Chinese outsourcer seeks U.S. workers with IQ of 125 and up

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Paul Saffo <paul () saffo com>
> Date: July 10, 2010 2:04:35 PM EDT
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Chinese outsourcer seeks U.S. workers with IQ of 125 and up

>  Now, here is a weird one from Computerworld.  Wants Americans with 125 IQ, but Chinese have to be 140 IQ. And note 
> the part where CS degrees are on the decline in the US, but on the rise in China.
> -p
>
> Chinese outsourcer seeks U.S. workers with IQ of 125 and up
> Bleum Inc. sets IQ threshold at 140 for its hires in China, however
> Patrick Thibodeau
>  
> July 7, 2010 (Computerworld)
> A Chinese IT outsourcing company that has started hiring new U.S. computer science graduates to work in Shanghai 
> requires prospective job candidates to demonstrate an IQ of 125 or above on a test it administers to sort out job 
> applicants.
> In doing so, Bleum Inc. is following a hiring practice it applies to college recruits in China. But a new Chinese 
> college graduate must score an IQ of 140 on the company's test.
> An IQ test is the first screen for any U.S. or Chinese applicant.
> The lower IQ threshold for new U.S. graduates reflects the fact that the pool of U.S. talent available to the company 
> is smaller than the pool of Chinese talent, Bleum said.
> In China, Bleum receives thousands of applications weekly, said CEO Eric Rongley. Rongley is a U.S. citizen who 
> founded Bleum in 2001; his career prior to that included stints working in offshore development in India and later in 
> China.
> The company employs about 1,000 and hires about 1% or less of the people who apply for jobs there. "It is much harder 
> to get into Bleum than it is to Harvard," Rongly said.
> Shanghai-based Bleum has been recruiting new computer engineering graduates in the Atlanta, Chicago and Denver areas. 
> If a student meets the minimum requirement on an IQ test, he then take a skills test, similar to the hiring process 
> Bleum follows in China.
> Bleum has already hired its first U.S. recruits -- a group of five people who left for Shanghai this month, said 
> Rongley. They will work in China for year and then return to the U.S. to work.
> Many employers do measure intelligence to cull candidates from pools of applicants, but they typically call the exams 
> aptitude tests, said Dennis Garlick, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, and 
> author of an upcoming book called Intelligence and the Brain.
> An IQ of 140 is extremely high, representing about the top 1% of the population, said Garlick. But he said that even 
> though some studies have shown a correlation between IQ and job performance, IQ is a "crude assessment tool" when it 
> comes to sorting out job applicants.
> IQ tests tend be inaccurate at the upper end of the scale as the questions become more complex and it becomes 
> "debatable what is a correct answer," he said.
> IQ is also an indirect measure of job performance; a high IQ doesn't necessarily mean a worker will achieve a certain 
> level in job performance, "because an IQ test measures abstract reasoning in a general context, and on-the-job 
> performance requires abstract reasoning in a specific context," said Garlick.
> But for a person who does score high on an IQ test, "you can reasonably say that the person is likely to be able to 
> understand typical abstract concepts as they are applied in business, understand instructions, follow them, and then 
> generalize them in a new situation," said Garlick.
> Mark Finocchario, national director for recruiting at the Eliassen Group, said that his IT staffing and recruiting 
> firm in Wakefield, Mass., administers technical skill tests, but not IQ tests, for some clients. The importance of 
> the skill tests varies depending on the client. Most clients view the skill tests as academic and rely mostly his 
> firm's assessment of a candidate's experience. "Experience is huge," he said.
> For its own employees, Eliassen uses what it calls an EQ test, which measures how an employee may operate in a 
> stressful environment, as well as their sense of social responsibility to the team, said Finocchario. The EQ test 
> "provides a measuring stick on how someone will adjust," he said.
> Rongley believes that higher-IQ IT workers are more productive. "The point is not that they are typing faster, but 
> they are finding a faster solution to the technical problem," said Rongley.
> Moreover, unlike many of the larger IT offshore development companies, Bleum is focused on long-term engagements with 
> its clients, not on one-time projects. Over time, it hopes to hire 100 to 500 U.S. workers to help support North 
> American customers.
> China's technology labor force is largely young; the massive government ramp-up in science and engineering education 
> is a recent development, and the labor force doesn't yet have a broad pool of people with deep experience in 
> technical disciplines. By seeking high-IQ employees, "we're compensating for the experience gap," said Rongley.
> He also said said that the number of students seeking computer science degrees, which has dipped in the U.S., is on 
> the rise in China.
> "China has a much larger talent pool than India does, and it has much less demand for that talent," said Rongley, who 
> added that the number of new computer science graduates each year is about 300,000.
> India dominates the offshore outsourcing industry, helped by the fact that it has a large English-speaking 
> population. The largest Indian IT vendors have in excess of 100,000 employees.
> The impact of China's larger talent pool may be evident in an international coding contest conducted annually by 
> TopCoder Inc., a Glastonbury, Conn.-based software development service.
> Last year, about 4,200 people took part in this coding competition, which includes events such as algorithm-writing 
> contests. Of the 70 finalists, 20 were from China, 10 from Russia and two from the U.S. The top winner was Chinese. 
> The contest is sponsored in part by the National Security Agency.
> Bleum has a policy of requiring its employees to speak English, and many of its hires have already been through 
> English-language programs widely taught in the schools. The company uses a system of levels for marking capability 
> with English, with the highest level reserved for those who achieve accent neutralization, said Rongley.
> "In China, for a long time now, anyone from eighth grade and above is being taught English," said Rongley. However, 
> what those students don't have is an opportunity to practice, he noted, adding, "We create the environment for them 
> to practice all the time."
> Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT 
> workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at  @DCgov, or subscribe to Patrick's RSS feed . His 
> e-mail address ispthibodeau () computerworld com.
> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9178913/Chinese_outsourcer_seeks_U.S._workers_with_IQ_of_125_and_up



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