Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

Remember when you took your SAT’s? Studying and stressing through standardized tests is a right of passage for most college-bounds students, as is the huge sigh of relief once they’re behind us. But now, fast forward many years later – you’re sitting behind your desk of your hot, growing company and you need to find an intern. And fast! Not just any intern will do, you need to find an intern that’s quick on their feet, can dive right in and quickly become a star on your team. Top notch social media skills wouldn’t hurt either.

See the Scores

SAT’s Measure An Aptitude for Learning: When you hire an intern, you need to find someone who can quickly learn about your business and your industry. Chances are someone who performed well on a standardized test has some experience with jumping into a new subject matter and quickly making heads or tails of it.

SAT’s Are Heavily Rooted in Quantitative Analysis: Remember those obscure math problems?  If you’re looking for someone who has strong quantitative skills, than taking a look at SAT’s scores may be helpful to your when evaluating candidates.

SAT’S Are Hard Work: Prepping for the SAT’s is hard work. Staying cool and calm, not to mention bringing your a-game is even harder. Putting aside the subject matter, a high SAT score says a lot about a candidate’s ability to perform under pressure.

Don’t See the Scores

Yesterday’s News: The intern you’re looking at hiring is probably in college or a few years out. Are scores from one test taken on one day several years ago as relevant as what a candidate has learned and accomplished in the years since then?

Not the Full Picture: SAT scores are just one piece of data. Just ask college admission officers, who require high school students to fill out lengthy applications when applying for college. Will you take the time to get the full picture once you have one piece of “hard” data in front of you? Or will you perhaps wrongly assume that a high SAT scorer is an automatic right fit for your company?

One Size Fits All: The words “standardized tests” say it all. The tests are designed to measure a very specific (and yes standard) body of information. Knowledge, talent and skills that falls outside of the scope of the test will not be measured – which just further supports the points above. A SAT score is not the Full Picture.

What do you think? Should you look at SAT scores when hiring an intern? /