TLDR: I agree with you. It is complicated and ambiguous and I wish it was more clear-cut.
Regarding GMA Tests, my loosely held opinion at the moment is that I think there is a big difference between 1) GMA being a valid predictor, and 2) having a practical way to use GMA in a hiring process. All the journal articles seem to point toward #1, but what I really want is #2. I suppose we could simply require that all applicants do a test from Wonderlic/GMAT/SAT, but I’m wary of the legal risks and the biases, two topics about which I lack the knowledge to give any confident recommendations. That is roughly why my advice is “only use these if you have really done your research to make sure it works in your situation.”
I’m still exploring the area, and haven’t yet found anything that gives me confidence, but I’m assuming there has to be solutions that exist other than “just pay Wonderlic to do it.”
reality just is very complicated. But I do think this means that the average hiring manager – or even the average hiring manager who is statistically literate – can’t really get much useful information from these kinds of academic reviews.
I strongly agree with you. I’ll echo a previous idea I wrote about: the gap between this is valid and here are the details of how to implement this seem fairly large. If I was a researcher I assume I’d have mentors and more senior researchers that I could bounce ideas off of, or who could point me in the right direction, but learning about these topics as an individual without that kind of structure is strange: I mostly just search on Google Scholar and use forums to ask more experienced people.
My anecdotal experience with GMA tests is that hiring processes already use proxies for GMA (education, standardized test scores, work experience, etc.) so the marginal benefit of doing a bona fide GMA test is relatively low.
It would be cool to have a better sense of when these tests are useful though, and an easy way to implement them in those circumstances.
TLDR: I agree with you. It is complicated and ambiguous and I wish it was more clear-cut.
Regarding GMA Tests, my loosely held opinion at the moment is that I think there is a big difference between 1) GMA being a valid predictor, and 2) having a practical way to use GMA in a hiring process. All the journal articles seem to point toward #1, but what I really want is #2. I suppose we could simply require that all applicants do a test from Wonderlic/GMAT/SAT, but I’m wary of the legal risks and the biases, two topics about which I lack the knowledge to give any confident recommendations. That is roughly why my advice is “only use these if you have really done your research to make sure it works in your situation.”
I’m still exploring the area, and haven’t yet found anything that gives me confidence, but I’m assuming there has to be solutions that exist other than “just pay Wonderlic to do it.”
I strongly agree with you. I’ll echo a previous idea I wrote about: the gap between this is valid and here are the details of how to implement this seem fairly large. If I was a researcher I assume I’d have mentors and more senior researchers that I could bounce ideas off of, or who could point me in the right direction, but learning about these topics as an individual without that kind of structure is strange: I mostly just search on Google Scholar and use forums to ask more experienced people.
Thanks for the thoughtful response!
My anecdotal experience with GMA tests is that hiring processes already use proxies for GMA (education, standardized test scores, work experience, etc.) so the marginal benefit of doing a bona fide GMA test is relatively low.
It would be cool to have a better sense of when these tests are useful though, and an easy way to implement them in those circumstances.