Question

A firm has found that their sales team’s performance has declined in recent years due to poorly-performing recent hires. A consultant has convinced them to give a personality screening test to avoid this in the future. The screening test has a series of 10 questions, each with two possible responses, one of which is considered a positive/right answer, and the other is considered a negative/wrong answer, where each positive/right answer suggests a personality aspect that bodes well for performance, while the negative/wrong answers suggest the opposite. A score of at least 7 right answers is required to pass the test.

Q1. After recruiting and testing 80 applicants in Baltimore, the firm is successful, in that 52 of them pass the test and are hired. In Pittsburgh, Mr. Vandelay’s historical numbers closely hold up, and 56 out of 100 applicants are hired. Can we say with 95% confidence that the recruiters in Baltimore did a better job of finding applicants likely to pass the test than the recruiters in Pittsburgh?

Answer 1