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The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

nytimes.com

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Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#81

Post by mtkd »

gatsby wrote: post #11

Laszlo Bock (former SVP of People at Google) did a great job summarizing decades of research around structured interviewing in his book 'Work Rules!' For a quick reference, the two defining criteria for a structured interview are: 1.) They use one or several consistent set(s) of questions, and 2.) There are clear criteria for assessing responses That second point is really important. You can't only ask candidates the…

this just gives them resource liquidity for operations - the people that take things forward are mostly acquired

if you have to start using structured interview questions to expand a team - you've already lost

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#82

Post by [deleted] »

davidf18 wrote: post #41
hobls wrote: post #21

I've been a programmer for a bit over ten years. I've worked at scrappy little startups, midsized companies, now for a tech giant for a few years. The engineers I work with at the tech giant are consistently better engineers than my other coworkers have been, and I credit the very structured interview process. We're trained to ask specific questions, look for specific types of answers, and each interviewer is evaluat…

Thanks...could you please cite specific examples?

[deleted]

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#83

Post by crispyambulance »

hobls wrote: post #15
PlaceFan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? Isn't the generic accusation against AmaGooFaceSoft that your interview performance largely depends on whether you happened to study some interviewer's pet topic (e.g. parallelism, dynamic programming, networking, etc.)?

People always talk about the whiteboard interview, and assume it has the greatest weight, but the other questions are just as important. There are plenty of things being measured, and technical ability is often not the one that disqualifies a candidate. The other questions do tend to come from a standardized bank of questions too; the whole thing is very structured.

This. I wonder how many people "think" they flubbed an interview strictly because they got some detail wrong on the whiteboard when it was really far more related to a negative impression of grit, communication, motivation, personality, or work-history.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#84

Post by throwaway71958 »

One thing interviews can't select for: creativity and motivation. And in tech those two criteria are the most vital, especially motivation. I can easily fill in the skills gap in someone who's motivated. I can't do anything with someone who doesn't give a shit, even if they're the second coming of Albert Einstein. So folks, please, don't apply for jobs you don't really care about. Save yourself and your prospective employer time, aggravation, and the opportunity cost.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#85

Post by [deleted] »

rntz wrote: post #76
scottshepard wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is critiquing the unstructured get-to-know you interview. It is not critiquing highly structured interviews with clear goals, nor technical challenges, nor references checks or past performance. In your example, how would you structure a series of questions and procedures to limit the risk of marrying someone who will abandon you or cheat on you? I think you can apply good interview process techniques to…

The trouble with this advice is that, while it's accurate if your one and only goal is to predict the likelihood of someone divorcing or cheating on you, it seems profoundly unfair. To examine this "unfairness", let's imagine it at its most extreme: a society in which divorcees are so stigmatized that it's practically impossible to ever re-marry; in which children of divorcees are likewise stigmatized; in which victi…

[deleted]

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#86

Post by throwaway71958 »

gatsby wrote: post #11

Laszlo Bock (former SVP of People at Google) did a great job summarizing decades of research around structured interviewing in his book 'Work Rules!' For a quick reference, the two defining criteria for a structured interview are: 1.) They use one or several consistent set(s) of questions, and 2.) There are clear criteria for assessing responses That second point is really important. You can't only ask candidates the…

Don't take his word as a word of god from heaven. Google's interview process is just as shitty as anyone else's, and shittier than some I've been through. It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure, which are very often not the best workers overall. It also wastes a ton of time both on the employer and on the candidate side. Source: interviewed ~100 people in my 6+ years at Google.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#87

Post by eikenberry »

rb2k_ wrote: post #3

It should probably have been titled "The Utter Uslessness of Unstructured Job Interviews", because that's the kind of interview the author criticizes. In my personal experience, structured interviews can be very helpful in determining a candidates abilities.

I'm curious in your structured interview process what parts of the interview are setup for the person interviewing with your company to interview your company? Interviews go both ways. I've turned down more jobs than I've accepted due to the company doing poor on the interview.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#88

Post by gukov »

uncensored wrote: post #42

How do you know that the person you'll be marrying won't cheat on you and won't leave you in hard times? If you apply the methods we use today for interviews you'll end up with a 50/50 chance at best, a coin toss. Yet why do some marriages last forever (till death do us apart) while others fail miserably or crumble even after 20 years? The search for the global optimum cannot be performed by asking a set of questions…

Have good instincts or have a system (hire after speaking to 34% of the candidates, fire early and often, etc).

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#89

Post by chmln »

manarth wrote: post #61
uncensored wrote: post #42

How do you know that the person you'll be marrying won't cheat on you and won't leave you in hard times? If you apply the methods we use today for interviews you'll end up with a 50/50 chance at best, a coin toss. Yet why do some marriages last forever (till death do us apart) while others fail miserably or crumble even after 20 years? The search for the global optimum cannot be performed by asking a set of questions…

instinct and sexism/racism are often conflated. What's perceived as instinct is often the outcome of social conditioning, which gives outcomes such as "People See Black Men as Larger, More Threatening Than Same-Sized White Men" [1] [1] http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/03/black-men-thr...

Could also be due to the disproportionally high rates of crime among black men. That should never be an excuse for prejudice, however.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-... https://infogr.am/Black-34991937313

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#90

Post by cwyers »

Merad wrote: post #65
redthrow wrote: post #31

Matt Mullenweg advocates audition/tryouts instead of job interviews. https://hbr.org/2014/04/the-ceo-of-automattic-on-holding-aud...

That has to be one of the most employee-hostile hiring strategies I've ever read.

You're pretty much limited to hiring either only the jobless or someone with the ability to work two jobs at once for an extended period of time while you hold your tryout. There are a lot of people who can't devote that kind of time to a second job (some candidates burn a week's vacation!)

And it's not some mere formality, according to their stats they hire about a third of the people they try out.

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