"as soon as we started doing them however, I saw a problem. Almost everyone was passing."
Why is that a problem? Maybe almost everyone is decently good (as evidenced by having a string of jobs, and presumably, references), and your interviews are creating tons of false negatives.Or heck, vice versa. You don't know.
You are presuming your conclusions. You have no basis to make conclusions yet, you just have incomplete data. It's iteresting data, and I'm gleefully happy that somebody is looking at this in the context of programmers (too many studies are very broad, across many different career/job type, IMO). But I think all you have right now is data. Fishing for correlations at this point is nearly bound to lead you astray.
With that aside, I'm very interested in the eventual correlation with test performance and job performance. I'm biased - I dislike IQ tests, but I must admit there is a lot of research on them out there. For me personally, I perform spectacularly on this sort of test, pretty poorly in whiteboard tests, so-so in pair program to get a job, and generally top of the heap in actual job performance. It would definitely help me personally if these tests were true. Yet, still, I wonder, do they measure "get things done"? Do they measure "don't piss off the CEO/customer" skills? There's a ton of things that I think are important beyond pure cognitive skills.
If they want to market themselves as being great at screening candidates so that they send only the best to interviews at client companies, then a test that 90% pass isn't of much use to them.
Why is that a problem? Maybe almost everyone is decently good (as evidenced by having a string of jobs, and presumably, references), and your interviews are creating tons of false negatives.Or heck, vice versa. You don't know.
You are presuming your conclusions. You have no basis to make conclusions yet, you just have incomplete data. It's iteresting data, and I'm gleefully happy that somebody is looking at this in the context of programmers (too many studies are very broad, across many different career/job type, IMO). But I think all you have right now is data. Fishing for correlations at this point is nearly bound to lead you astray.
With that aside, I'm very interested in the eventual correlation with test performance and job performance. I'm biased - I dislike IQ tests, but I must admit there is a lot of research on them out there. For me personally, I perform spectacularly on this sort of test, pretty poorly in whiteboard tests, so-so in pair program to get a job, and generally top of the heap in actual job performance. It would definitely help me personally if these tests were true. Yet, still, I wonder, do they measure "get things done"? Do they measure "don't piss off the CEO/customer" skills? There's a ton of things that I think are important beyond pure cognitive skills.