18th
Mismatch Problem
This post sparked via two seperate Kottke posts about mismatched persons to jobs. Short story is that it’s really difficult to place people in complex jobs based on rigid criteria.
I consider myself quite a good little programmer but I would have no idea how to hire a coworker. What would I ask? How would I know if this person is bullshitting? Scary still is whether or not in the future I miss an oppurtunity based on someone else’s ability not to sufficiently do these things.
My bosses’ first question after any interview is, “Well, what do you think?” My canned response is, “Dunno, get them in here, if they fuck up, fire them.” Luckily you can still do that here! Imagine situations like they have in France where you can’t get rid of someone for almost any reason.
Anyway, here’s the posts directly ripped of his site…
Picking a subject from his upcoming book, Malcolm Gladwell talked about the difficulty in hiring people in the increasingly complex thought-based contemporary workplace. Specifically that we’re using a collection of antiquated tools to evaluate potential employees, creating what he calls “mismatch problems” in the workplace, when the critera for evaluating job candidates is out of step with the demands of the job.
To illustrate his point, Gladwell talked about sports combines, events that professional sports leagues hold for scouts to evaluate potential draftees based on a battery of physical, psychological, and intelligence tests. What he found, a result that echoes what Michael Lewis talks about in Moneyball, is that sports combines are a poor way to determine how well an athlete will eventually perform as a member of their eventual team. One striking example he gave is the intelligence test they give to NFL quarterbacks. Two of the test’s all-time worst performers were Dan Marino and Terry Bradshaw, Hall of Famers both.
A more material example is teachers. Gladwell says that while we evaluate teachers on the basis of high standardized test scores and whether they have degrees and credentialed training, that makes little difference in how well people actually teach.
…and then today…
Ben Fry analyzes the data from an intelligence test administered to all incoming NFL players and displays the results by position. Offensive players do better than defensive players on the test, although running backs score the lowest (wide receivers and cornerbacks also don’t do well). As Michael Lewis suggested in The Blind Side, offensive tackles are the smartest players on the field, followed by the centers and then the quarterbacks.
Malcolm Gladwell talked about the Wonderlic test at the New Yorker Conference and judged it a poor indicator of future performance.
