If I’m being honest, I thought I’d seen it all when it came to resumes. I’ve had people cite their love for Sudoku, mention their short-lived TikTok fame, or even provide a color-coded graph of their time management. But this time, while on the hunt for a new data analyst, I was thrown a curveball: an IQ score.
Hold on. I can hear the collective groans. Why would I, or any hiring manager for that matter, care about someone’s IQ? Isn’t it all a bit… snobbish? Old-fashioned? Maybe even irrelevant?
Bear with me.
1. Breaking The Mold
When you’ve scanned through a thousand resumes, they start to blend into one big data soup (pun intended). Bachelor’s, Master’s, interned here, worked there. Then, out pops this candidate, waving his IQ score like a flag. It got my attention, not because I was in awe of the number, but because it was so darn audacious.
2. Behind the Number
Let’s clear the air. I didn’t shortlist this candidate just because of a high IQ score. But it made me think: what kind of person lists their IQ on a professional resume? Someone who thinks differently, isn’t afraid to be judged, and probably has a good reason behind it.
3. Intuition vs. Institution
Sure, big-name universities are impressive. But sometimes, the institutional style of learning can limit a person’s intuitive and cognitive growth. An IQ score, while not a definitive measure of one’s capability, at least gives a hint towards their natural propensity for problem-solving.
4. The Human Aspect
Let’s face it: hiring decisions are seldom purely about credentials. They’re about gut feelings, connections, and those tiny quirks that make a candidate memorable. In this sea of sameness, the mention of an IQ score was a quirk that made me ponder about the person behind the paper.
5. What's the Downside?
If everything else on the resume checked out (which it did), what was the harm in bringing this candidate in? At worst, I’d meet someone with an interesting story about why they decided to put that score on their resume.
To wrap it up, I didn’t hire this person because of their IQ test result. I hired them because their decision to include it made me consider their potential from a unique angle. In the world of data, where thinking outside the box is the name of the game, I felt it was a gamble worth taking.
