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You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

talent.works

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Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#41

Post by JustSomeNobody »

adetrest wrote: post #31
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the 5th time you see the question, you're fuming so you shout, "YES! I ANGER EASILY!!!!" Ahem... Sorry. I worked at a place that was bought out and the new team immediately made everyone take a battery of these style tests. A few days later they did a mass firing based on the results. I survived long enough to find work elsewhere.

Firing based on test results sounds illegal. Same reason why employers can't give iq tests to candidates anymore IIRC.

Fair point. It happened after the tests, but I've no way of knowing if it was because. Just seems suspect.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#43

Post by pc86 »

wil421 wrote: post #40
mszcz wrote: post #19

https://dilbert.com/strip/2008-03-01 I'm not a fan of HR in general and it's frustrating that they are often the clueless gatekeepers.

Sometimes it isn’t even an HR person. A computer will scan your resume and if you don’t match enough keywords a person won’t even read it.

This is bad too (in its current state of sophistication) but I still think it's better than having some HR generalist with 6 months on the job and no technical knowledge scanning resumes before anyone who knows what they're doing gets to them.

At least if you know your resume will be scanned by a computer before-hand you can optimize for that. It's hard to optimize for a person with no skill-set.

The place I've worked with the best HR department realized that they didn't have any legitimate role in determining whether someone was fit for a job, only whether or not they were fit for the company. So they'd handle the background checks, the reference checks, etc, usually after the phone screen and before the on-site interview. But they didn't have any say in who got the job other than vetoing candidates with company-wide disqualifying features.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#45

Post by watwut »

scarejunba wrote: post #4

Perhaps companies over-list requirements because everyone knows requirements are not ANDed together. There is a scoring scheme that combines all of these, and the quality of the requirement. And let’s be honest having spent “5 years of Python” at a Google is a different story from having spent “5 years of Python” at an Infosys. To be honest, I’ve never seen a job description that exactly lays out what you’re going to…

Not everyone knows. Especially on junior positions they often don't know.

What it does is that it biases hiring process against self-aware or humble without right network to tell them to exaggerate.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#46

Post by _pmf_ »

wil421 wrote: post #40
mszcz wrote: post #19

https://dilbert.com/strip/2008-03-01 I'm not a fan of HR in general and it's frustrating that they are often the clueless gatekeepers.

Sometimes it isn’t even an HR person. A computer will scan your resume and if you don’t match enough keywords a person won’t even read it.

That's actually better, since in this case there's reason to the madness, which cannot be said for the typical second order ignorant HR person.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#47

Post by carlmr »

I've only once ticked of roughly 95% of job requirements. I didn't get the job. They actually cited the 1/20 requirements I didn't fulfill and said they can't hire anybody who doesn't have that.

They wanted a 100% candidate. Looking through the list of the things they listed as must haves and that they wanted an internal candidate I showed them it is statistically very unlikely they would even find a better candidate for this position.

The position had been open for almost a year. I think there's a reason. These are probably the same people that go to the press and whine about a shortage of engineers.

EDIT: Made a small mistake there. Anyway I only mentioned it after the interview was over. Not during.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#48

Post by was_boring »

itronitron wrote: post #36
sureaboutthis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the "looking for experts in X" followed by "with one to two years experience". And then I see my neighbor who is an expert in X, can code rings around anybody, but can't find a job after his company shut down. His only fault is he's 60.

I think there is an assumption that if a candidate doesn't have experience in 'Y' but they have ten years of 'X' (which is similar to, or a precursor of Y) then the candidate is somehow biased against Y or unwilling to work with it. Two decades of OpenGL experience?, sorry we are looking for someone with Vulkan experience. Two years of OpenGL experience? when can you come in?

As someone who does hiring, I have a different interpretation. Let's say I'm a rails shop and I'm looking for mid to sr. level candidates and someone has 10 years of experience working on Java 1.4 spring based application. I think to myself "this is great, they are willing to do some grunt work but I need to know they haven't stagnated".

It's the stagnation that leads to lower job offers. You need to convince me that you were a dedicated employee for 10 years (which you are), but you also need to show that you're willing to learn something completely different. This can be a side project (doesn't have to be crazy, but slightly more then just going through the tutorial), certification of some sort, or _something_ that tells me you're not just going to write java-esque rails.

I would even go so far as I prefer people with diverse backgrounds, who are really willing to learn, so that we benefit from mistakes they made at previous employers.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#49

Post by gaius »

sethammons wrote: post #9
austincheney wrote: post #5

You can eliminate all kinds of selective bias and incompetence by first filtering candidates based upon a battery of personality tests. You don't have to know anything about the candidates until this pass through the initial filter.

Aside from personal experience, can you point to any data on this, and maybe go into some more detail? When I think of personality tests, I think of quack science. "Do you get angry a lot?", "Is it easy for you to get angry?", "Would you say it is difficult to make you angry?, and four other similar questions in a 200 question quiz. They ask the same thing multiple ways to try to know if you are an person categorizab…

That’s my secret: I’m always angry

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#50

Post by wil421 »

pc86 wrote: post #43
wil421 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it isn’t even an HR person. A computer will scan your resume and if you don’t match enough keywords a person won’t even read it.

This is bad too (in its current state of sophistication) but I still think it's better than having some HR generalist with 6 months on the job and no technical knowledge scanning resumes before anyone who knows what they're doing gets to them. At least if you know your resume will be scanned by a computer before-hand you can optimize for that. It's hard to optimize for a person with no skill-set. The place I've worke…

I recently changed jobs and the company I work for now does exactly what you say in your last paragraph. It was the best hiring experience I’ve been through. A couple other companies I applied to followed the HR screen first and I’m sure I failed. What’s weird is the same company that denied me has recruiters contacting me on LinkedIn monthly, as recent as last week.
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