get him wrong, Bock begins, “Good grades certainly don’t hurt.” Many jobs at Google require math, computing and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more.

“There are five hiring attributes we have across the company,” explained Bock. “If it’s a technical role, we assess your coding ability, and half the roles in the company are technical roles. For every job, though, the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information. We assess that using structured behavioral interviews that we validate to make sure they’re predictive.”

This is interesting. I remember when interviewing with a famed management counslting firm in late 90s and there was a lot of brain teaser types of questions. I thought that was outdated. I wonder what this kind of structured behavioral interviews look like.

When I read the subject line, I anticipated the thread would be about test fatigue. I was intrigued.

This is even better. Great article. Real-life stuff: What can a person do with whatever level of formal education and life-learning they have amassed?

This brought to mind a website I recently came across after reading another discussion thread... a web search for "Writing Sample Readability Analyzer" shows an interesting tool and includes an "About Me" page... the website author is a Google employee. I found the tool provided worked consistently and well... also found a number of typographical or spelling errors. How might this relate to the article shared in this thread? Some might say the employee's website shows a focus on the essentials, without perfectionistic tendencies.

While some readers may hop into comparative/competitive mode and know they could create a better website, there is something to be said for meeting deadlines and keeping life in balance despite one's mistakes. We'd all rather be known for our positive contributions than our foibles. This is what we advocate for, in terms of challenging/supportive academic learning environments for our kiddos. We don't want formal education, test-preps, and grade-chasing to disrupt abilities to process on the fly and pull together disparate elements.

Thank you for posting a thought-provoking article.

I think that IQ is a way to get at that same something that Google is apparently interested in.

We've talked a lot here about the hallmark of HG+-- it's not WHAT they learn, or when.

It's how FAST, in most cases. It's the number one problem in school fit, once you take away quite basic (stupidly basic, really) barriers like AR reading restrictions and getting "perfect" scores to "show mastery" of math concepts.

Most HG+ kiddos can go through all of K-12 in about 4-6 years, all other things being equal. They don't need the repetition, they don't need a lot of hand-holding and drill. They are learning machines.

IQ is an attempt to measure THAT quality. That's my guess.

Taken altogether, it looks like Google is more interested in personality than ability, and in ability more than experience.

I had to laugh at myself on this bit, because it is SO me:

It's things I've interviewed for that show up in conversations. It's intellectual curiosity. It's flexible heuristic development, passion to learn, etc. IQ can be a light proxy for some of this, and as per the article grades are an even lighter proxy. Degress at least represent some incoming body of knowledge (if they can put it to use.)

This shows on IQ tests with the processing speed or working memory disconnect often shown for gifted. The more aptitudinal processing speed shows in leaps in thought with the dull and obvious bits swept under. It's not showing your work. Working memory is more interesting about how much of a puzzle can you hold in your head, how well you prop it together to hold even more.

An easy interview trick is to use a jargony acronym that you are highly confident the candidate doesn't know. Do they ask about it? Mention an interesting problem in passing, do they scoot forward in their seat, can you see them itching to want to solve it?

At first I confused it with this article that I saw yesterday by a friend who works at google. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/b...e-such-a-big-deal.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

I haven't read the above article yet, but I went to a conference last year where I got to meet with a HR Rep from google to try and get an inside into how to get a job there. And I must say I was intimidated by what one needed to do to just LAND the interview. (I'm a programmer with 15 yrs experience but have been out of the job market for 10.)

I like the article's take on leadership... traditional leadership... emergent leadership. It reminded me of this recent discussion thread on How to get noticed by college admission officers .

I would not get too focused on Google. I predict the technology will be moving at this continual fast speed and by the time our children are the age of the average Google employee, that little empty box on the screen for the search engine is going to seem so rudimentary (check out Bing for awesome pix and info. each day, just as an example). I have always observed the dynamics in a large metropolitan area and traced the feeder schools (public, parochial, private and now there are charter, cyber, etc.) and the tracks people take to their various universities and careers and I think that IQ holds up as a measure scientifically meaning that you can see the pattern genetically and trace it consistently from early childhood through adulthood. Remember, the gifted people are the Jobs, Dell and Gates of the world. The Google article might be talking about their employees. Think of a pyramid, when they say that it is lonely at the top that is because there are few people there. In terms of wealth, they speak of the top 1%. You know the name Warren Buffet but we probably cannot think of the name of his top Chief Financial Officer. Every time a professor says they are teaching to the top 5%, they literally mean that they are not teaching to the level of 95% of the class (think of the tuition those students may be paying). Nobody I know thinks that every person who works at Google is at the highest level, because they would leave and start their own company. You can see the pattern. That is why Jobs and Gates had to have separate companies. Hope that helps.

I forgot to add that the field of journalism is in a huge state of flux right now, so take what the journalists are writing with a dose of really healthy scrutiny.