Is Your Career Outcome Attributable to Intelligence & Training?
Did you know the SAT is changing? People are realizing the test is fairly idiotic. It has little bearing on how well one is suited for a career or college. For instance, to prepare for the test I remember spending countless hours memorizing arcane words, like “inchoate.”
I recently ran across an article that discusses the upcoming changes in the SAT. The article questions how much career outcomes are attributable to intelligence and training (e.g. college). Two salient points from the article:
- As it turns out, IQ and technical skills combined predict only 20 to 25 percent of job success. That means that over 75 percent of your career outcome has nothing to do with your intelligence and training.
- For around 88.5 percent of college students, SAT scores are no better at predicting academic success than a pair of dice.
If startups prove anything, it is that go-getters can be successful, irrespective of background. Background helps. But drive, stickiness, hunger, loyalty, and a bit of luck often trump academic intelligence and training.
What are your thoughts on the correlation between intelligence/training and career outcomes?
From the conversation
Comments preserved from the original post.
BarrettBrooks
John, I enjoyed this post — it brings an important topic to the forefront of the conversation. That being said, i have a bone to pick with the title you chose. If I could retitle this post, it would be, “Is your career outcome attributable to Intelligence and Schooling?”
If that were the title, I think we could unequivocally agree that SAT and IQ tests create a way for us to measure ourselves against others while proving exactly nada for our ability to produce real world results. Similarly, the efficacy of our formal learning institutions is debatable at best, abysmal at worst. Research tells us our students are less prepared than ever to be productive contributors in the workforce. Turnover is higher than ever amongst Millennials as compared to other generations. IQ = nothing when it comes to predicting outcomes in the workplace. And, Google has proven that asking “smart” questions during the hiring process does very little to predict fit or ability to deliver results.
Great, so we’re in agreement on all of that. My bone to pick is with the word “training.” The alternative to the argument you’ve presented in this post can be seen in what Iron Yard has done that is allowing it to expand to ATL or in what we’re up to at Living for Monday. Practical, soft- or hard- skill based training that helps professionals solve specific problems they encounter at work or home on a regular basis. I believe there is infinite room in this space to transform the way we train and the efficacy of the programs we ask people to attend/watch/participate in/whatever.
The “Ed Tech” sector is massive because of this exact vision — making education accessible and effective for more people in more locations. We’ve largely failed in our efforts to “train” people through traditional schooling. Similarly, we’ve inflated egos with things like the SAT and IQ tests.
We’ve done all of this without encouraging enough experimentation, failure, recovery, experiential learning, and the hard knock life kind of lessons that something like entrepreneurship throws you into. But my ultimate point here is this: just because it’s not common doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I believe Living for Monday will transform the way young professionals approach their work — just as CreativeLive has transformed learning and training for creative professionals and Iron Yard for aspiring developers.
Let’s not write off “training” as a whole just because most people/institutions/companies are too (insert word of choice here) to do it right.
Thanks for stoking the fire and creating conversation.
melonakos
In reply to an earlier comment
Hey Barrett, thanks for the great comment! You’re exactly right. I’m a big fan of on-the-job training, lifelong learning, and anything else that contributes to useful impact. I’m not anti-formal-schooling either; just think it’s largely inefficient in many cases.