Post No.: 0838
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Apart from general intelligence, there are considered to be many other forms of intelligence that cannot be measured via traditional IQ tests…
Emotional intelligence is the aptitude to motivate yourself, persist in the face of frustration, to control impulses, delay gratification, regulate your mood, keep distress from swamping your ability to think, and the ability to emotionally understand and empathise with others. Emotional intelligence includes the capability to handle your own emotions, as well as those of others.
Social intelligence is the capacity to know oneself and to know others. It’s required to communicate and form relationships with empathy and compassion, to socially charm, as well as to lead and assertively manage complex social change.
Practical intelligence is a more real-world, as opposed to abstract, measure of problem solving. This can be improved by ‘learning by doing’ or observing masters at their work. The best learning is achieved by getting out there, experimenting and doing, rather than through books or videos – although both are important because we can learn from the experiences of many others whereas we only have one lived personal life experience. Still, do not underestimate real-world experience over academia. And real-world skills are obviously more crucial in real-world life.
Creative and other forms of intelligence may be included too. This all highlights that intelligence is a hypothetical construct i.e. it isn’t directly observable, and any form of test is highly likely going to be incomplete in measuring it.
Depending on the job vacancy, intelligence tests are often part of the job interview process though. And some intelligence or creativity tests are ironically dumb! What links the words ‘pomelo’, ‘loquat’, ‘guava’ and ‘rambutan’? If you thought laterally – which when everyone else is trying to think ‘outside of the box’ might sometimes mean thinking ‘inside the box’ – and said that they’re all words in an English dictionary; then why is that an unacceptable answer? The simplest answers or solutions are often the best in real-world problem-solving scenarios. Blame the question-setter, not an answer that works!
Applicants may be asked to play some abstract games that test their persistence, risk appetite, abstract thinking, etc.. But the interpretations of the results are likely to be over-extrapolations. For instance, an individual might like to take risks driving fast but is risk-averse when it comes to other things. Is someone not impulsive or are they indecisive? Is an extrovert going to be open and collaborative or too chatty to get on with her/his own work? Is the persistence to carry on commendable or foolish because a particular test is rigged and pointless? Those who set these games will know whether a game is, say, truly winnable or not, in order to categorically conclude that one should quickly learn to give up on it – but real-world situations seldom tell us these absolute certainties.
We ought to rationally work out the expected value of any gamble, but real-world scenarios seldom reveal to us the exact figures to work these values out – at least without attempting lots of trials (which would likely be initially errors) first. And, in real-world settings, they’re not always independent trials because you can improve a skill from one trial to the next hence the more you try something, the better your odds at success become rather than those odds staying fixed from one trial to another. So when should you give up?
If algorithms are used – how reliable will they be too for assessing candidates for creative roles or attributes? An algorithm will have to somehow emulate the moods and capriciousness of real-world consumers because art is subjective. There may be overall consensuses amongst humans, but that still won’t make a judgement objective, especially because trends and tastes can and do change over time (sometimes within weeks). In principle, if humans can judge creativity then so can robots, but in practice – it’s ultimately humans we’re trying to impress with our creativity so why not just stick to using human judges? Moreover, do we want judgements of creativity based on the wisdom of the crowd, which is essentially the loathed ‘design by committee’ approach?! Won’t we miss out on the fluffy avant-garde since machine-learning AIs will be basing their judgements on what most conforms to what they were taught according to historical works?
Regarding transferable skills, there’s some disagreement about the extent of real-world skill specificity. It’s metaphorically a case of whether you think ‘some’ or ‘50%’ is ‘a lot’ or ‘a little’. It’s like if you’re a champion cyclist but you’ve never rowed before then, compared to someone who does no exercise, you’re going to have a decent cardiovascular base to be okay at rowing, but you won’t be expected to just jump in and be in contention for winning elite rowing competitions. So it’s taking things on a case-by-case basis – for example, people who are organised in one task tend to be organised in other tasks, but knowing how to work one computer system won’t automatically mean one can work a different computer system without at least some training.
Applicants should absolutely demonstrate enormous attention to detail and effort to impress their prospective employers, and so things like spelling and formatting does matter and can reveal some information about their conscientiousness. But the content should always take precedence over the presentation to a recruiter. (Note that spellcheckers aren’t always reliable because they don’t understand what words you intended. The correct grammar depends on the intention too, like ‘have you eaten(,) granddad?’ A passive voice isn’t always a problem and can sometimes sound more natural.)
Instead, most employers will, even glibly, state that they’ll not bother reading the content of an application or CV/résumé if it’s presented badly, which means that they put presentation before content. So there are applications that end up in the bin before they’re even read, maybe because of a spelling or formatting issue near the top – perhaps because the applicant’s first language isn’t English, they have dyslexia, or there’s a difference in taste of colours or design between the employer and the applicant. (Thus diversity and originality are often not what organisations want to see! Relatedly, profit maximisation can kill creativity when investors want games developers and movie producers to rinse the hell out of existing, already-proven popular franchises, knowing that the loyal fan base will still go for it. Some fans might bemoan the money-grab yet still open their wallets (again) anyway, which only encourages the practice! Indie studios with more freedom end up being more experimental and creative.)
Employers value honesty, but to be employable you must carefully curate (i.e. manipulate) your application forms and digital footprint to only show or exaggerate your best side (or even fake it!) The main reason why people want a job is usually because of the money – but you cannot just honestly say only that(!) You’ve got to sound more motivated and passionate! (Post No.: 0827 talked about this in more depth.) Sometimes you can express in words, while sitting in an interview, what to do in a situational judgement question – but whether you’d actually do that if you secured the job and that situation actually arose is another matter! Play the game – it’s foremostly about appearances. (It’s the same with dating profiles and typical chatty first dates.)
Job interviews, as they generally are, are more about playing the game than telling the truth because, say, if your greatest weakness is genuinely because you’re a perfectionist (which can be an inefficient behaviour and a waste of time that could be more productively spent elsewhere) then because this is considered a clichéd response, you could be rejected for being truthful. Also, if you have a worse weakness then you cannot be too honest because negative points will be noted and remembered more easily than positive ones! (This is why some front-running political candidates choose not to participate in TV debates for there’s more harm in saying something silly than the benefit of saying something smart, hence it’s best to avoid saying anything at all.) It’s manipulative. It’s game-playing. But most interviews are set up to be this way – you should say what they want you to say, and nothing else. Smooth talking is rewarded, not plain candidness. (And some seasoned politicians are the masters of this. But maybe we cannot blame them if we’re the ones who keep falling for presentation over substance when we vote.)
Interviewers are humans too and will get bored after a long day. So if you can entertain them then that’ll help you stand out; whether being entertaining is important to the vacancy or not(!) They will also judge you by how you physically look – whether all this again is relevant to your aptitude to excel in the job or not. Meow.
It’s usually quite easy for prospective employees to research what questions will likely be asked and to rehearse their answers over and over until they’re like PR-trained sportspeople giving canned responses in post-match interviews. (More genuine responses would include more cursing and blaming the referee hence they’re not being authentic(!)) If an interviewer alternatively tries to be clever and goes leftfield to ask some unexpected and quirky questions, these can venture into irrelevance or absurdity.
Of course, it’s a good sign to see someone do their homework and prepare thoroughly for what’s important, but interviewees can appear more polished than they really are. It can be an act that they put on just for the interviewing process. Someone could find out that the company wants self-driven employees, for example, so will claim to be self-driven in an interview and come up with some bull**** story about their self-drive even though it’s all hyperbole or fabricated.
It’s the same with current forms of diversity training where people can be taught to give the appropriate answers in questionnaires about bias, but the learning effects don’t last long. Mandatory training can even lead to a backlash from managers. If you tell people they’re prejudiced or racist and therefore require implicit/unconscious bias training to fix that, they tend to become defensive. Hiring tests can be selectively applied more to women and minorities, the results of performance evaluations can be biasedly fudged or cherry-picked, discrimination complaints are often met with a charge of retaliation, and women or minorities who get jobs in a firm are sometimes accused of only getting them due to diversity quotas, too.
…Still, it’s astute to get into the mind(s) of your interviewer(s) – what sorts of questions will they likely ask and what sorts of evidence might they be looking for? You’ll likely need to demonstrate your motivation, communication skills, values, thinking, teamwork, leadership, problem solving, ability to work under pressure or with surprises, your adaptability, organisation, professionalism, and how you can ultimately add value to the organisation and help it meet its aims.
Describe examples using the ‘situation, task, action and result’ (STAR) technique. Show that you really want to work for this organisation rather than just any that’ll take you. Show how you stand out from the rest by conveying your key selling points that are relevant to their needs. It’s about matching you, the role, the organisation, and maybe even the industry, together.
The interviewer may presume that she/he has all the power – but if her/his interests are tightly aligned with the company’s (which isn’t always the case in large organisations because it’s not like the fate or salary of the person conducting the interview will be directly affected whether she/he employs the best candidate available or not) then the power between the interviewer and interviewee should be regarded as pretty balanced (depending on the state of the job market or level of competition for the job, like if there are far more skilled applicants than jobs that desire their particular skills) – because a top employee can positively affect the company’s fortunes enormously hence the company should recognise, and reward, that potential.
Meow.
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