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The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

nytimes.com

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Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#371

Post by throwaway71958 »

solipsism wrote: post #336
throwaway71958 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I say it was "data"? The closest anyone has come to "data" on this (that I know of) is Google, in that experiment where they just hired people at random. But they decided to ignore the results and stick to the soul crushing 5 hour interviews anyway, so data did not change the relevant people's minds.

Looking up the actual experiment, you're completely misrepresenting the conclusions. Here: https://www.google.com/amp/business.financialpost.com/entrep... These were their conclusions: 1. The ability to hire well is random. This is referring to individuals, not the system as a whole. 2. Forget brain-teasers. Focus on behavioral questions in interviews, rather than hypotheticals 3. Consistency matters for leaders 4. G…

Ouch, "making stuff up". That's harsh, my man. Thus far I've made absolutely nothing up in this thread, or indeed in any others under this account. And you're using a PR puff piece written by Google HR to discount years of personal experience that I'm sharing here. You're free to not believe me, but let's not level accusations without evidence, OK?

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#372

Post by tempodox »

> So great is people’s confidence in their ability to glean valuable information from a face to face conversation that they feel they can do so even if they know they are not being dealt with squarely. But they are wrong.

If people utterly refuse to learn from proven mistakes, then all hope is lost. Einstein was right, human stupidity is infinite.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#373

Post by Beltiras »

cubano wrote: post #272
jernfrost wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. First step is to acknowledge that interviewing doesn't work very well. You can't keep deluding yourself because you haven't found a better way. Accept reality. This is one of the biggest problems I see with business guys today. They want absolute certainty in a world which can't offer it. Start accepting that there is a lot of stuff we don't know and can't know at the moment and we simply have to work towar…

I still don't understand why employers can't simply set up a two week "trial contract" where as promising candidates simply work for two weeks so everyone can actually see and judge, with real world empirical data, how well the person does in the environment at the actual job. Yes yes..of course I know this could be gamed as well, but no matter...you can't really argue that this wouldn't be magnitudes better then the…

I took a job half a year ago. I'm still "learning the ropes" so to speak. I remember the first two weeks. Nothing would have been gleaned from them.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#374

Post by kiranmova »

vonnik wrote: post #169

The traditional recruiting and hiring process is broken. I say this as a former technical recruiter. I wrote about the problems of recruiting for a closed-source startup here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisvnicholson/recent-activity/... I mention closed-source for a reason. For technical hiring, there is nothing better than open source. Open-source projects allow engineers and their potential employers to collabor…

Hiring candidates through interviews or through known contacts list is just about taking a chance. There are several unknowns which can only come out in the course of time.

I agree with vonnik, that running the Project in Open Source definitely has an edge in the interviewing process. The potential employee has already seen your code (or you can make sure that he has), knows what he/she is getting into. I would seek for some links of their contributions to other projects which will help me evaluate if their code.

Of-course less than 5% of the job applicants now have had the opportunity to develop for open source. (Either the folks contributing in the open source love their job so much, that they hardly look around or they are already being offered jobs without looking..).

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#375

Post by AstralStorm »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #298
mahyarm wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course people know interviews aren't the greatest, but it's the best tool they have right now. What people are pushing back against is criticism without solutions. There are a bunch of other testing methods that are illegal in the USA too, such as IQ tests.

> What people are pushing back against is criticism without solutions. Which is bullshit. It's perfectly reasonable to criticise something without proposing an alternative. It's especially ridiculous to reject criticism provided without alternatives, when it's literally your job to do the work being criticised. "Hey the way you're doing this part of your job produces results no better than random selection." "Bring m…

Solution: toss a coin or take n first applicants for the trial period. Same effectiveness, much cheaper. No need for the interviewer.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#376

Post by AstralStorm »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #290
cubano wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand why employers can't simply set up a two week "trial contract" where as promising candidates simply work for two weeks so everyone can actually see and judge, with real world empirical data, how well the person does in the environment at the actual job. Yes yes..of course I know this could be gamed as well, but no matter...you can't really argue that this wouldn't be magnitudes better then the…

The concept of a two week trial contract is interesting, but also as flawed as anything else. I switched roles to a new team, and the first 2 weeks were a trainwreck. It was almost of no predictive quality on how I would do. Now, there are many reasons why that was the case, and perhaps those underlying issues should be addressed, but from all the role changes I've had, the first two weeks shows how well the group yo…

You would need a longer trial period, a few months is fine with a clause that allows earlier termination.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#377

Post by AstralStorm »

wolco wrote: post #276
cubano wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand why employers can't simply set up a two week "trial contract" where as promising candidates simply work for two weeks so everyone can actually see and judge, with real world empirical data, how well the person does in the environment at the actual job. Yes yes..of course I know this could be gamed as well, but no matter...you can't really argue that this wouldn't be magnitudes better then the…

If someone is currently employed it makes that arrangement difficult.

Indeed, though any kind of arrangement is difficult. You might end up in a dead end job, not matching your skills or otherwise soul crushing regardless of the method.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#378

Post by AstralStorm »

hobls wrote: post #172
schmit wrote: post #108

I find it quite problematic that researchers get to talk about their own research and present it as facts without anyone taking a critical look. Over time I’ve become more skeptical about this kind of psychology research (as more studies fail to replicate) and, as is often the case, here the sample size is quite small (76 students, split across 3 groups), predicting something relatively noisy as GPA. It is unclear to…

It's also worth noting that those students are probably very inexperienced interviewers.

Indeed, warrants further study.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#379

Post by Spooky23 »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #338
Spooky23 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, literally every professionally employed person is in their current gig via that process. It works good enough.

That's a syllogism and I'm not sure it tells us anything. If you replaced interviewing with a footrace across hot coals the same assertion would be (just as vacuously) true.

It's deeper than that.

Everyone hates the process, and companies have investing major dollars and hours trying to improve. End of the day, little has changed since 1917. You either acquire-hire, get a strong referral or interview a pool of unknown applicants.

The tests and quizzes are little different to how a city hired an accountant in 1917. The old boys network evolved. Then you're left with the rest.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#380

Post by flukus »

jacobr1 wrote: post #315
cubano wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand why employers can't simply set up a two week "trial contract" where as promising candidates simply work for two weeks so everyone can actually see and judge, with real world empirical data, how well the person does in the environment at the actual job. Yes yes..of course I know this could be gamed as well, but no matter...you can't really argue that this wouldn't be magnitudes better then the…

In the 2004-2007 timeframe, the company I worked for hired software engineers via a staffing company for three-month contracts. We interviewed the candidates with the intention of making a full-time hire. As the contract term approached, the management team did a 360 review, the decided to offer a full-time position or just not-renew the contract. This had some downsides, but overall I found it to be better that alte…

This seems to work ok for companies working on green field stuff, though you'd still probably struggle to entice people to leave their jobs for you. For other companies though, where technical debt and poor management is everywhere you look it doesn't. It gives employees a chance to see what they're really dealing with and to look for work two months later.
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