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If someone bombs the work product example or the case study… believe it!! Do not hire them! Speaking from painful experience of having a candidate bomb the case study and then hiring them anyway

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Jun 3, 2021Liked by Ben Kettle

Appreciate the reference link! Nice meta-analysis and kudos to those r^2 :-)

My first employer took the time to make a "work sample test" as part of my interview: a 3-day data analysis and modeling project that is reflective of the kind of work I'd actually do. Since then I've tried to replicate the approach from the other side of the table, but ran into problems with time constraint and proprietary data. The next best method would be to look into candidate's online portfolios and/or presentation of past projects.

For the "general cognitive test", there are caveats re: biases with respect to the cultural context of how the test was constructed. https://theconversation.com/the-iq-test-wars-why-screening-for-intelligence-is-still-so-controversial-81428#:~:text=According%20to%20some%20researchers%2C%20the,problematic%20in%20culturally%20diverse%20settings. A more focused version could be useful to test a fresh graduate's subject-specific knowledge, making it resemble more closely to the "work sample test". There are also more debates about how much this kind of tests is useful for more experienced workers, for example, all college computer science classes teach recursion but real-life software engineering rarely needs recursion...

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Sharon, LOL sometimes I include things that I know will appeal to a smaller subset.

I knew that "General Cognitive Test" are really hard and controversial. but even I have been surprised at how many people have messaged me offline about how terrible they think they are. That will be a fun post to write and thank you for the link!

Work Samples are also a bit hard for the reasons you mentioned. Additionally they can also perpetuate bias. That said, I believe that there are easier ways to implement Work Sample Test that are practical, fair, and less time consuming.

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Look forward to your post on Work Sample Test! And yes, if something is meant to appeal to everyone, most people will find it boring 😆

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Jun 4, 2021Liked by Ben Kettle

(Unless it's a feature film by certain makers, etc. )

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I love that you included a link to the academic paper. I’m a sucker for a good academic paper.

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More of that coming your way!

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