Dear Fellow Professionals,

I am working to create and implement a new entry level screening system for our Company. The Job profiles being S/w development, Techno-Commercial Sales Engineers, Customer Support Engineers, Design Services Engineers (Projects). The system is to be used for Screening of Engineers for employment as Engineer Trainees.

The debate I'd like to raise is "Academic Excellence (Track record) v/s Aptitude", which is a better barometer for predicting on the job performance.

You all as HR professionals would have experienced various issues (including subsequent performance of selected employees) arising out of administering either or a mix of these systems. I would appreciate if you could please enlighten me on your experiences, the benefits and shortfalls of each.

As also I would appreciate if you could suggest components of each from your experience: for example

1 Academic Excellence: Grades from Class Xth onwards, Weightages for different Boards or Institutes etc.

2 Aptitude : Mathematical, Reasoning, Language (English skills), Attention to detail, Data Sufficiency, Process Modelling, Psychometric Questions {Situation reaction Tests, Thematic Appreciation tests, Psycho profiling Tests, Word Association tests, Group Problem Solving exercises etc}

Thanking you in advance for you valuable inputs.

Rajul

Hi Rajul,

An interesting query raised and that was just the thought that ruptured my mind a few months back.  McClelland, back in the early 70s, found that academic performance was a poor predictor of accomplishments later on in life. Also, the academic system is harsher on certain kinds of people. Back then, Mclelland felt it was harsh on women and minorities. With the benefit of theories such as Gardner's multi intelligences that have evolved since, I conjecture that we can rephrase that to say that it only rewards people with 2 or 3 types of intelligences. Read books on competency theory for more on this.

Clearly, the academic system is designed only to generate academics and researchers.

Ditto for intelligence tests - very poor predictors of job performance. One source of details on this debate is Goleman's book, Emotional Intelligence.

However, the catch is, if not acads and IQ, then what? Aptitude, you say. But how do you measure it? Again, competency theory. There are, by now, many readymade, well-researched models available for some of the positions that you have mentioned. But, all the research is international. And, even if you do find a piece of research done here, you still would not be able to ascertain whether it applied to your organization's context exactly. The surest way would be to learn the process and then conduct that research by yourself in your organization. And that is cumbersome.

There is a cheat available to this game, though: take a standard competency model for, say, long cycle sales (which is what your techno-commercial sales job would amount to, I believe). Apply it to your top 10 salesmen and the 10 salesmen with average performance. Does the model neatly differentiate between the two in terms of scores? If it does, you can be sure to some extent that the model is valid in your organization.

Besides competency theory, there are all manner of tests of different skill types available (some of them you have listed in your message). The validity of most of those tests is suspect. In fact, I would like to know (and therefore look forward to contributions from others), which of these tests have been tried out and have been found to be accurate predictors of performance (obviously, I would be interested to know the research design that was applied to establish that the test was an accurate predictor).

At any rate, to test using a questionnaire how well someone DOES something just does not make sense to me, however well anyone may explain this to me.

Hope those were useful thoughts for you!

Shantanuji

Dear Team,

During my career in organisations, I noticed several cases where gold medalists failed to achieve results in group / team work situations ... and second class holders performed well and won performance awards. But I have not accepted this as a rule. But I determined to make it a rule that I will not reject a candidate soley because he is not a distinction holder or the like...

Regards

lieu