Post: #1

Anyone heard of this? Some big firms are looking at outside the box ways to hire talent for Finance gigs. Anyone can take it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/street-of-walls-2013-3

http://www.streetofwalls.com

Quote:For every job opening on Wall Street, there can be hundreds of highly qualified candidates vying for the position.

Just last year, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said that more than 300,000 people applied for available full-time positions at the firm in 2010 and 2011. The bank hired fewer than four percent of those applicants.

The CEO of job search site Monster, Salvatore Iannuzzi, said the average company with 100,000 employees receives about three million applications each year.

On Wall Street especially there are tons of highly qualified candidates with degrees from top schools and stellar GPAs competing for a limited number of openings.

And as Wall Street has contracted due to layoffs, there are more and more qualified people looking for those available jobs.

So how do you stand out and how does an employer sift through all the job seekers for the perfect candidate?

That's exactly the problem former investment bankers/ hedge funders Adam Goldstein, 33, and Brett Adcock, 27, are aiming to solve with a new product called Street of Walls— a web site that tests and screens job seekers based on finance industry specific skills employers are looking for. With this service it doesn't matter where you went to school if you can prove your abilities.

Post: #2

Have always been surprised that such things are not more prevalent. IQ tests are the best predictors of productivity for novices [1], but using IQ tests to select employees would probably get a company sued [2], due to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commmission's rules on Disparate Impact.

It sounds like this is a little more job specific, but it operates on a similar principle. Also, I wonder if asking employees for the results of IQ tests or IQ-like tests (Wonderlic, SAT, GREs, GMATs, LSATs, AFQT, etc.) is legal, if it would make a company vulnerable to an EEOC discrimination lawsuit. Anyone else know? Judging by the looks of this, I'm guessing this is a lower risk way of sidestepping the risk of a disparate impact lawsuit - it's done by a third party (i.e. not the employer) and it tests skills supposedly related to the job.

If tests like these became more prevalent, and were more based on general mental ability instead of testing job-specific skills, I could see wages declining in these fields. There are a lot of smart people working in sub-par jobs, that don't have the resources to get into the channels from which high paying professions recruit. For instance, if an elite consulting firm like McKinsey could identify talent with a free online test, it could screen hundreds of thousands of applicants for relatively little money. Currently, it just hounds the top graduates at elite schools, a rather small pool. It's missing out on all the smart people laboring in obscurity, without the time, money or credentials to go to Wharton. As the Business Insider article suggests, this could be a great tool for opening up certain jobs to smart people at less prestigious schools. School prestige as a measure of merit is a useful but extremely crude tool that has outlived its utility. Lots of the people taking the test wouldn't be up to snuff, but when the cost of administering them a test is free, that's not a problem.

On the other hand, difficult exams are often used in certain professions to limit access, keep wages up and ostensibly maintain quality. The actuarial profession is famous for this, with a series of increasingly difficult exams. As the number of actuarial positions have declined, I've heard that applicants have to pass more and more of these tests before even getting a look for a chance at employment.

I've seen some startups pitching things along these lines, like they test your skill in something online, and then if you score well, they notify relevant employers, or give you some sort of merit badge. It's pretty nascent right now, but I expect this sort of thing to become more common, unless the government decides to come down on it.

[1] = http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20...lletin.pdf
[2] = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

Post: #3

Yeah. I had taken an Excel test on Smarterer.com for this one firm and I had a 700+ score that they said was top 4% of all test takers on the site. It wasn't a tough test IMO though. I haven't taken the WSAT but it seems like it's probably challenging. I'll check it out when I get a moment.

Post: #4

Many of the interviews for traders involve mental math, expected value and probability, and algorithms. Depending where you go and what the group does, you might be asked about Java or C.

If you can filter applicants toward those things, then incorporate the ones who pass the filter into the regular interview process, I don't see why it would be bad for anyone.

Still, your best bet at ground-level hiring is likely to remain attendance at a good university in a relevant degree program.

Post: #5

Not all "front-office" Wall Street jobs are equally g-loaded; a high g-loaded job being where high-IQ is necessary and/or tightly associated with success at the job.

Low g-loaded Wall Street jobs include sales and relationship management.

High g-loaded Wall Street jobs include roles like quantitative trading and financial engineering.

In the middle are jobs such as investment banking and flow trading.

A good litmus test for how g-loaded a job is how many white girls and "underrepresented" minorities are hired. When intellectual heavy-lifting is needed, firms stop bullshitting around with diversity. You'll see quite a few ex-sorority Bimbo McSlampieces in sales and relationship management (in fact, being a Bimbo McSlampiece can even be an advantage here), but none in statistical arbitrage.

Even at very low g-loaded jobs like burger-flipping, ceteris paribus, higher IQ people would be better at it than lower IQ people. The only thing low-IQ people have going for them is comparative advantage.

Thus, Wall Street will still higher the brightest kids from the best schools, because they can; school pedigree and grades serve as a proxy for IQ, since IQ tests are not widely used for the reasons basilransom described.

Also, for finance, pedigree matters in and of itself for signaling reasons. You seem more credible to clients and potential clients when you have a bunch of HYPSW alum.

Post: #6

No bullshit test like this will ever get you a job on the street (front office real Wall Street jobs) unless you already have the pedigree. If anything, more tests like his will be required on top of the already rigorous background (top school near 4.0 gpa and several finance jobs, and apparently now add another test on top of the painful series of interviews).

If you went to a shitty school and then do well on this test... There are thousands who also can do well on his test... And did attend a pedigree school.

It will become increasingly difficult to get a job on the Street and the sales roles will be filled in more and more with people who are already connected. The only thing that matters in Wall Street is generating revenue for the firm and keeping a perfectly clean background.

People try to find "cheap and easy" ways to break in. These people if they do break in, are called to the "conference room" by month 6 or earlier because they are unprepared for the pain to come your first 3-5 years.

TL;DR Street will get tougher, either you go through the pain knowing it will be worth it or you choose a different career.

Also lol at anyone who thinks the job is easy, my career mentor is an ex-marine and told me he would rather do military training again then be forced to earn his stripes in the gutter positions in Wall Street again. (Perhaps he is being facetious but who cares) Your first 2-3 years you'll never see the sun, assuming you're good.

Post: #7

This is such an awful idea that it could only come out of 1 of 2 places, Wall Street or Washington.

Although it's a good time for one of you to start a Princeton review for the WSAT (Wall Street Aptitude Test).

WIA

Post: #8

Every time hiring tests are released, people come up with ways to cheat on the tests. Even cases when the tests are written for a single day, one use, and you have to show up to a warehouse to take it (like the SAT, GRE, LSAT, etc), there's tons of applicants hiring people to take the test for them. Or people who show up, take the test, then sell the job for 10% of the salary, letting the buyer use their social security # and providing fake ID when necessary. (While these new hire's jobs are to hide as long as possible and not be discovered how incredibly incompetent they are while still taking paycheck after paycheck)

You start to notice patterns, like groups of people that all have the same exact answers, both right and wrong, and then notice there's whole syndicate of frauds. You scramble the order, and then you see people in these syndicates are just copying down the same answer pattern. You investigate a little bit, and you find out they're fucking illiterate in English, and are just trained to fill out this pattern on the sheet regardless of what the questions are. Some of them are copying down exact patterns from hiring tests 2 or 3 years old. Many of them are just full time test takers, and you see them with a different name and ID every open hire.

It's a huge fucking headache.

It is simply amazing how much work losers will put in to hacking your hiring tests, rather than, I don't know, actually learning the skills to do the fucking job.

It isn't finding the best candidates that's the problem. It's sorting out the hiring syndicate frauds from real people that you would actually hire that's the problem.

It'll be relatively easy to use a bot-net to attack their test by the Monte-carlo method and whichever bots get responses back, sell those answers.

Post: #9

(05-12-2013 07:33 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  This is such an awful idea that it could only come out of 1 of 2 places, Wall Street or Washington.

Although it's a good time for one of you to start a Princeton review for the WSAT (Wall Street Aptitude Test).

WIA

It's actually a genius idea. More hoops.

If you're such a drone that you're willing to take 75 tests and pass them all perfectly, you'll surely follow directions to the T when you join the firm.

Hell remember when SATs used to be out of 1600? Only going to see more hoops.

Follow follow follow, give them money, watch them see people spend, give them more money, now you got several people making $500K a year spending like crazy and working to the bone. People spend more and eat more carbs when they are stressed. So give them cash and stress them the fuck out. Watch that cash flow. For the vast majority, Wall Street people have low savings due to the trap I just laid out.

Brilliance.

Post: #10

(05-12-2013 07:38 PM)WestCoast Wrote:  

(05-12-2013 07:33 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  This is such an awful idea that it could only come out of 1 of 2 places, Wall Street or Washington.

Although it's a good time for one of you to start a Princeton review for the WSAT (Wall Street Aptitude Test).

WIA

It's actually a genius idea. More hoops.

If you're such a drone that you're willing to take 75 tests and pass them all perfectly, you'll surely follow directions to the T when you join the firm.

Hell remember when SATs used to be out of 1600? Only going to see more hoops.

Follow follow follow, give them money, watch them see people spend, give them more money, now you got several people making $500K a year spending like crazy and working to the bone. People spend more and eat more carbs when they are stressed. So give them cash and stress them the fuck out. Watch that cash flow.

Brilliance.

That would only make sense if that's how Wall Street made money or the function of new hires at a firm. You don't make money in Wall Street by throwing more bodies at a problem.

These people are idiots.

WIA

Post: #11

That is what they want from a new hire though. Someone to crank out perfect excel/word/PowerPoint work. Follow directions, don't steal their clients. Then after 3-5 years quit because you're worked to death.

Smart. I would do the same. Hell even trying to outsource to India. Protects my book of biz. I don't want some young guy coming in and stealing my biz, I just want him to churn out perfect work, by following my directions to the T. Then quit and i'll just get another fresh monkey.

The real future revenue generators don't need an ivy degree or to pass the tests because their dad is already a PM/MD. They don't interview at all.

Hope that clears things up. Basically the short term hires go through the hoops while the real long term ones just waltz in with a book of biz since their pops or whoever is already grooming him.

So the tests just make for even better short term hires. Great idea + biz model. These guys are far from stupid.

(05-12-2013 08:05 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  

(05-12-2013 07:38 PM)WestCoast Wrote:  

(05-12-2013 07:33 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  This is such an awful idea that it could only come out of 1 of 2 places, Wall Street or Washington.

Although it's a good time for one of you to start a Princeton review for the WSAT (Wall Street Aptitude Test).

WIA

It's actually a genius idea. More hoops.

If you're such a drone that you're willing to take 75 tests and pass them all perfectly, you'll surely follow directions to the T when you join the firm.

Hell remember when SATs used to be out of 1600? Only going to see more hoops.

Follow follow follow, give them money, watch them see people spend, give them more money, now you got several people making $500K a year spending like crazy and working to the bone. People spend more and eat more carbs when they are stressed. So give them cash and stress them the fuck out. Watch that cash flow.

Brilliance.

That would only make sense if that's how Wall Street made money or the function of new hires at a firm. You don't make money in Wall Street by throwing more bodies at a problem.

These people are idiots.

WIA

Post: #12

(05-12-2013 04:27 PM)basilransom Wrote:  Also, I wonder if asking employees for the results of IQ tests or IQ-like tests (Wonderlic, SAT, GREs, GMATs, LSATs, AFQT, etc.) is legal, if it would make a company vulnerable to an EEOC discrimination lawsuit. Anyone else know?

A few federal legal employers ask for LSAT scores, including the IRS Office of Chief Counsel. For what it's worth, I think the LSAT is supposedly the most g-loaded of all the regular standardized tests. It makes sense to me; IQ tests are generally time-pressured spatial reasoning, while the LSAT tests a mixture of time-pressured verbal reasoning and time-pressured spatial reasoning.

(05-12-2013 04:27 PM)basilransom Wrote:  For instance, if an elite consulting firm like McKinsey could identify talent with a free online test, it could screen hundreds of thousands of applicants for relatively little money.

They do screen first round candidates with a fairly easy math test. They also have online portals with a case study test you can log in to do and send the results on.