
Ask HN: How do you test for analytical skills? - neilsharma
From what I can tell, most skilled jobs these days require &quot;strong analytical skills&quot;. How does one go about evaluating this?<p>What if the candidate has no work experience to speak from? Do you provide him with math problems or logic questions?
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abakker
I'm not qualified to say recommend you do this when hiring or being hired,
but, I tend to look at someone's hobbies when judging their analytical skills.

People with hobbies that they have invested lots of time in often understand
their hobbies' domain space in a very specific way, and can demonstrate their
analytical ability when presented with a problem related to their hobby. An
example might be to present a photographer with a challenge one how to get a
given picture, or a collector with the challenge of spotting a fake, or a rock
climber with a particular problem/route.

I don't think this really provides a foolproof methodology, but when people
have strong extra-curricular domain knowledge, I find that they are often able
to answer higher level questions about those areas. This is a good proxy for
general analytical ability, and helps get past the problem of testing them on
something they may know nothing about, which doesn't really highlight
analytical ability at all.

The downside to this is that you have to know about their hobby to ask a good
question, and you have to put in some effort to ask a good one. This is good,
since even casual effort on your part can give a boost to the level of your
"test".

Source: I am an Analyst, with lots of hobbies. I have found my own hobbies
have prepared me very well for being an analyst that deals with multiple
subject matters at a time.

Note: I am referring to analytical abilities as reasoning, judgement,
intuition, etc. Not to be confused with skills in Analytics which refer to
math/statistics/data science.

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akg_67
If you are interested in testing for analytical skills, look into Consulting
domain. The Consulting domain is primarily based on analytical abilities in
addition to inter-personal skills. The hiring and interview practices of
consulting industry, specifically case based interviewing, can offer you good
insight.

Identify the analytical skills that are important in a role. Find parallel
scenarios where such skills are also needed that a person most likely to
encounter either as hobby or in another familiar personal/professional
settings. See how the person approaches the scenarios. After reviewing the
resume and information available about candidate before interview, you most
likely will be able to come up with certain line of questions that may give
insights into specific analytical skills required for the role while not being
unfamiliar scenarios to the candidate.

For example, once a candidate during interview mentioned setting up his own
home network for Internet connection. After discussing more details about his
home network, I just asked him about how he will investigate "Page not found"
message in a browser on a PC on his network. The responses and ensuing
discussion told me a lot about the candidate capabilities in investigating and
resolving problems that was the requirement for the role. Another time, a
candidate mentioned liking Chess and American Football. After discussing chess
and football with him for while, I just asked him to compare and contrast
chess and football. The discussion told me a lot about the candidate
capability in finding similarities between two seemingly unrelated situations
and able to take lessons from one and apply to other.

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ChuckMcM
I'm curious why you put strong analytical skills in quotes. It reads like you
are using a definition outside the standard one (the typical use of scare
quotes). But putting that aside for a moment.

Analytical skills are simply the ability to develop new information and
insights from a mix of information that is present and identifying and
acquiring information that is necessary and not present.

You say "Mary went to the movies, how much did she pay?" Analyst questions is
"Is there any thing special about Mary?" Interview question is "What
characteristics of Mary do you consider special?"

Now if the interviewee can come back with the typical spread of movie prices
(child, adult, student, senior) that is the minimum response. They get more
credit if they also include matinee vs prime-time shows, they get still more
credit if they test the assumption that Mary was going to a theatre that
required payment, and full marks if they want to be sure that Mary does not
own, or work at the theatre where the movie is being shown.

Analytical skills are, in my mind, being able to identify all of the variables
that might bear on the solution of the problem, ranking them in order of how
likely they are to come into play, and constructing alternatives based on the
most likely combinations of variables. And doing that quickly and methodically
without losing track of the variable expansions in the process.

The reason I prize those skills in an employee is that it gives them the
capability to solve poorly specified problem tasks. Flipping my question
around, as a manager I would much prefer to tell my employee "Give Mary money
for the movie tonight." and be assured that they will expand the variable
list, talk to Mary if necessary to fill in missing gaps, and then disburse the
funds. But if they either freeze up unable to break down the variables into an
action plan, or if they simply provide the "typical" money needed without
figuring out if that will be too much or too little, then I know that managing
them will take too much of my time. HTH

~~~
mswen
I loved this response until the end. When the absolute cost is actually really
low relative to the cost of the analyst's time then skip the expansive
analysis, use a reasonable heuristic and be done. I get frustrated with
analysts who are so caught up in their analytic prowess and technique that
they lose sight of the business context and basic ROI.

Despite my objection at the end, I really did like this example as a way to
explore a person's ability to ask good questions.

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Gustomaximus
Pose relevant practical problems for discussion vs more standard Q&A.Keep
questions broad as you want to give them room to show where their thinking
takes them.

E.g. When hiring a marketing role I'll give someone some campaign materials
before the interview (when they arrive so they don't discuss it with
friends/family) with instructions to tell me how they would improve this.
There's no correct answer but I want to see how they approach and consider
possibilities. I'm more interested in the 'why' they say something than the
what. Combine this with an Excel or relevant technology test and you should
have a good idea of if they can use critical thinking and logic to meet goals.
Another question I've used is what business in another industry do they think
is looking to change the market. Then challenge their views and see where they
go.

For soft skill roles basic logic is seriously under-rated. Also finding
someone that can look beyond the obvious. Look for someone that sees the world
differently, like a Karl Plinkerton, but with some more common sense of
course. I personally don't want hive-mind in a team. I want people that can
respectfully disagree at all levels, provide options but then crack on with
whatever decision is made. Its surprisingly hard to find this.

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apryldelancey
There are two things that clue me in - attention to detail and the ability to
follow directions. I give a test that has explicit instructions and it works
every time. The test has both math and non-math problems but is mostly
logical. The questions are more broad so that I can see their thought process.

I also weed candidates out immediately in the job description by throwing in a
sentence in the middle that instructs them to send their resume with the
subject line "entropy" or some other key word. When I get emails with resumes
I simply delete those that don't have the key word.

~~~
RogerL
I don't see how this measures analytical capabilities.

For example, people with mild ADHD will probably fair poorly on your tests.
Now, if you are hiring for something that requires profound attention to
detail (dispensing medicines in a hospital), keep on. If you are trying to
measure analytical abilities, you should try measuring that, not some proxy
that has little to do with analytical abilities.

(and the reverse also applies - I know people with great attention to detail
but that I wouldn't rate particularly highly on analytical skills).

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gonyea
Interviewing for abstract qualities is horse shit.

If they have paper experience (or a solid github), pick apart their decisions
and lessons from the experience. Look for strong opinions.

If they're "Jr" and have no paper experience, summarize some problem that your
company faces every day and ask them how they would solve it.

For Hacker News, that might be how they'd store a comment tree in the database
and how they'd render it to the user. Did they forsee any problems? Were they
self-aware and recognized what they didn't know?

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DrNuke
When applying for coding-related positions, you are usually given a language-
agnostic online test made of 3-5 tasks to be solved in 60-120 minutes. Not
sure it proves anything more than your ability to game the testing system but,
hey, that's what analytical skills are in their eminence.

