The ineptitude of it all
Earlier this week I was “invited” to take an online aptitude test. “But why?” I hear you ask. “What for?”
Along with being a self-employed coach which, despite what the countless coaches on Instagram and LinkedIn etc may give the impression of, it’s hard getting a full time wage equivalent purely from coaching especially if you don’t want (or have the extrovert energy) to be a full time content creator, and/or if your values-based coaching aligns with one to one private coaching rather than “corporate coaching”. Plus, if you have a somewhat chaotic ADHD/ADD-like brain that enjoys short-term gratification and have a thousand interests, having a variety of “projects”, skills, and potential sources of income is a good thing. Business slow in one area? Focus on another. In theory this feels like a good thing.
I mean, yes, I could just get a job if anyone would give me one, but having applied for a few and heard nothing back or interview refusals the signs are reinforcing my belief that I thrive better as an independent/freelance/self-employed person. I do tend to ask too many “Why?” style questions in employed roles, and therefore have an equally chaotic CV which never looks good to normal people.
One of the great things about Ireland is that it’s really quite good at offering a range of either free or very subsidised (eg 90%) further education courses especially in skills/areas that are in high demand – notably IT, the film/media/games/animation industry, oh and big pharma. If curious, check out Springboard Courses. Cutting this a bit shorter, I applied for a place on a Web Developer course. People tell me I have an eye for visual stuff, like photography and interior design. I have designed (cheating, using drag n drop builders) my own websites for coaching, so this seems like a sensible choice – another thing I can do for money, self-employed, working from home. Perfect. The roadmap for acceptance to this course is fill in Google Doc form to apply, then “Do 30 hour ‘Get connected’ module” which I think was supposed to be an extremely basic intro in how to use computers and the internet (except I couldn’t get the content to display so educated-guessed my way through it in an hour), then do an online “Aptitude Test”.
As I reported to the application organisers that I couldn’t see the contents of the first module/test, I had a quick call from the person and then learned they had about 1000 applicants, and the top 25 would be selected to take part. No pressure, then.
Online Mensa Aptitude Tests Format (for the uninitiated)
The invitation to take test email and welcome screens to the test didn’t really give any explanation of what was about to happen other than the test would be timed (40mins) and have 40 questions. So easy math brain says 1 min per question. Without any indication of what the questions would be like. No pressure. NO PRESSURE.
The categories of these types of test for the uninitiated will test for skills in:
- “General Intelligence” (Logic, analytical, constructive thinking)
- Verbal Reasoning
- Word analogies
- Code breaking (Hmm)
- Numerical Logic
- Non-verbal reasoning (ability to spot patterns and identify errors or inconsistencies)
- Abstract reasoning (creative thinking)
- Verbal Ability (Vocab, spelling, grammar) – oddly I did worst of all on this!
- Numerical Ability (reasoning, logic)
- Spatial Ability – ability to mentally manipulate 2D and 3D figures (I guess “mentally” means “on paper” (literally, on one occasion in the test).
My own results put me in the 93rd percentile of all people who have ever taken this test apparently. This isn’t a humble brag, more a point of an internal voice saying, “Interesting.”
General Intelligence = 96
Verbal Ability = 63 (!) (Well, there goes my writing career!)
Numerical Ability = 88 (!!??) (please note, math(s) is NOT my strong point. I love me a good spreadsheet, though)
Spatial Ability = 75 (I can mostly parallel park without cameras or car controlled “AI”)
The format of the questions are like the annoying but thankfully multiple guess choice “series” of numbers, or diagrams, interspersed with “maths” puzzles sprinkled with a load of irrelevant information of the type mainstream media will give you to hide what the actual information is to give a correct answer, which causes enormous mental gymnastics and brain-the-size-of-a-planet computing power to answer in 1 minute per question.
Some examples:
- Numbers series – guess (work out) the missing number 1, ?, 5, 7. But slightly more complicated, like ?, 50, 100, 30000. Remember 1 min per question. You can use a calculator.
- Diagrams – spin, flip add and subtract the weird arrangement of lines, dots, squares as if you are taking a Mensa test, because reasons
- General Intelligence – Phil is Tony’s brother, Linda is Ralph’s mother and daughter of Sandra. How is Tony related to Sandra? I mean, IS Sandra related to Tony at all? I think I need more details to create a reliable family tree to answer this. Sometimes it feels like these question would throw in “How is Tony related to Bob?” whilst omitting Bob in the mental diagram leaving you thinking, “Who the F is Bob? Why do I care? On a scale of 1 to ‘not remotely’ how is this important and what’s the deadline?” The deadline is 1 min per question. Or you get rejected.
Why?
Obviously, we know why – it’s a way for educators, employers etc to quickly filter people out of a process to get selected for a thing. It’s a quick way to select for reasoning skills as briefly detailed above and much more.
But why, more specifically, for specific courses, jobs etc.
I had flashbacks to being at school learning things I have pretty much never used in my life, like Sin, Cos waveform calculations in trigonometry. Algebra was somewhat useful. Geography was also pretty unhelpful (sorry). I should have tried harder at French to be fair, looking back. I do not remotely recall anything about The Catcher in The Rye, but do recall a bit about Macbeth. Out damned spot.
I also had flashbacks and an immediate sense of anxiety, irrational panic at not being able to answer some questions correctly, logically, with actual reasoning rather than taking a wild guess or reduction deduction (ie “Well it surely can’t be that option, or that one, so that leaves two, so 50/50 guess here.”) There’s a term for that which currently escapes me, sorry. Also remember 1 min per question when 4 mins into how long the Smiths have been married when they had their eldest daughter (a different question). And who the hell is Bob?
Also a little voice in my head asking why any of this is actually important to getting on a Web Developer course. No-one has asked for a portfolio, or experience in anything related to the course. I can spot a pattern in a series of numbers and possibly do genealogy, though.
Which highlights the ineptitude of these kinds of aptitude tests.
The problem(s) with aptitude tests
I am not the first and I sadly won’t be the last person to rant about the issues with such tests, but this is my space and now I have a voice, I’m damned well going to moan about it myself.
Like many of us have realised through experience in “normative” school life, not everyone fits the prescribed national mould. Some fare well within timed, pressured and strictly enforced rules-based environments learning parrot fashion with barely a need for creative thought. Often the environment of being in a group class, dealing with peer pressure, pressure to fit in, anxiety over having to interact with or even be remotely near people you don’t like (or maybe even fear), pressure to perform well, get things right, focus, sit still, don’t daydream, face the front of the class, and a whole raft of other internal and external challenges is not helpful to proving you have abilities which, if nurtured correctly, carefully and compassionately will help you find a way to amply, easily provide for yourself once you have flown the nest of home. (Aside: That’s a really long sentence. Sorry.)
Knowing you have 1 minute per question to work out answers, even in simplistic multiple choice answers immediately triggers anxiety. Even completing this in a “work from home” environment is not, in my experience a good parallel example of the “real world” of a work environment (or self-employment environment talking with clients, for example). Doing this the old fashioned way in a controlled environment where you aren’t allowed to use anything other than a calculator or scratchpad (this was actually set by the online aptitude test I completed this week, but there’s no way for the test to enforce that, so we’re working on the basis of unmonitored honesty here). I recall the days of math(s) exams where we weren’t even allowed to use a calculator. The horror of it.
The anxiety rising up the spine, into the neck, suffocating the head. Fear of looking stupid (remember all the kids at school who made fun of your inability to do simple things) (Voice in my head, at the very least, if not relatable Dear reader), fear of failure, fear of being rejected, fear of unfairness (“Life’s not fair”, unhelpfully sounding in my head from those same kids, and peers in positions of power and random trolls on the internet). Don’t overthink it, right?
So much going on internally in flight and/or freeze mode that it blocks much actual ability to guess the correct missing number in a series of numbers or to work out someone’s relationship to another person for a Web Developer course. It’s not rocket science and it needn’t be treated as such. Applicants needn’t be treated as if they’re diffusing an unexploded bomb on a heroic do or die countdown. It sometimes feels that way. Irrational? Yes. But some of us, our brains are wired differently. Sometimes those wires get crossed, short circuit and can cause meltdowns or shutdowns. Another mark of failure scored deeply, frustratedly into the cold hard wall of life trying to find a place to fit, to thrive. Another mark closer to giving up. And accepting a deduced level of stupidity and inability to make the grade. Another period of “What’s wrong with me?” internal confusion and self-doubt.
This why we sometimes see people who seem incredibly smart, gifted, amazing living “satisfied” in menial and undemanding jobs.
How many dyslexic people have you come across who were put into the “special needs” classes simply because they apparently couldn’t spell words, or arrange numbers in a way that allowed for correct calculation?
I (and we) are perfectly able to answer all of the aptitude questions given the right environment for our individual needs. It’s not a Mensa test (which I’m sure a lot of people will agree is not a great way to measure intelligence anyway – another gate to separate “them” from “us”. Intelligence-walling). I appreciate this isn’t always possible in a standard classroom environment, but once we get to times in life where we’re looking for gainful employment, or paths to better employment/earning options, it feels irrelevant and unhelpful.
Honestly, I don’t really care if I don’t get on this course. It’s certainly not the end of my world if I don’t. But the idea of being rejected at the time if I failed simple reasoning questions simply because I don’t always deal well with anxiety is occasionally crushing. Frustrating. Angering at the way the world norms are structured so those who don’t fit, don’t fit and aren’t “allowed” (or encouraged) to make the progress they could probably sail effortlessly through given a different environment. Worse if the rejection letter says something like “Others were better than you”. Another time where I wasn’t good enough because my innate anxiety survival instincts were on overdrive and ability to over analyse causes me to be rejected, to fail. “Thanks for taking the time to reject me” based on an impersonal 40 minute mental gymnastic test. “Thanks for irrecoverably altering the course of my life.” There will be people who fail the application process who are perfectly able, perhaps more able to successfully complete said course than those who gain entry.
Food for Orchids
There is a great article on this kind of idea based on a similarly named book (different author) on a website which has some other great articles on being different, being “gifted” (I am not saying I’m “gifted”, but I am clearly “different”) and being “over-excitable” etc. I highly recommend you read this article on nurturing Orchids, and although I have yet to read it myself, the book here listed via Amazon UK.
A little intro to this analogy – the cultivation of Dandelions and Orchids:
The former can grow almost anywhere (apparently a good indicator of compacted soil, also a great nitrogen fixer, I think) in lots of harsh conditions. they will thrive regardless.
Orchids, as I’m sure you know, require a very specific, narrow range of environmental conditions and much care, nurturing to thrive. The results can be phenomenal, however.
With a little more attention, a different environment and more consideration, those Orchids may give your organisation phenomenal results too. Or you can just grow endless Dandelions. Grow both for a range of rewards.
