No, An IQ Test Is Not a Work Assessment
This week, I decided to look into a potential freelance tax opportunity. Everything was going fine, the company asking for the expected things: resume, interests, experience.
So far, so good.
Then they asked me to do an assessment and a personality test.
At first I didn’t think much of it. A personality test, I supposed, could potentially avoid some conflicting personnel on an assignment. And a quick test to make sure I have at least basic tax abilities wouldn’t be bad.
I loaded up the assessment and started reading through the instructions. “You have 15 minutes to answer 50 increasingly difficult questions. You may have a piece of paper but not a calculator. You will only be marked for answers you get right, not those you get wrong.”
All this put my hackles up. What accountant has to do math questions WITHOUT a calculator? I mean, unless you mean we should use Excel. Nothing is sweeter than a hit of that Microsoft product.
But no, no Excel.
Then I clicked “next,” and within 5 seconds, I realized what this “assessment” really was.
An IQ test.
Which is next in this series? Which word should go here? If I have a factory producing 16 lawn mowers per hour for 5 hours, how many lawn mowers can it make?
I was so mad I shut it down.
Our society is obsessed with many things. Quite a few of them are not good for it. Measurement and comparison are near the top of that “not good” list.
An IQ test has become an accepted way to do both of those things at the same time.
The original purpose of the IQ test was to figure out which students would have difficulty during school. We’ve certainly heard stories or maybe been that student whose boredom in the classroom was confused for inability. So in that regard, the IQ test could have its uses.
However, an IQ test is not a determiner of success. We worship at this cult of intelligence, somehow believing that because someone’s number on one test on one day is higher than another, that person is a better person.
Which is stupid.
Malcolm Gladwell goes into the “Trouble with Geniuses” in great depth in his popular book “Outliers.” His argument is that, yes, you do need to be “smart enough,” but beyond that, that IQ number is no determiner of success.
This lesson for me goes deeper than one popular book.
Let me instead talk about closer to home.
Growing up, my mom regaled me with stories of her and her brother. Her brother, she would always say, was clearly much smarter than her. But she would work harder and she got the better grades.
“I may not be very smart,” she’d always say, “but I can make up for that with effort.”
(I should note that she was very much downplaying her intelligence)
I took her stories to heart. I put in the effort from start to finish, got into all the “advanced classes,” ended up finishing second in my high school class, got into the college I wanted to, and have so far have had a successful career.
And that whole time, I rarely, if ever, felt like a smart person.
Later on in life, my mom told me that in elementary school, they told me that my assessment scores weren’t high enough to be put in their gifted programs. She told them, “I don’t care, put him in anyway.”
Thanks to her insistence, I never had the sigma of “being dumb” that was common in my schools growing up for those who weren’t in the “right” classes. I never had my peers mock me for being dumb (kids are so mean). But I knew I had to work hard to keep up rather than rely on my natural intelligence.
(To be sure, I also had several HUGE advantages, including that very hard working mother who would sit down, work with me and push me on all my assignments)
I know I’m already going long here, but let me briefly mention my wife.
My wife had an IQ test early in life. It was very high. She is an absolute monster when it comes to Set, a game surrounding one of the big parts of an IQ test.
She always felt like that test set her apart in the school’s eyes. She skipped a grade because of it. She was always rewarded for her innate intelligence rather than her hard work. And she hated it.
She’s still mad at them today. But that’s her story to tell.
I am now 37 years old. I have worked in my field for 12 years. My I’ve had successes and failures, and I know fairly well now where I’m going to do well and where I probably should let someone else take charge.
I honestly have no idea what my IQ score is. Somewhere between 60 and 240. It doesn’t matter to me, and it shouldn’t matter to the freelance agency.
The IQ test was NEVER intended to determine how well a person can put together a tax return. Nor whether someone can manage (which, I’m told, Dish does). Shoehorning that test into projected work product is just another example of our culture worshipping at the altar of the almighty IQ number.
After a few minutes and many deep breaths, I finally debased myself enough to take their “assessment.” It’s a potential source of income that I figured I shouldn’t close myself off to right now.
I must have done well enough, because they said they have opportunities for me. But I’m still pissed. We need to stop obsessing over innate ability and start worrying about things that actually matter. Like what we do with the gifts we have.
And while we’re at it, maybe we can stop with the measuring and comparing altogether.
I know, never gonna happen. But I can dream.
