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Indeed, this is the major problem I have with the OPs comment. We're not looking for intelligence and using "performance of competence" as a proxy. We're looking for competence. It could be that intelligence is a better proxy for competence than our current tests, and almost certainly is true that an intelligence test is a better measure of intelligence than our current tests of competence are for competence (because competence is just harder to measure). But intelligence itself isn't usually what we're looking for.
I don't think I disagree. Competence is the most important thing, but it is also devilishly hard to pin down. That only gets harder when you need someone to demonstrate their competence before they get the job.
(And then you see person specifications asking for 5 years of experience in some React-knockoff that's only been out 2 years)
Unfortunately, there is often a massive, unavoidable delay between training for a job and getting a job. We want to know if someone will be a good surgeon before they hold a scalpel. How would you check if a 17 year old pre-med student will make for a good neurosurgeon if he won't do any neurosurgery for another 10 years?
That brings me back to the point that intelligence really is our most robust proxy. It's one of the few things in the psychometric literature that has resisted the replication crisis. It is still a proxy, and thus imperfect, but like democracy, it's the worst option except for all the others. If you want to go back to work-experience and trainability, we're going to need a lot more apprenticeships or internships. Those are much harder to scale than standardized tests.
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