Appreciate your response and insider view, Evan! Certainly some nuances to consider here, and I'll keep your points in mind when I'm applying for these kinds of roles.

I'm glad to hear it resonates with you and others!

Right agreed - like hypothetically if you plotted a curve of [work test duration] and [employer/employee satisfaction ~6 months after the hire], where would you start to see that curve level off? I would bet it'd be a lot earlier than 7 hours (as long as hiring is still based on interviews etc)!

To your other comment about standardized tests, I think that's interesting. I don't know too much about where/when standardized tests are most effective when it comes to assessment in the working adult population. On the one hand, that would be pretty broad coordination with all the organizations, and there is such a broad skillset requirement dependent on roles. I think we'd know it's valuable if hiring orgs didn't do something in their hiring process, now that they had that assessment result for each candidate. But on the other hand, maybe there are some fundamentals like the ones you mention that could be a shorter path to screening. Another question for the recruiting folks!

Hi everyone thank you for your time and thoughts here.

Can you weigh in on work tests? I have done ~4 work tests now, and a role was posted that I was excited about that required a 7 hour (!) paid work test, and it's really diminished my motivation to apply there. I have my own opinions as a 15 year professional, but would love to get other views - both from hiring managers and job seekers. Full disclosure.... that 7 hour thing is hot on my mind and doesn't represent the typical length I've seen (more like 4). Also I value work tests - for both sides - everything below is about course correction for efficient interview effort vs hiring satisfaction, not direction changing away from work tests.

1 - 80k's book cites a big study where correlation between selection test and job performance is 0.54 (1st place) for Work Sample Tests, and 0.51 (3rd place) for Interviews (structured) - IQ test is 2nd. Not a huge gap, and neither very impressive overall. I understand prioritizing the best, but it seems an immense amount of priority is placed on tests vs interviews. Both employer and candidate put a ton of collective work into work test sampling - creating, doing, and assessing.

2 - I appreciate the payment that comes with most tests. I am lucky enough to be a) fully employed and b) not care too much about work test payment, and care more about my time. But 7 hours.. I'm kind of like jeesh... If you have a full time job (me) or a family (me) or just a lot going on in your life (everyone), 7 hours is two free nights, or a whole weekend day. It just seems overkill as a screening method, or even after a single screening call which is mostly what I see.

3 - I've never experienced work tests outside the impact space, but I also know that my (corporate non-impact) org which does a great job recruiting capable folks also does not use them - instead a combination of personality tests (which I have yet to see in the impact space) and interviews. Not saying it wouldn't improve with work tests being added in, but it seems like it can be effective without.

To me - emotionally - it just feels like some orgs are taking work test duration too far and dissuading capable folks from applying. Maybe it's meant as a scarecrow for the uncommitted. It has a flavor to me of SAT-testing elitism a little bit (which I admit isn't totally fair - these aren't standardized tests you can hire a tutor for) where it's a signal of seriousness. Could there be a university/academia-testing bias, given the impact space's educated demo? Or do experienced hiring managers really see efficient value in beefing up work tests like this? Or is there some unique challenge going on in impact work that requires this kind of selection? Is this different when it's an internal hiring team vs. consultant-driven? What about those of you that hire without work tests?

This may read as complaining, but I imagine there's a good case for cutting way down on work test duration and getting equivalent performance results out of your selected hire for less effort on everyone's part. Love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for the response!

Re: Chief of Staff.. most of the roles I've seen posted in the impact space over the past year seem to be a less-tactical (than an exec assistant) more-strategic direct report to a c-suite. For a "traditional" CoS that heads up people-functions, I've also seen role names like Chief People Officer (at my current org), and I have no doubt there are many other versions.

Chief of Staff as a role name seems like it has an unusually broad set of use cases, and yes I'd agree - anything with "Chief" in it sounds more prestigious. I balance that with the fact that the "non-traditional" version doesn't seem to really be a managerial position in a lot of cases but a high-level individual contributor. I'm not entirely sure that's the path for me personally, but I do see the allure (not just for prestige, but to be in ongoing high-level work with senior leadership). I do think that the non-traditional role I'm referring to here deserves a different kind of role name then CoS - its literal interpretation throws me off. 

Thank you for the experienced insights, Deena. 

I wanted to ask a couple questions here that might be relevant for others: When you think about the most senior operations folks, how would you describe their strategic strengths as they move up the hierarchy? I sort of imagine (an example of) growth from "keeping the website updated" to "partnering with CEO to match the future vision with the future of how the org can practically pull that off".

I've heard perspectives that Chiefs of Staff can also be framed not as people leaders, but as more strategic assistants to executives - their right hand so-to-speak. It sounds still like an ops-minded person has skills here, but perhaps different ones than managing employee performance and direct reports. Thoughts on that?