Is Hiring Broken? (rajivprab.com) 397
DevNull127 writes: Hiring is broken and yours is too," argues a New York-based software developer whose LinkedIn profile says he's worked at both Amazon and Google, as well as doing architecture verification work for both Oracle and Intel. Summarizing what he's read about hiring just this year in numerous online articles, he lists out the arguments against virtually every popular hiring metric, ultimately concluding that "Until and unless someone does a rigorous scientific study evaluating different interviewing techniques, preferably using a double-blind randomized trial, there's no point in beating this dead horse further. Everyone's hiring practices are broken, and yours aren't any better."
For example, as a Stanford graduate he nonetheless argues that "The skills required for getting into Stanford at 17 (extracurriculars, SAT prep etc) do not correlate to job success as a software developer. How good a student you were at 17, is not very relevant to who you are at 25." References are flawed because "People will only ever list references who will say good things about them," and they ultimately punish people who've had bad managers. But asking for source code from past sides projects penalizes people with other interests or family, while "most work product is confidential."
Brain teasers "rely on you being lucky enough to get a flash of inspiration, or you having heard it before," and are "not directly related to programming. Even Google says it is useless." And live-coding exercises are "artificial and contrived," and "not reflective of practical coding," while pair programming is unrealistic, with the difficulty of the tasks varying from day to day.
He ultimately criticizes the ongoing discussion for publicizing the problems but not the solutions. "How exactly should we weigh the various pros and cons against each other and actually pick a solution? Maybe we could maybe try something novel like data crunch the effectiveness of each technique, or do some randomized experiments to measure the efficacy of each approach? Lol, j/k. Ain't nobody got time for that!"
For example, as a Stanford graduate he nonetheless argues that "The skills required for getting into Stanford at 17 (extracurriculars, SAT prep etc) do not correlate to job success as a software developer. How good a student you were at 17, is not very relevant to who you are at 25." References are flawed because "People will only ever list references who will say good things about them," and they ultimately punish people who've had bad managers. But asking for source code from past sides projects penalizes people with other interests or family, while "most work product is confidential."
Brain teasers "rely on you being lucky enough to get a flash of inspiration, or you having heard it before," and are "not directly related to programming. Even Google says it is useless." And live-coding exercises are "artificial and contrived," and "not reflective of practical coding," while pair programming is unrealistic, with the difficulty of the tasks varying from day to day.
He ultimately criticizes the ongoing discussion for publicizing the problems but not the solutions. "How exactly should we weigh the various pros and cons against each other and actually pick a solution? Maybe we could maybe try something novel like data crunch the effectiveness of each technique, or do some randomized experiments to measure the efficacy of each approach? Lol, j/k. Ain't nobody got time for that!"
Hiring is not broken (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting hired is very simple: get a job through contacts, not through ads posted by some recruitment manager or whatever. If the company needs to advertise to get staff, they're probably not a very good company.
Re:Hiring is not broken (Score:5, Insightful)
get a job through contacts
Do you seriously not see the problem with that old-boys network method of hiring?
Re: (Score:2)
Talk to which people? (Score:2)
Its easy to get contacts, just talk to people.
I'll take an educated guess that by "people" you do not mean random people off the street. The hard part of getting contacts, especially if you are the only IT specialist in an organization, is finding the most appropriate "people" to whom to talk. What steps might one take to identify these people?
Professional organizations, Meetup, Facebook group (Score:5, Interesting)
I have three groups I meet with regularly outside of my employer.
I'm in IT security, so the groups I spend time with will be a little different than yours, but you can use mine as examples and figure out what is analogous for you.
You may have heard of the OWASP Top 10. Anybody working wtih web applications in any way should know them. There is an OWASP chapter in town and I attend regularly.
The premier certification in my field is the CISSP, sponsored by an organization known as ISC2. There is an ISC2 chapter here. I show up to the monthly meetings.
There is a local group called Dallas Hackers Association, which can be found on meeting.com. I show up there too and mingle.
Each of these groups has someone speak each month. I'm getting my presentation ready. I'll have over 100 of my peers learning from me, with me in the role of expert on that month's topic.
The IETF (internet engineering task force) creates internet standards. They have working groups for many different topics. I used to be active in the IETF authentication and authorization working group, helping to set security standards for the web.
The latter is particularly good because I was working not with local people, but with people like Vint Cerf, known as "the father of the internet". I regularly debated with Daniel J Bernstein. Working with these people upped my game.
When I was a Perl programmer I participated in the open development process of the Perl programming language, with Perl creator Larry Wall. One day at work someone asked in the company chat "who here is a Perl guru?" My response:
I don't know about *guru*. I'm no Larry Wall, but I did have a conversation with him this morning. Maybe I can help you?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you seriously not see the problem with that old-boys network method of hiring?
Call it what you like,it won't ever make it any less true.
Let's say I have a job and I have a really good colleague. An "old boy" if you like, regardless presumably of gender. Things change and we go our separate ways. Fast forward a few years and we're hiring and I hear that old boy is in the market for a job.
Of course I try to recruit "him" because I know 100% "he" can do the job and do it well. An person I don't know is a ri
Re: (Score:2)
Or they could've slacked off in the last couple of years and never updated their skills. Hiring through friends is particularly bad because you have an established relationship that is increasingly positive over time (people forget the negative rather quickly) and then you probably end up breaking that relationship when they're not the right fit for the job.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hiring is not broken (Score:5, Interesting)
There is the same principle that doesn't work though.
I have a friend who worked at a company, and they hired a contract project manager who then aftre deciding they needed more staff went about hiring her old chums in positions. They were all useless and drove the company to scrapo the project, but they all got paid handsomely and apparently go from company to company like a bunch of locusts.
now sure you can say "only hire the good PMs" but that's never a given, particulaly as the worst ones are the ones who are best at lying and making you want to hire them.
IIRC the Romans had this system down pat - when someone was hired on your say, it was your reputation on the line. If they were useless, you got the black mark, so it was only ever in your interest to promote the best people, but that relies on your reputation being used to hire you in the first place too. Our random hiring practices off some job ad on the internet made all that obsolete.
Re:Hiring is not broken (Score:4, Interesting)
The nearest approximation of that for an experienced hire is contractor, where, at the end of the contract, you decide whether to bring the person on full-time. My company doesn't use contractors for software dev, so I've never tried it. I imagine that the problem would be that during the contract period, I really don't want the person working on anything mission critical, in case they aren't as good as their resume suggests. We use most intern projects, but many do get trashed when the intern leaves... does it make financial sense to pay experienced hire wages and have them work on minor features and bug fixes for three months? I think so, but it would be a hard argument to make with management.
So, instead, when evaluating experienced hires, I just do what the rest of industry does: read the resumes, talk to them a bit, and roll the dice.
Re:Hiring is not broken (Score:5, Insightful)
get a job through contacts
Do you seriously not see the problem with that old-boys network method of hiring?
All methods have some problems. But you have to network.
I think you conflate networking and establishing contacts with criminal groups. It isn't, unless you are already a criminal, and are lookingfor a small subset of criminals to network with. But the world is not going to beat a path to your door if you think you just show up for work, and not interact with anyone all day.
And once you establish a good network, be it good old boys or good old gals, if you are good at what you do, you'll get good offers rather than seek them out.
Let's say you are looking for a new person to work on a critical project. Who are you going to hire - Someone that is a known quantity and recommended by your circles, or someone you have no idea about? As well, I've been around long enough to know that there are people who interview well, but suck once hired.
As noted, there can be problems with any method of picking candidates.But here's your problem. It ends up preventing people who need to hire someone from asking others "I need a good person that knows (fill in the need). Anyone you can recommend?" That my friend, is how networking functions at it's base level. The meme of old men sitting in overstuffed chairs, smoking cigars and drinking scotch is silly. I've taken on work that way, and hired that way. The problem with crap shooting methods is that you get a known quantity with the networking.
Work hard, be value added, and eschew insularity. Establish your network and go places.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Hiring is not broken (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem of hiring through contacts is that it almost inevitably biases the system in favor of the gender and racial background of the person doing the hiring. Many Fortune 500 companies won't even allow for recommendations from employees because it can easily become a problem that runs afoul of equal opportunity laws. It isn't illegal, but it is risky. It can be done in a legal way, but it takes a very special manager to be gender and racially blind when pulling in known contacts.
Can you imagine a workplace where the most important thing is skin pigmentation or the genital equipment between a person's legs? That sounds inherently racist and sexist.
Anyhow, quiz time - you have a top notch programmer and an average one applying for a job. You have a vagina/skin/ pigmentation/gender quota to meet, as well as a deadline.
The top notch programmer is a penis wielding guy of middle african descent, with dark pigmentation. The average programmer is sporting a vagina, and is of Northern European descent.
Who do you hire? Now exchange the male of african descent with say, me. a middle aged white male of multiple ancestries, all what racists call "white". I'm also of the same level of competency.
Who do you hire in this case?
Keeping in mind that there are questions you dare not ask, and your supervisor said your job depends on getting that project out the door.
Okay, sorry for the grilling.
Now here's the surprise. There are women in my network. They are people I've worked with or known or been told about. And we don't refer to them as "sporting a vagina" because they are competent, good hires who can work with people. They are not there because of their genitalia.
And we all work together to make certain we are all working at the right places. Which usually isn't a sexist genitalia focused place. Which might sound odd, but these top notch ladies like to know they are working somewhere because they are top notch, not because they have female sexual apparatus.
Re: Hiring is not broken (Score:3)
Re: Hiring is not broken (Score:3)
No you dont have to network. My friends are completely seperate from my job - I dont keep i touch with anyone from past jobs or contracts, just not interested. But Ive yet to be out of work not out of choice for more than 4 months in 25 years in IT.
Re: Hiring is not broken (Score:3)
Im not a sad bastard like you who clearly links his self worth to his job title. I make a nice living from contracting thanks without having to put up with any MBA BS.
Re: (Score:3)
Get a life loser.
Re: (Score:2)
As an employee of a small local business, how would I go about building contacts through this business?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
1. I work in a major metropolis with literally thousands of potential employers. Am I supposed to be limited to the small fraction of employers in which I have personal contacts? I don't care how large your network is you are going to writing off the vast majority of potential jobs in this scenario.
2. What if I need to relocate to another part of the country where I don't have many contacts? Should I be locked out of the market just because I haven't lived in an area for t
Re:Hiring is not broken (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why it's vitally important to choose the right parents.
Re:Hiring is not broken (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why it's vitally important to choose the right parents.
Well, that gives a person an excuse anyhow.
Perhaps I'm the exception that proves that rule, but I had some impressively humble beginnings. As in outhouse instead of bathroom, no indoor plumbing, take a bath in a washtub type beginnings.
I've risen quite a bit over that. Kinda driven, rely on myself - but I do network, and I don't worry about the gilded (or should they be gelded?) offspring of the wealthy. They can have their money, I'm more worried about mine.
Re: (Score:2)
Getting hired is very simple: get a job through contacts, not through ads posted by some recruitment manager or whatever. If the company needs to advertise to get staff, they're probably not a very good company.
Companies must advertise openings, even if no candidate ever gets a job by responding to the ad. Otherwise they can be accused of discrimination.
Re: (Score:3)
Recommend checking with your legal counsel - there are federal employment laws that kick in at the 50 employee and 500 employee level regardless of whether your firm is closely held or publicly traded.
Re: Hiring is not broken (Score:4, Informative)
Cite the law
You should ask a lawyer this question.
I'm assuming that you're misusing the word law here to mean statute, in which case there isn't a statute that says that. But over a certain number of employees you're supposed to have success at not discriminating in practice, which means that the law that would be cited would be a whole ream of case law and precedent that is inappropriate for including in a general discussion.
Your lawyer can explain why it is that in effect you must advertise the position, not only advertise it but to do so carefully with input from your legal team, because you will not actually succeed in hiring a diverse technical workforce if you have that many employees. And so why you failed is everything. Everything.
This will remain true until we live in a more perfect world.
Re:Hiring is not broken (Score:4, Interesting)
That works fine if you are in an area where your line of business is the predominate business line. Software in San Francisco, for example. ... not so much if you are doing something that is more rare in your area. In my case, most of my business contacts live in other areas, so unless I am willing to relocate, I am not going to find much through my contacts. I have a very few in my area, but none of them are looking for my skillset, and not likely to be anytime soon as people in jobs in my area tend to stay there. I have lived in the Washington D.C. area in the past, and yes... there you are correct. There are lots of jobs and my contacts were then all local.
My last several jobs were remote, but it's hard to find remote jobs without going through the broken hiring process. I saw some posting on LinkedIn a while back from some hiring manager who said if she didn't receive a thank you note from the candidate in the next few days, she threw the resume in the trash. I am now a CTO of my own company, and I posted that if she worked for me, I would fire her on the spot. That comment lit up the comment section like you wouldn't believe. Most posting that they were glad I had the nerve to post that. I don't care about such posts, but it shows how frustrated and helpless people feel.
Re: Hiring is not broken (Score:2)
Re: Hiring is not broken (Score:2)
...he lists out (italics mine)
While hiring may or may not be broken; the ability to speak is certainly withering away...
Re: Hiring is not broken (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I read a lot. Especially about things... about history. I find that shit fascinating.
It's from that one, isn't it?
Re: Hiring is not broken (Score:3)
Been in my current company almost five years. Didnâ(TM)t know a soul in the company. Didnâ(TM)t know a soul in the city. Didnâ(TM)t know a soul in the state. Iâ(TM)ve been promoted twice. Despite being a fairly average person with no real special skills, and not even remotely a rock star, it seems to have worked out just fine. I make over $100K/year with a mortgage payment under $1000 with no money down (i.e I am not in San Fransisco or similar shit hole).
I recently hired 3 engineers (Score:5, Interesting)
as part of my tech support team, and they turned out to be great assets. How did I do it? Here's how:
- They were NOT on Linkedin - and generally avoided social media. They applied directly, and were not referred to me by a shitty recruitment agency.
- They claimed to speak French and Spanish (2 requirements in my company) and to master Unix. I interviewed them in French and in Spanish, and I gave them a simple task to do in a shell session. Nothing complicated, just find and delete files with a certain name pattern in a directory full of 2 million files. You'd be susprised how many people fail this test after they do a "ls" that doesn't work.
Is hiring broken? Hell no! It works for me, with simple, no-nonsense criteria and real human contact. Is social media-based hiring broken? Probably, since social media is an abortion of a model for real social interaction...
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with your test is that the applicant has no way to check the landscape before going in and potentially clobbering a crucial file because his regexp was less than perfect (unless you think that typing 'rm "some random regexp"' into a directory you have not seen the contents of is a good idea). I wouldn't try to do this IRL without having a good way to actually see what's in the directory first.
Plus, your mini-test is just as contrived as any fizzbuzz.
Re: (Score:2)
Were these sanitation engineers? Any position that hires based on shell commands should not have that title.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm betting they would also hire someone who turned to Google for a solution after "ls" failed
Even if only to see how the candidate diagnoses a problem with the Internet connection on the testing computer.
Re: (Score:3)
The days of memorizing solutions to problems is over.
I actually agree with you in general.
But this is an elementary sort of task. I would be watching how they did it. If they just want to lookup the syntax for find, no problem. If they said they had a few years experience and searched “how do I delete files with a pattern”, then what do they actually have experience doing?
Re: (Score:3)
It is broken for the same reason many things are (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't want to spend money on it. That's why.
Oh, we spend money on headhunters and hiring bonuses, allright. Which is about the most insane thing possible. Think about it: We give people money to hire someone for us whose only interest is to find someone with the least amount of effort and as fast as possible, with zero information how that someone even fits the existing personnel. Now how could that go wrong?
Hiring is usually then handed to HR. The one department that doesn't even know what the person to be hired should know. That way you then get webdesigners when you're looking for malware analysts ("He said he can do VB and JS, that's computer languages, simply teach him some ASM, what is your problem?").
And all that when looking for people who you need to train for 3-6 months to be productive, only to find out that they'll never be because you hired the wrong people. Do I have to tell you what that costs? Aside of crippling your workforce for that 3-6 months, too, because you need to put at least half a person aside for training?
Hiring a new person can accumulate costs that reach the 100k. But we don't even want to invest the 10k it would take to find the right person by asking the only people who could sensible decide whether or not a candidate is suitable: The people you already have doing that job.
Re:It is broken for the same reason many things ar (Score:5, Insightful)
Hiring is broken - what a dumb statement. You can say the same for anything and people will pretty much agree, and it's always been the case. Politics is broken - as true today as it was 50 years ago. Our education system is broken - same thing. Public safety is broken, our economy is broken, our cities are broken. These statements are meaningless because they will always find people to agree with them because they are actually content-free.
Click bait is click bait. Anything dealing with people making decisions is going to be flawed. News at 11.
Trying to remove humans from the decision process will just produce a new set of flawed decisions. Welcome to reality, where there are no perfect solutions, where who you know counts for as much as what you know, and all so-called solutions are just going to be sub-optimal - and everyone is going to claim their way is better because it's in their self-interest to say as much, rather than "we're muddling through."
Re:It is broken for the same reason many things ar (Score:5, Interesting)
So your HR department may have come up with requirements and procedures which are effective at preventing a bad employee from being hired. But those same requirements and procedures may also screen out an Albert Einstein from being hired (he ended up working as a patent clerk).
The only method I've been able to think of to test if an HR department is truly being effective is to occasionally secretly send in fake job applicants whose backgrounds are perfect for a job. If HR recommends hiring them, then you know their type II error rate is low. If HR rejects their resume, or flunks them at the interview stage, then you know your HR department is just making crap up about applicants to justify shrinking the applicant pool.
Defining the Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Most hiring managers can't even adequately describe the problem they're trying to solve via hiring, much less assess candidates' ability to solve those problems. 'The best person for the job', 'hardest worker', 'good fit with existing employees/company culture' are typical hiring justifications, but are hopelessly vaguely-defined.
And of course it's impossible to scientifically study ability for a hire to match those criteria, it's like throwing darts blindfolded at a wall with jello dripping down it: even if you hit, the dart won't stop the jello from running down (tortured metaphor or insight? you decide).
Google not only admitted that brain teasers are useless; they eventually admitted that they found no correlation between ANY hiring criterion and job performance. That does raise the question of how they validate their job performance metrics themselves; maybe it doesn't correlate to anything because the metrics themselves are useless. Which brings us back to hiring being an art rather than a science; and just as in art, no one can agree on what is considered 'good.'
Re: (Score:3)
The hiring process is only ever going to be able to filter out bad candidates. The good ones will only be proven in the long term, and their value depends a great deal on the company and their manager anyway. If it's a bad place to work with bad bosses then no-one is going to thrive in that environment.
Another big issue is salary. For many jobs the company doesn't want the best person, they want someone who can do certain tasks and who will accept a certain, usually low wage. Most don't seem employees as as
Re: (Score:2)
Thats the part of looking back over a persons education can show.
Did they study? Could they study? Show an interest in passing exams?
Years of education sorts the average and below average from the people who have the ability to learn.
Re "they see them as costs"
Thats why sorting people before they are accepted to "work" is so important.
The ability to work. To make a profit. To get work done on time. To the standard that was set out.
A very
Re: (Score:2)
Google not only admitted that brain teasers are useless; they eventually admitted that they found no correlation between ANY hiring criterion and job performance.
Employee performance in a role is affected by a large number of external factors. I have seen employees that were difficult to work with and not productive on one team that were model employees when moved to a different team with a new manager.
It's not hiring that's broken. The interview process should do two things: Confirm that the person actual
Re: (Score:2)
Re: I've never worked for a software engineer ever (Score:2)
...because effective people and project management is an actual skill that many software engineers do not have, and are not passionate to learn.
Re: (Score:3)
From TFA (Score:3, Informative)
There are idiots present in every university. Yes, even at Stanford
Why yes, star football or baseball players who get grants just because they can play football or baseball...
Re: (Score:3)
The football and basketball players are talented and work hard to be better.
So? Basket weavers work hard and are talented, and generally more useful to society. The majority of sportsball majors will, after graduation, spend a large part of their working day asking "Do you want fries with that?"
Re: (Score:2)
Many football and basketball players were total asses towards hard-working geeks, so that door swings both ways.
I say "were" because they stop being such assholes, or at least having as many opportunities, after everyone graduates and the geeks are the ones with the jobs that pay.
In high school and college, many still have some growing-up left to do. Older people can't use that excuse.
Re: (Score:3)
Not really. Most university sports are a money LOSER for a University. Especially football.
Unless you are upper division of the top tier (D1) then that is true of all sports. In that top tier however, Football is a huge cash cow that pays for the entire athletic department (with an assist from Basketball). The difference is TV money. Until then its a nice thing to allow students to do.
It's broken, but not that way (Score:5, Interesting)
Essentially we're talking about secretaries reading requirement lists and applying them in a completely inflexible nature, not really understanding the convertibility and how related other skills can be. Have a few months short of the required 2 years of experience in something? No interview for you. Experience in something very closely related where the skills easily transfer over? No interview for you either. A lot of experience in the field, but not the exact languages, APIs or technologies on the sheet of requirements? Nope, 'cause in our minds none of that is applicable.
In the end what's happened is that to minimise the amount of management time spent on recruitment they're ended up outsourcing much of the recruitment process to people who just don't understand the jobs they're recruiting for. Additionally when they apply the requirements sheets with zero flexibility of understanding of the job they're hiring for they've also caused employers to get the impression that there's a huge deficit of engineers and programmers in my country. This of course hasn't driven up wages or anything like that, it's only driven up demands for loosening up immigration laws.
Re:It's broken, but not that way (Score:5, Insightful)
This is spot on. Ultimately, the only way to truly hire the right person is to get the team thought leader* in a conversation with the candidates. Given three strong candidates, the thought leader can tell you in an afternoon which of them will be the best fit.
The problem is how to find strong candidates. You can't just send all candidates to the thought leader, they're busy being a thought leader.
The answer is probably to be _less detailed_ in the job requirements. Since those are going to be used as a filter by people who can't tell what is and isn't important, simply don't list any two technologies or skills that describe the same thing you're looking for.
Example: programming languages. Don't list the language you need by name as a requirement, list knowing _multiple_ languages as the requirement. It goes without saying to never list a particular version or rev of a language. Focus on experience with the needed target audience, not the specific tools and skills used to serve them. There is a world of difference between a commercial product and an internal, corporate project. There is a world of difference between writing code that can handle 1 million transactions an hour and one that can handle 10,000. There is a world of difference between managing jobs for the government sector and the private sector.
You do need to have a filter. Just don't make the screen size of that filter too small.
* I say "thought leader" and not "project lead" or even "technical lead" because the person you want making the final pick needs to be the one who is actually calling the design shots, not the one whose name appears in the org chart.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't list the language you need by name as a requirement, list knowing _multiple_ languages as the requirement.
That's a horrible idea. I don't even bother applying to job ads that don't list the language(s) needed.
That's like a "car driver" ad that doesn't say what type of car you'll be driving. Any professional driver should be able to learn to drive just about any car very quickly, but there is a HUGE difference between a limo driver and a taxi driver, even though they both drive 4-wheeled vehicles with passengers to and from reasonably close locations. Not only are there skill differences (using the taxi dispatch
Re: (Score:2)
In the end what's happened is that to minimise the amount of management time spent on recruitment they're ended up outsourcing much of the recruitment process to people who just don't understand the jobs they're recruiting for.
Awesome statement of the fundamental problem.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I am an engineer. My job is adult day-care, as are most jobs. The major problem in hiring is the depth of the talent pool is shallow. I can hire people with zero experience no problem; if they are still around in 5 years they are usually great at the job. I can hire people with 40 years of experience as well, who are likely to be around another 10 years.
The problem is the older engineers are un[willing|able] to work with the entry level people, and unable to work without supporting engineers. The junior fol
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is the older engineers are un[willing|able] to work with the entry level people, and unable to work without supporting engineers. The junior folks take 3 months before they can do anything, another 5 months before they can do anything productive, and another year or two before they can work for a few days without constant supervision.
I hear you, but as an older engineer I take exception with this statement. Sure, many are like that, but many are not. I take satisfaction in teaching a new person how to do something and seeing them develop skills; it's part of passing on the profession just like older engineers did when I started out. I think many companies use your comment as an excuse to avoid hiring older staff.
Re: (Score:3)
Does your organization perhaps have a reputation of hiring the 40-year greybeards, using them to train new graduates, then transferring them to a slow division and "RIFing" (i.e. firing) them at the next slight industry downturn?
Does your organization perhaps have a reputation o
Re: (Score:2)
And this guy is just pissed that he can't break the rule.
Re: (Score:3)
I've noticed that very often, if the interviewer doesn't like you, it doesn't matter how well you do on the technical interview, they will keep giving you harder and harder questions until they can find some justification for rejecting you. But if they do like you, even if you do poorly on the technical interview, they will help you out, give you hints, sometimes even type the answer for you.
In general technical interviews are just as subjective as anything else. It doesn'
A "Trial period" is standard in Germany (Score:2)
Our hiring is fubared too, just as described, but we have a thing called "trial period", typically ranging up to six months during which any side can quit on a days notice without requiring an explanation or reason. After that, regular employees rights apply, and they are pretty good in Germany. I find actually working with someone is the best way to find out if you can work with someone.
My 2 eurocents.
Contract to Hire (Score:3)
That process is becoming more common in the US too. Of course there's a drawback: the really good talent won't accept those conditions. They have a network of friends and former co-workers who know where the good jobs are and can easily find a permanent job when they're ready to move.
You might still find good people through contracting but you need to make exceptions when appropriate.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you take on extra people to allow for the number that don't work out? So if 60% drop out do you take on 3 for each position?
Sounds quite expensive, but I suppose hiring the wrong person isn't cheap either.
Re: (Score:2)
Both sides can terminate or walk off the job whenever they want. It's fair unlike Europe where you can be forced to work for an employer or forced to pay a worker that doesn't do their job.
And water is wet (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixing it requires putting humans back into the process. For too long the hiring process has begun with algorithms that filter applications without human intervention. The people who take the output of these algorithms often don't understand how said algorithms work, and they seldom are knowledgeable on the jobs that the algorithms are filtering candidates for. The result is terrible, in that many qualified applicants are thrown out the window before their resumes and CVs ever make it in front of human eyes simply because the algorithm did not parse those documents correctly.
Part of the problem - particularly that of HR people not being knowledgeable on the work of the company - is a result of large companies growing larger (and the missions of said companies therefore becoming more diverse). The solution to this is that hiring needs to be taken back from HR and moved to the departments that the positions are going to be in. Yes, it will take time away from managers and employees in those departments but the investment will be worth it in the long run as it will result in better hires and less time with open positions going unfilled.
All there is (Score:2)
Employers should not only information about the employee to estimate chance of success, but info about the job. How tedious is the work? Are there idiotically long specifications written by a chimpanzee AKA a design for specs from the 1980s? Are developers supposed to use them and not complain because they pay the bill? Do you look for changes by doing a differnce vs. the previous one but they changed the format so its prettier but the writer doesn't have to actually use his spec, so the diff is messed
Behavourial Interviewing (Score:2)
One thing that is horribly broken is the trend of interviewing around "behavourial questions" - asking the candidate for anecdotes around a broadly-defined problem or situation.
Not to say such questions couldn't be a useful recruiting tool, but their role should be limited. I had an interview that was almost entirely vaguely-worded situational questions, even though the job required either technical skills using custom in-house software applications or compliance and record-keeping skills (they seemed pret
no, it is very relevant (Score:2)
No. It is very relevant. It is less relevant than what author wants: automatic exorbitant salaries (which actually happens a lot) for Ivy League graduates.
We do not want that.
Parts of the problem (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It's broken because we're stubborn (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in IT, but given what I know about development interviews, our side has the same problems. The hiring manager is overworked and trying to find the one non-BS artist out of a pile of 100 resumes who doesn't have a toxic enough personality to turn the rest of their team off. Because there are no training standards or prerequisites beyond vendor certifications, these interviews devolve into trivia contests. I'm terrible at memorizing stuff, and realistically everyone just Googles and synthesizes info, but the hiring process hasn't been able to evolve beyond seeing how much esoteric knowledge someone has at their immediate fingertips. Beyond just liking my current job a lot, this is one of the things that keeps me from wanting to interview. I'm sure there are a lot of people in this position...non-BS artists, good troubleshooters and problem solvers, but can't get hired because they don't know some random bit of trivia the interviewer came up with.
My solution to this is pretty radical but I think it's the best in the long run....turn IT and development into a licensed profession. No one would question that a newly-minted medical resident has the prerequisite knowledge...they made it to medical school, through the academic hazing and passed the first stage of their medical licensing exam. Interviews would be more about seeing how someone would fit in and how they would synthesize the knowledge they have already. Yes, there would be a barrier to entry but it could be set very low...high enough to keep the money chasing idiots out but low enough to not be onerous. And since it's a profession, the profession could buy legislation that's favorable to its members like other professions have. Finally, since it's a profession and not a union, the libertarian bootstraps crowd would be happy because all profession members are free to negotiate whatever deal they can.
I think this is the way to go. I have never met a doctor that's unhappy with their workload or has money problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent up. Pretty insightful.
Re: (Score:2)
Finding and synthesizing the right information from Google is actually pretty darn hard. Not everyone can do it, even those that studied for years to become some IT role.
The problem with licensing is two-fold, first of all, it artificially limits the amount of people in the profession through quotas in an attempt from trade organizations to keep salaries high and keep a tight knit group of practitioners. The second is that it's just a test, I've aced various tests without any sort of prep, they're just too
Better at Hiding Predjudice (Score:2)
Most of the newest systems are simply a way of burying the prejudice under obfuscation.
Simply put: they can hire who they want and blame anything else on whatever system they have in place.
No old people (like me).
No "over-qualified" people - they'd cost too much, even if they would do the job Very well.
"Gender and/or Racial/Cultural bias" can also be added without being too noticeable.
Seriously, though. it highlights the old adage "It's not what you know, but Who you know".
Anyone who can bypass the digital
Problem with a scientific approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Until and unless someone does a rigorous scientific study evaluating different interviewing techniques, preferably using a double-blind randomized trial, there's no point in beating this dead horse further.
There's one big, possibly insurmountable problem in approaching hiring as hard science: In order to test whether a specific approach is objectively more successful at identifying good employees, we'd first need an objective measure of whether someone is a good employee.
Someone is going to bring up metrics here. If you're talking about programmers, then you can grade them based on the number of lines of code they write per week, but that doesn't tell you anything about the quality of the code. You could try to account for that by quantifying the bugginess of the code or measuring the performance of the code. But then, is the code readable? Ok, let's say you quantify that too.
Now how do you want to weigh those metrics against each other? Do you care more about performance or readability? It might depend on the role, the kind of product you're making, or who else might be working on or maintaining the code. It might depend on the boss's personal views.
Ok, so you have all of that to contend with, but then there are all kinds of other considerations. Is the new hire a cultural fit for the company? Is the new hire a good personality match for the boss? Will the candidate work well in the kind of work environment that the company has? Some companies are more relaxed and some are more intense, some slow paced and some fast paced, some appreciate directness and some require political savvy.
Even within a company, it can be hard to identify an employee's value. I remember back years ago, I worked at a helpdesk position and they were trying to implement metrics to measure performance. One guy did great by the metrics they were collecting. He closed tons of tickets and put in his notes and time, but his work was sloppy, his notes were poor, and people didn't like him. Another guy almost got in trouble for not closing enough tickets fast enough, until the manager realized that he was taking the hardest cases, and taking the time to help and train his coworkers. I've seen people who aren't the best performers, but they have a great attitude and help keep morale up.
Honestly, as someone who hires and manages people, I find it impossible to quantify an employee's value or compare their worth in any kind of precise or objective way. If you can't come up with a way to objectively measure an employees value, then you won't be able to come up with a way to objectively measure the methods of predicting their value.
Re: (Score:2)
How about filling out a mock "employee evaluation" for each final candidate after the interview? Even better, save the mock evals and compare them to the real eval for those people who you do hire. That will tell you both how worthwhile your eval process is and how well you are at interviewing candidates. A two fer.
Re: (Score:3)
Poor phraseology (Score:2)
That should have been: "Is Hiring Not Broken?"
Job retention is broken, not hiring (Score:2)
Job retention is broken, not hiring. Change is constant. But remember how you'd once learn to do something you didn't know to? That's right -- you were **trained** to do it (millennial please excuse me here). Preferably by someone **taught** how to train you.
Companies are getting greedier -- many have discarded human trainers and don't want to pay for classroom-based training anymore. Instead, there's this a rush toward low-cost, low-quality cloud-based training. This attitude is infecting entire industries
More than just hiring is broke (Score:5, Interesting)
Hiring is broke. ATS's with bad scoring mechanics turn away highly qualified candidates all the time. Part of this, I believe, is because there is this ongoing debate about hiring for cultural fit or competency or both. Let's examine this for a moment. If I hire purely for cultural fit and not based on competency in a discipline what happens? Well if we applied this idea to let's say brain surgery, the results are, as you can imagine, going to be disastrous and make no logical sense whatsoever.
Even if companies could hire the "right people" (tm) that's only a small fraction of the problem. Most companies have no idea how to manage people as evidenced by all the researched at Gallup [gallup.com]. Many think tanks like SHRM are well aware of this. What's missing is people who truly understand the problem and the problem is most managers are ENTJ's and ESTJ's and don't like to get into details but getting into details especially of the psychological variety is imperative and those leaders are lacking competency in those areas. It's a mess.
Here's the basic idea that most companies don't understand. Some entrepreneur starts company XYZ that makes ABC widgets. They probably started their company because they hated their job and were looking for an alternative to the daily grind. They get successful and now are hiring employees and expecting them to share the same enthusiasm about their personal goals, which the employees don't because they have their own goals and hate the daily grind too. The truth is 80% people only work exclusively to survive for the paycheck. The problem is HR and business leadership fails to acknowledge this and deal with and instead tries to gaslight the majority of people who feel this way. It doesn't work.
It not broken (Score:2)
Did they show up on time? Do their work on time? Pass their exams? Attend class? Not fail?
See that need for a lot of extra help and time to do the most simple of tasks every year?
Did they want to get further in education? No problem passing exams other students could pass on the first attempt?
Did years of non academic consideration allow them further advancement?
Could the person learn? Study? Take in new information and pass an exam
A Google/Amazon Asshole (Score:2)
People that work for those kinds of companies have zero reason to criticize anything for being broken, considering what they've likely done to help fuck people over for Amazon and Google's profit margins.
Hiring broken? You are fired! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hate it when code monkeys get called engineers but otherwise yes its just a well formed rant
Business might be broken (Score:2)
Oh great (Score:2)
yet another smarter than everybody taking a big steamy dump on something they see wrong and produces absolutely zero effort on how to fix it
its not that hiring is broken, its that you are a useless douche, go apply to the quality department, you will find a bunch of useless douches that only point out problems but offer no solutions just like yourself, and spare your co-workers the insufferable presence of yourself
Why brain teasers work on the day (Score:2)
The math question asked will be something a person who did the level of math they "need" for work can be expected to do after years of math.
Can understand the math problem? Thats strange.
Need a calculator? Really? Its going to be a simple math problem people who have been around math for years can understand and get correct.
Can a person do simple math in seconds when asked?
Why should any company a
Shrug (Score:2)
Hiring will PERPETUALLY be "broken" .... (Score:3)
The thing is, the people studying this are searching for the "golden metrics" that will somehow find the best candidates every time, if only the right questions are asked and interview techniques employed.
All of it is futile. Hiring, by its nature, is a flawed process where a person (or a few individuals) get tasked with trying to select the right applicant for a job opening, using a small fraction of their time they're allowed to carve out of everything else they're tasked with doing during the work day.
I'd say the "best technique" for hiring even varies wildly, based on the corporate culture.
For example? I work in a mid-sized company with marketing/creative talent. A group of 5 of us handle all the I.T. needs for them. My boss hired 2 of us because we were long-time friends who had always been involved in I.T. My interview process was largely a formality, focused primarily on convincing HIS boss I wasn't a total screw-up and really did know a lot about technology in general. I'm sure it was similar for my other friend they hired. For 7 years now, that's been "the best decision I ever made" according to him, and we're all still happy to work there. He kept begging us to let him know if we had any other friends interested, when it was time to hire again. (I knew one guy but he had just got hired on as head of computer security for a hospital.) So for that hire, they went with a recruiting firm. The woman they found us was a great fit though, and complimented our team pretty well. Unless it was pure luck? I give that recruiter kudos because they did an amazing job finding a qualified applicant who ALSO had enough in common with the rest of us so it felt like she was ALSO a long time personal friend.
Now, at a previous place I worked? I *also* got hired by a boss I was old friends with. But that was a completely different situation. For starters? He was so paranoid about hiring me and then getting questioned for "hiring a buddy" that he refused to do more than let me work part-time, as a temporary thing. That temp, job kept going on and on, and people kept asking him why he didn't just hire me full-time. So FINALLY, he did -- when it was clear the only pressure he was getting was for NOT doing it! After that, I learned that #1, he wasn't any good at managing people. (He worked best when he was the only I.T. person in the company.) And #2, he kept making things extra difficult for me, out of some sense he HAD to do that to keep justifying why he hired a friend. I was short-changed on raises and regularly micro-managed over stupid things. (I'd be in the middle of updating user accounts or whatever, and he'd be looking over my shoulder randomly, interrupting me and chastising me for not clicking through some menus one way instead of another to "save 2 clicks".)
I need the money and liked a lot of my other co-workers though, so I stuck it out for a long time. At one point, he asked if I knew anyone I'd recommend when he needed to hire a software developer. I thought I'd do a guy I knew a favor, and referred him. I didn't know a LOT about him or his work ethic, but I knew he coded a whole lot of custom modifications for a BBS system he'd been rewriting back then, and he was definitely intelligent and good with conversation. Turns out, he screwed us over badly. Kept taking off in the middle of the day "to go look some things up at the library" or whatever excuse he could make, and then didn't return. Got way behind on everything my boss asked him to do. Just a train-wreck. Made me hesitant to ever recommend someone for a job again.
Hiring comes after recruiting. (Score:5, Insightful)
The hiring process is, indeed, a PITB. But before you encounter the hiring process, you need to make it through the recruiting process. The awful state of the hiring process pales in comparison to their way of companies do recruiting nowadays. Post an ad. Direct everyone to the web site where they upload their resume. Make the candidate spend an hour or more fixing the hash that the ATS made of their uploaded resume. Maybe at the end of that process -- just for fun mind you -- toss in some essay questions covering requirements that were never mentioned in the posted ad---requirements that likely would have caused you to self-filter yourself out even applying. Then, if you're very, very lucky, your resume had the correct number of matching keywords to pass muster and make it into a queue where an HR representative that knows nothing about technology looks at it for six seconds and decides whether it'll be passed on to the hiring manager.
If, on the other hand, you do get in touch with the hiring manager through a personal contact, have a nice conversation with them about a job, and the hiring manager would really like to have you come in for a face-to-face interview, company policy often dictates that the manager direct you to... the company's `careers' web site. And the real fun begins as you deal with the ATS and the droids in HR. And that hiring manager never sees your resume again as only those that make it through the HR gauntlet are allowed to be interviewed let alone be hired.
Finally, when you're rejected, if you're lucky, the company will keep your resume on file so you can be contacted about upcoming job openings. This means that failing to land a job as, say, a manager of the networking team, will result in your receiving emails notifying you of jobs that you're a perfect match for---like Lead Java Developer.
Yeah, has been known for a long time now (Score:3)
The most strikingly obviously broken one I went through was at Google: The interviewers were asking in-dept technical questions they did not really understand themselves. I probably failed that interview because I knew too much and had actual experience with most subjects asked and my answers did not match the list of simple answers they were using.
To illustrate this with an example (which they did not ask, but it works nicely):
Q: Why are manhole covers round?
A (simple, wrong): Because then the cover cannot fall into the manhole
A (real one): First, many are not. Second, they are round because the pipe below them is round. Pipes are round because that is the best way to withstand pressure. Putting a square cover on a round vertical pipe requires an adapter and makes things more expensive.
Hence when they only have the simple answer on their list, people that actually have a clue will fail the question. And that was pretty much my experience. Although, I could have gotten by the hiring-freeze as well, but no matter. Of all the Googlers I knew, only one is still there and that one is not the smartest. All the others have moved on, usually in frustration.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? They went round going LOL ur mom?
I think it's more likely that they metaphorically dragged a net through the water intending to catch something.
Re: (Score:2)
My experience with students asking for references is backwards - it is the ones I'd never consider giving one to. You know, the late with homework, not contributing fully to group assignments, etc. or even the ones that just don't get the hands-on parts of the course but do OK on the book tests (I teach a few Linux Admin courses at a community college).
Since book tests are only 20% of the course and the other 80% is hands on projects and labs, I tell students my policy is "I can't give you a reference beca
Re: (Score:2)
...not contributing fully to group assignments...
Why do you even have group assignments? Is your course about navigating post-adolescent group-dynamics bullshit? Because that's what governs success on group assignments.
The group-dynamics bullshit on group assignments is nothing like working together at a job either. At an office job, group members have a supervisor. And the other group members at the office aren't all trainees, some of them actually know the job.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Imperfect process (Score:4, Insightful)
Interestingly, TFA doesn't criticize diversity hiring, even though that is surely the most broken model of all.
The article doesn't criticise a fantasy of the perpetually aggrieved? Interesting...
Most "diversity" hiring is expanding the pool of applicants for a job and removing bias from the interview process.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most "diversity" hiring is expanding the pool of applicants for a job and removing bias from the interview process.
*Some* "diversity" hiring does that. Some is affirmative action which we tried 50 years ago and discovered created more bigotry than it eliminated.
Re: (Score:2)
There's an Easy Solution: Give up. Hire most people, and then fire people who don't work out quickly.
For most problems there is a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. That's a great way to get a terrible reputation in the industry and then fail to get anyone but the desperate incompetents.