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October 30, 2003
Thursday, October 30, 2003. Job
Thursday, October 30, 2003. Job Applicants Submitting SAT Scores Is Dead Wrong.A story in the Tuesday, October 28, Wall Street Journal with the headline "More Employers Ask Job Seekers For SAT Scores" really pissed me off. Not the story, which was well written by reporter Kemba J. Dunham in the typical humanizing Wall Street Journal style. Dunham told the story of Donna Chan, a 23-year-old Wagner College graduate who, "Since Ms. Chan started looking for an entry-level job in financial services more than a year ago, she has repeatedly stumbled over a common requirement for many of these positions: a combined SAT score of at least 1300 out of a maximum of 1600." The story goes on to tell about Ms. Chan's SAT scores and her 3.9 grade-point average and her difficulty in finding a job with a less than 1300 SAT score.
Dunham goes on to write, "A number of ads placed by recruiters and staffing firms set clear SAT goals. Consider this recent ad on HotJobs.com for an entry-level, investment banking position: 'Minimum expectations include and overall score of 1350 on the SAT's...You will be required to provide official scores and transcripts, so please do not respond if you do not meet the aforementioned requirements.'"
Purely coincidentally, I received the following e-mail on 10/29 from a colleague of mine at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where I hold an endowed chair and teach online courses: "The graduate faculty senate is currently considering a proposal that would allow schools to determine whether entering graduate students would be required to take the GRE. Currently, all grad students are required to take this test; it is a campus-wide requirement, first instituted campus-wide in 1969.
Several programs, for example music, have indicated that the test is of little to no help to them in deciding who to admit. Others, like business, rely more heavily on tests that focus specifically on that discipline.
Current evidence indicates that the GRE has many of the same problems as the SAT--in other words, results appear to be biased against women and people of color. Suzanne Ortega sits on the national GRE board and can provide more information on this portion of the debate."
When I was on the Graduate Admissions Committee of the Journalism School, we did a study that covered many years and found that there was absolutely no correlation between GRE scores and performance (grades) and success in the rigorous and selective Journalism School graduate program. Some selective colleges, including some Ivy League colleges, have recently announced that they would no longer require SAT or ACT scores. If students take these tests, then they could include their scores, but the scores would not necessarily be looked at or considered. Obviously, these colleges had discovered what we at the Journalism School had discovered, that GRE and SAT scores meant little and were clearly discriminatory against minorities and women.
I'm not exactly sure why the SATs and GREs discriminate against women--maybe it's the math section of the test--because I know for absolute certainty that women, in general, are much smarter than men, especially in the area of emotional intelligence, which Daniel Goleman in his brilliant books Emotional Intelligence, Working With Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership claims accounts for about 80 percent of success in business. People smarts is what counts in business, not test smarts.
I think what is happening is that HR Departments and HR professionals, who have taken over the function of recruiting and hiring in many companies are pulling the standard HR trick of covering their asses. They recruit people and advise on hiring people based on not making a mistake rather than on hiring based on strengths. If someone doesn't work out, they can always say, "It's not our fault, we required 1300 SAT scores." If you have ever dealt with bureaucratic HR departments, you know that nothing is ever their fault. Some companies are even stupid enough to let the HR people do the actual hiring. Next thing you know, they'll be running the company. But in a sense they are running companies' futures by their restrictive, exclusionary, and moronic recruiting practices at a time when most companies pontificate about the importance of diversity and of promoting women.
Any company that says it wants diversity and to give equal opportunities to women and that requires applicants to submit SAT scores is hypocritical at best and probably mendacious. Such companies are passing up potential superstars like Bob Pittman who never went to college and, therefore, didn't take the SATs. If you did an analysis of superstar business people, artists, teachers, politicians, and clergy who didn't go to college or had less than 1300 on their SATs, it would probably look like a Vanity Fair cover of the nation's elite success stories (if they could get a picture of 100,000 people on the cover).
The only thing the IQ tests, SATs, and GREs test is a person's ability to take those tests. The tests don't measure intelligence, emotional intelligence, or, most important, motivation. There is no adequate paper-and-pencil test for motivation. The best way to assess intelligence, emotional intelligence, and motivation, is in a personal interview conducted by an experienced interviewer. And by an experienced interviewer, I mean someone who is an expert in the field (the hiring supervisor, not HR), who has conducted hundreds of interviews, and has seen the on-the-job performance of those interviewed and hired. If you are interested in learning more about how to interview people, go to my Web site, in "Papers by Charles Warner" link, and read the "Hiring Workbook" and view the presentation "How to Hire the Best People."
Finally, if you work for a company that requires SAT scores from job applicants, point out their hypocrisy. If you're looking for a job in a company that requires them, punish that company by not applying--it doesn't deserve you.
Posted by Charles Warner at October 30, 2003 10:57 AM