As a general rule of thumb, when several people send me a link to the same article or column, it is worth reading. A recent column by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times proved the wisdom of this approach yet again. Links to Friedman’s February 22 piece, “How to Get a Job at Google,” linked here, landed in my inbox throughout that Sunday and the next day, everyone recommended I read it. In his typically pithy and profound manner, Friedman provided an example of our changing world by citing another journalist’s interview with Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google, about the qualities his company looks for in applicants.
According to Bock, “G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don’t predict anything.” Bock said that Google looks for five attributes in its hiring process: general cognitive ability, leadership, ownership, humility, and expertise. In the process of Friedman’s column, Bock elaborates on these concepts and explains that he does not mean the traditional definition of these terms; for example, he defines “emergent leadership” as “...when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what’s critical to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power.” Similarly, humility does not mean merely modesty; on the contrary, Bock calls for an “intellectual humility” that allows one to learn from failure. Of the five attributes, Friedman says, “The least important attribute they [Google] look for is ‘expertise’.” According to Bock, expertise can actually be confining and inhibiting while someone with emergent leadership and intellectual humility can find a solution that may elude everyone else.
I read Friedman’s column the same week National Public Radio’s Morning Edition carried a story on a new report that proved what many educators have thought for a long time, but now there is data to confirm: the lack of correlation between tests like the SAT or ACT and success in college. The report, linked here, titled “Defining Promise: Optional Standardized Testing Policies in American College and University Admissions,” was written by Former Dean of Admissions William C. Hiss and Former Assistant Dean of Admissions Valerie W. Franks of Bates College in Maine. Hiss and Franks compared the college grades of students who submitted their SAT/ACT scores versus those who did not share their scores at test-optional schools. In their study, they reported the following: “Few significant differences between submitters and non-submitters of testing were observed in cumulative GPAs and graduation rates, despite significant differences in SAT/ACT scores.” Working with high school students for over 25 years has allowed me to see this anecdotally; it was nice to have it affirmed now quantitatively.
So, for those of us working in high schools, what do we teach our students? Combining the hiring practices of Google with this most recent study on the unreliability of standardized test scores would indicate that we need to help our students learn how to learn rather than focus on what to learn. More and more, the process of learning outweighs the product; we want our students to be intellectually curious, hungry, and have the skills to lead others. They need to have the confidence to be okay with being ignorant in some areas but be nimble and flexible to make up for any “stuff” that they may not know. In an era where learning is 24/7 and an interrelated world where geographic location is meaningless, what you know means less than how you know. To close with Friedman, “Beware. Your degree is not a proxy for your ability to do any job. The world only cares about — and pays off on — what you can do with what you know (and it doesn't care how you learned it). And in an age when innovation is increasingly a group endeavor, it also cares about a lot of soft skills — leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn. This will be true no matter where you go to work.”
