The original poster seems to be complaining more about the validity of the testing, rather than the fact that testing is happening.
For a role in developer relations, the real core competencies should be very high scores on "soft skills". Like being personable, communicate well with others, able to make people "feel good", "able to spread joy".
The number of times he's going to have to recursively solve the quadratic formula while displaying the data points on a graph using pictures of Barbara Striesand downloaded in realtime, is going to be infrequent at best.
So the complaint that they're testing for engineering aptitude, when interpersonal creativity is the required core competency seems (from what I've seen of google's hiring) a pretty valid one.
Perhaps what they really need to do is look at engineering their scientific hiring process to add a weighting to for "people skills".
This could be easily accomplished by evaluating candidates using the NEO-PI-R* candidates would then be awarded scores out of 5 on various personality areas such as Trust, Straightforwardness, Altruism, Compliance, Modesty, Tendermindedness. Community relations people should score very high in Altruism and Tenderness.
I also believe that Google's hiring process undervalues the human element. When dealing with pure engineering issues that might be OK but there are some positions that could use people with more 'creative flair' than others.
For a role in developer relations, the real core competencies should be very high scores on "soft skills". Like being personable, communicate well with others, able to make people "feel good", "able to spread joy".
The number of times he's going to have to recursively solve the quadratic formula while displaying the data points on a graph using pictures of Barbara Striesand downloaded in realtime, is going to be infrequent at best.
So the complaint that they're testing for engineering aptitude, when interpersonal creativity is the required core competency seems (from what I've seen of google's hiring) a pretty valid one.
Perhaps what they really need to do is look at engineering their scientific hiring process to add a weighting to for "people skills".
This could be easily accomplished by evaluating candidates using the NEO-PI-R* candidates would then be awarded scores out of 5 on various personality areas such as Trust, Straightforwardness, Altruism, Compliance, Modesty, Tendermindedness. Community relations people should score very high in Altruism and Tenderness.
I also believe that Google's hiring process undervalues the human element. When dealing with pure engineering issues that might be OK but there are some positions that could use people with more 'creative flair' than others.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Invento...