One man’s job-seeking plight shows the contradiction of IQ discourse

I saw this going viral: I’ve applied to nearly 2,200 jobs and am ready to give up, by Kevin Cash, a 43-year-old Portland, Oregon resident:

I’ve been spending less time in front of my computer these days because I’m almost up to 2,200 job applications. With the results I’ve gotten, my plan at this point is to give up on the search.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of Uber driving and Taskrabbit. I’m just grateful they exist, because if it wasn’t for those things, I probably would have moved in with a friend by now or something.

It’s not surprising he was rejected so many times. The process of applying to jobs is increasingly Sisyphean. Or analogous to Dante’s Inferno, job seekers must cross concentric rings of ‘screening hell’, such as automated resume screening and phone interviews before applicants even have a chance to land an in-person interview, which leads to yet more rounds of screening and waiting. There is also pre-employment screening, such as cognitive tests (e.g. the Wonderlic, which despite Griggs is legal and widely used), personality tests and criminal background tests, all of which is assuming you pass the automated screening.

Moreover, ghosting applicants has become a widespread practice. Same for fake job listing. ‘Help wanted’ signs does not mean companies actually need work, but rather want a pool of potential applicants for a single or hypothetical position. Ghosting mitigates legal risk and is more efficient than having to send personalized rejection letters. It’s like there are two narratives: companies are soft or uncompetitive due to DEI, yet are cutthroat or impersonal everywhere else.

Fake listings helps to throw off competitors or even hedge funds. Some hedge fund use software to automatically parse job listings to try to glean insider information. If Walmart, for example, posts a listing for an ‘AI researcher’ this could indicate that Walmart may be branching out into AI, so a hedge fund may want to act on this information first by buying Walmart stock before Walmart makes the announcement public.

As the story went viral on Twitter, people attributed his failure for having the audacity of mentioning his Mensa membership. From @RobertMSterling:

He writes:

1. Nobody cares that you’re in the top 2% of the human IQ bell curve. It means you’re smarter (“smarter”) than 49 out of 50 people. Congrats, I guess? But it also means there could be 1,000 people smarter than you at the average Chicago Bears home game.

Note the contradiction: If nobody cares or if nobody is impressed, then why would it be an automatic disqualification or cringe? Despite being rejected thousands of times and driving for Uber, that this person may still be smarter than him, is an affront to his ego.

Also, mentioning Mensa in his author bio (of the aforelinked Business Insider article) does not mean he includes Mensa on his resume. There is no mention of Mensa on his LinkedIn profile or on his personal website.

Given also that job screening filters for intelligence, such as the use of the Wonderlic, as well as required credentials such as degrees, suggests that employers do put weight on intelligence, among other factors, contrary to what Twitter would have you believe. So I don’t see how mentioning Mensa would be an automatic disqualification.

Nassim Taleb weighs in, again, honing in on the Mensa part and ignoring the rest:

This shows the inherent cognitive dissonance of IQ discourse. These people want to convince themselves and the public that IQ is not important or that no one cares about IQ, yet their revealed preferences show otherwise. They they collectively spend a lot of energy, including writing entire Twitter-essays, about how much no one cares about IQ. It’s more important that people know without any inkling of a doubt that IQ does not matter, and that it’s always bad to have any pride in your IQ. So either they are hypocrites or the public actually does care about IQ (I think the latter).

I think it would be more productive to focus on what the author’s inability to find a job says about the labor market and the unrealistic expectations placed on job seekers, than having to go through the typical song and dance about IQ. If people who are genuinely smart are unable to find decent jobs, maybe the problem is not him but something else.