Are You As Smart As A Hiring Manager? Don't Take It Personal If You're Not

Cognitive Computing

Have you applied for a position online and received this confirmation; "Congratulations, your application has been reviewed and you've been identified as a potential candidate to move to the next step in the process"? Then, you receive an email with a link to an assessment, which tells the hiring manager (presumably) about your Predictive Index, or, PI, as it's known. Sound familiar? There are several companies that administer tests that gauge character and cognitive traits, but, PI is one of the more common ones, so, I mention them.

https://www.predictiveindex.com/cognitive

Math is pretty important for most jobs I've had and if I'm hiring someone, I'd like to know they have some complex Math skills and an ability to think on the fly. Fair enough.

Well, PI has a timed assessment where you have to answer some 50 random questions about patterns, shapes, words and numbers, all in 12 minutes (see examples)! Now, they do tell you on the real test, most people do not complete all 50 questions and that answering all questions correctly is not expected, but, if you're like me, just knowing there are 50 questions and only 12 minutes messes with my brain before I even start (that's probably the intent by the PI folks).

https://www.predictiveindex.com/cognitive

For the record, I took the sample test on their website which consited of 20 questions in 5 minutes (self-timed) and scored 17/20 (sadly, it marked me wrong for choosing "ambiguous" when asked what the opposite of "conclusive" is. My other three choices were "positive", "finite" and "unusual". So, I technically scored a 90% as opposed to the 85% because they had a wrong answer (go figure). You can take the sample PI test here.

So, what do the results mean? Well, if you actually were able to read the results form a real PI assessment, you'd have an idea. But, since you're not going to see how you scored, you have no clue because the employer is not going to share those results with you. Besides, the score that the test spits out will only be used against a matrix in which the employer created the acceptable range. So, while I scored an 85% (read 90%), if the range is 92 or higher as being a perfect fit for the job, the hiring manager may pass me over since I didn't land in the pre-set range.

And, that's my point here. The acceptable range is whatever the employer sets as a benchmark for a specific role. And, then, they're relying on PI's science to tell them what the results mean. PI claims "when used correctly, the PI Learning Indicator is a powerful and legally defensible assessment for guiding high quality talent decision-making." Obviously, they feel pretty confident their system is up to the task, when used correctly.

Long are the days of filling out a paper applications and face-to-face interviews. Now, almost the entire process is web based. I hear of people who never even see another human for the entire process (excpet for Skype) until they start their new job. But, hey, it's 2018, and, if you can get a Ph.D online, shouldn't you be expected to find a job the same way?