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Pre-Employment Skill Set and Aptitude Tests?
stumbler asks: "I just had a lengthy conversation with my boss and co-workers about the value of giving skill set tests (programming ability) and aptitude tests (like reasoning or logical ability) to technical employees before they are hired. (We currently have no such tests.) For those that work in companies that require pre-employment tests, have you seen an impact in the quality of technical employees hired?"
They hired me. Which means the skill set tests don't have value! Any standard test can be gamed.
and you run a math teachers office right?
to most of us that type of stuff isn't very useful.. sure alot of us have done it at some stage (high school) but what bearing does asking such questions actually have on how well i can do my totally unrelated work...
if perhaps you were asking simple algorithmic questions... maybe boolean algebra simplification then i could see some benefit..
groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
Before we can hire you to write UI widgets in Java, please derive the quadratic theorem. NOT! For some jobs this makes sense. For others it's nothing more than a thinly veiled elitism.
I was taught how to derive the quadratic theorem in my freshman year in high school. Unfortunately, it was only a one hour lecture, and the knowledge was never, ever used again in the subsequent twenty five years. I don't think I could pass your test. But fortunately, I don't have any bosses stupid enough to make it a job requirement.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Interview problem solving often has something in common with Adventure style games: Guessing what the author was thinking is more effective then solving the problem.
When was the last time you solved a real-world problem in a few minutes with someone looking over your shoulder who already knew the "correct" answer?
There is no reliable algorithm or heuristic for hiring the best people, but some companies are comforted by introducing pseudo-rigor into the process.
I'm a sysadmin by trade, and I think a nice way to do it would be to give them a broken system to diagnose and fix. Hardware or software. Whatever you have that needs fixed. It shows you how they handle the type of stuff you need handled. And, if you have enough applicants, you never have to hire anyone! Just have them fix your stuff for free! ;)
Gosh.. I finished a physics master's degree less than 2 years ago and I had no memory of how to do it. Scary, but understandable. Solving the quadratic equation is one of those proofs that is simple but has a "trick" that you have to remember. Unless you use that trick in your day-to-day work (which, as a software engineer, I obviously don't), you're not going to remember it any other way than by having seen the solution recently.
Pretty stupid test for an interview. I'm top performer in my current team despite being the most junior. The project would probably have failed if I hadn't been there. I wouldn't have remembered the solution, though.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
If you would do that to me I would not consider taking employment with you.
To me it would look like you are disorganized and frankly could not care to work with a company with such messy outlook.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Give them a wrong address for the company. Nothing too misleading , such as a different town, just be a few streets out."
It cuts both ways though. If I was applying to a company that hired people incapable of giving the correct address, I'd think twice. Likewise, if a company deliberately misled me as part of the interview process, it would be harder to believe anything else they said.
And the most you've done is prescreened people who can use Mapquest. Whoop-DEE-doo.
"For fun, give them some paperwork to fill out at the end of the interview and say "I just have to duck out and check on something - back in a tick". Leave and time how long it takes for them to wander out of the office in search of someone... 15 minutes to half an hour's a pretty good baseline."
Most of the interviews I've been to have had a specified time limit (or have been happy to tell me when asked). A lot of people don't have time to waste on interviews: they're either taking time away from their current job, or have the day off. Why waste their time "for fun"? Wasting 15-30 minutes of interview time is stupid when you could be doing something productive (like talking to them).