PXT Select Mathematics

Robin addresses one of the most asked questions about the PXT Select: “what’s the deal with all this math?!” Learn why the mathematical sections are an important to the assessment.

What’s the deal with all this math?

In this video, I’m going to be talking about the mathematical sections of the PXT Select.  It’s one of the most asked questions that I receive.  What’s the deal with all this math?  

There’s good reason to include this, even if you don’t have a lot of formulas or calculations in the position.  So, I want to talk about why that is and how to use the information.

Thinking Style

The mathematical sections are an important part of your thinking style.  

The thinking style is measuring a candidate’s understanding of the relationship between concepts, the ability to problem-solve and to communicate that knowledge to others.  

It’s not that one score is better than another, because different positions require different levels of these skills and abilities.  

When we think about the extent to which learning, processing information, problem-solving impacts our work, we can clearly see the connection.  

For example, if we had a very redundant position, but we had a person in that role who is very adept at processing information quickly, problem solving, strategic thinking — they could get very bored and that more routine work.  

Or, if we had a very technical position that required higher levels of this ease of processing and communicating, but we had someone who was not as fast or as good at keeping up with that pace…

You can see the disconnect and the challenges there that would potentially impact the productivity and production in a negative way.  

In fact, research tells us that there is a high correlation between success and the job when we can match this cognitive piece to that of the work.  

You can see this clearly documented in this study, where several aspects are shown here and you can see how cognitive ability really stands out.

Measuring It

So, now that we know both intuitively and objectively the importance of this piece, the question becomes how do we measure it?  

There are essentially five ways that we reason:

• kinesthetic
• spatial
• music
• language
• numeric

In the workplace we are heavily leaning towards the language and numerical abilities.  

When we think about those two, we know that numeric areas are much more universally understood without a need for any kind of translation.  

When we are looking at the thinking style pieces in the assessment, it’s not because we’re trying to understand how good or bad a person is in math or language.  

It’s because we have specifically chosen this approach to understand and measure a person’s ability to learn, reason, problem-solve and communicate; which, we know, has high correlation to success on the job.

Recap

That’s the deal with the math!  

Trust me, it wasn’t my favorite part of the assessment to complete; but you can see the value and significance of this information.  

It’s a key piece to understanding how a person is going to be able to perform in their role based on their cognitive pace.