# Where to start instead: understand the role

- **Episode:** [04](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/04.md) (2022-07-19)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** role-understanding, hiring, job-analysis
- **Time:** 4:41–6:56 (start 281s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/04?t=281](https://truthliesandwork.com/04?t=281)

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[4:41] Al Elliott: Before we go any further, can you just give us an idea of, for people like me who don't really understand what predictors are, so can you give an example of a predictor?
[4:50] Leanne Elliott: Yeah. So, job interviews, for example, are a predictor. It's a recruitment method that is predictive of future work performance. So, in its most simple terms, if a candidate performs well at interview, then that's going to predict a certain percentage of how well they're going to perform on the job
[5:08] Al Elliott: Right. Okay
[5:10] Leanne Elliott: And so, you were saying that culture is potentially a predictor, but it's nowhere near as important as people are putting Culture fit is a predictor, but as I mentioned then, each predictor has different levels of variance in terms of how predictive it is. So, we think about, if, you know, in an ideal world, we'd take a candidate through a process and be able to 100% predict with confidence that because they performed well in that process, they're going to 100% perform well on the job. It's not quite that straightforward because people are complicated, they have free will, behaviours change, context, etc. So, we can only assign a certain percentage of predictability. Okay. to each of these methods. In terms of the most predictive and consistently found to be the most predictive or the best predictor of job performance is general mental ability or IQ. And that's predictive of about 42% of future job performance. If we compare that to other methods such as employment interviews, which is very, very popular, that's about 34%. Then we get into the more nitty-gritty, some psychometrics, integrity tests, for example, is about 21%. Certain personality inventories are about 10%
[6:18] Al Elliott: Okay
[6:20] Leanne Elliott: So it drops further and further. Culture fit is on the list. However, it accounts for less than 2% of future job performance
[6:29] Al Elliott: So if I've understood this correctly, then if I was to recruit 100 people based on culture fit alone and nothing else, then only 2 of them are likely to pan out for me because there's a 2
[6:40] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[6:42] Al Elliott: Whereas if I predicted 100 people based on— what was the top one you just mentioned?
[6:48] Leanne Elliott: General mental ability or IQ
[6:49] Al Elliott: Okay. So, if you always predict on IQ, then you're saying that out of those 100, 54 would work out?
[6:55] Leanne Elliott: 42
[6:56] Al Elliott: Sorry, 42
[6:56] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, roughly half. Half of the candidates who perform well in general mental ability are going to perform well in the job, roughly. It's not quite that straightforward, but it's an idea of kind of the power of that method in terms of predicting future performance of candidates that is the most reliable