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Eric Eden, vice president of marketing at Cvent, an online event management business, said the company had to know if a candidate was capable of learning its software in detail. Because its system is proprietary, there’s no objective measure candidates can earn, like an Excel certification. So it makes sense for Cvent to turn to the SAT, which measures what psychologists call “g,” or general mental ability — how well a person might respond to an unspecified challenge. In this age of rapidly changing technology and constantly upgraded skills, “g” may be a better predictor of success than expertise in a specific software package.

“Employers used to consider educational aptitude tests as having nothing to do with the real world, but some may have read enough to know that they’re very highly correlated with job performance,” said Frank Schmidt, an expert on employment testing. Mr. Schmidt acknowledged what some colleges have found: Achievement tests, which measure specific subject mastery, are better predictors than aptitude tests, which measure innate ability. But he said the difference was not large enough for employers to develop their own job-specific tests.