I wonder why they just didn't get rid of normal job interview questions and let a natural conversation unfold. Surely they want to at least meet the person and get a feel for their character.
To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews
81–90 of 437 posts
Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've heard it so many times about people interviewing others, as "(s)he is smart, passed all test, but weird, I don't like to work with her/him". At this point, it is systemic discrimination. No, that's a misnomer. Systematic discrimination implies the system itself codifies this behaviour - but instead, what is codified is _team fit_, which is often based heavily on intuition. Humans are capable of being good judg…
> Let's face it: for neurotypical people, a lot of autists are very hard to get along with. Their behaviour is not always predictable in the way that we need behaviour to be in a workplace; and when more pronounced, their specific needs are not something that we want to have to address in our coworkers. Or try it like this and see how it feels: "Let's face it: for white people, a lot of black people are very hard to…
There is a big difference between prejudging a person and their possible behavior from a known trait of their appearance, and judging a person from their observed behavior (often without any knowledge that the person is neuroatypical).
Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews
#83As an Aspie/ADD, I have never passed any formal interview, even for an intern position (sic!). (You can compare and contrast it with my GitHub/Resume/blog to make a judgment.) Fortunately, many times (even for mid-size companies or research institutes) the hiring was less formal. For small startups, where it is informal, I didn't feel at a disadvantage. For big, I don't believe I can pass through the first filter. It…
I had the opposite experience. I don't have Asperger's or ADD, but I'm shy and struggle with eye contact and small talk. I interviewed at about ten startups, and despite doing well on the technical questions, I got rejected every time. I began to suspect it was because of "culture fit" -- will this 35 year old introvert fit in at our frat house/office? I was getting pretty depressed after all that rejection, but I go…
To be fair, I don't think that its only big companies that discriminate (e.g. too many are agist, classist, or have a bias against parents). Though, small companies vary. And even if one is biased one way, it's likely that there are some (as in "any") that are not.
For social awkwardness - there are many kinds of that. For some corporate interview process may be not an issue. For others, a road blocker.
Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews
#84We need more genetic diversity in STEM. When will we be introducing DNA testing and doing mutation testing on all candidates to ensure perfectly equal distribution of all genetic combinations among employees?
Eliminating a source of bias that might prevent optimal workers from being hired is efficient, the initiatives listed in your sarcastic strawman are not.
We should finely differentiate between eliminating a source of bias, and adding a new bias to try to counteract a bias we think already exists. These are not the same thing.
Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll be happy to disagree with this post for reasons other than claims of "systemic discrimination". It celebrates behaviors that are linked with hypocrisy and arbitrary bias. The problem isn't that you're weeding out people who don't fit in with the team. The problem is that you're weeding out people as a result of invalid, inaccurate, arbitrary biases that are more likely to stem from animal-brain genetic instincts…
> animal-brain genetic instincts You're discounting intuition with this dismissive label. Trusting the instincts of your team to make decisions on who they can work with is critical to maintaining cohesion on that team and keeping people happy, which is a critical competitive advantage (especially during any kind of downturn). We're not talking about "low mediocre", "animal-brain" people, we're talking about professi…
> and not actually providing any kind of evidence
You might want to live up to your own standards. Looking at your posts so far, you point to no evidence that hiring 'based on intuition' (for whatever that means) ends in positive outcomes for either group cohesion, or even that fuzzy end-goal: productivity.
Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious, what do you think is a "good" answer? Because, from the interviewer standpoint, here's what such questions are about. Prepare to have your mind blown, maybe. 1. Hiring is by far the most stressful, unpredictable, career-destroying part of a manager's job. And that's as an employee, if that's your business (founder, entrepreneur) you're scared shitless that a mistake may plain and simple ruin your busines…
> So the 'soft' questions are attempts to weed out 'problems'. Get this through your head: when interviewing, experienced managers are not "selecting the best" but rather "avoiding the worst". And these questions... they're crapshots in the dark — “how the hell am I supposed to know if this person is OK/normal or a piece of work?” It's even more blurry from the interviewer's side. So they just try to get a 'feel' for…
Aha... so you know. Hopefully my long piece will be useful to someone else, then.
"Red flag", that's the expression I was looking for indeed.
Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews
#87What is this obsession with diversity, who wants so much diversity? what is it good for? what's wrong with having people who are more or less like you working with you and everything is nice and rosy. I am not going to try hard to get autistic people or women or black people or whatever is the flavour of the month I just want some people who i can get along with and produce enough work to make my 9 hours in the office worth while and not too hard. If they happen to be women or black or autistic fine, but I am not going to put so much effort into it just for the sake of diversity. Straight white males is fine by me.
Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ingrained misogyny was so common Was? I wouldn't call it misogyny, because it isn't out of hate but out of the unique social dynamics between genders, but absolutely nothing has changed except one thing: it's now politically incorrect and against the rules to actually say what you think/feel, so everyone hides it. Men and women still don't work well together. The attraction dynamics between them still overpower any…
> Men and women still don't work well together Citations needed. I've never had any issues working with women, nor have I heard any coworkers or friends express this belief, or raise issues about working with members of the opposite gender. I don't think people aren't talking about this because it's "politically incorrect", but rather because most people (at least in Canada) simply don't have any issues working with…
> have I heard any coworkers or friends express this belief.
You don't seem to value diversity of opinion that high, and expressing such opinions can be disastrous for one's career.
> Being unable to view female coworkers as you do any other coworker is misogynistic.
Sure, now what? There exists misogynistic people in the world, a lot of them in the workforce. That would imply that comment saying "men and women still don't work together" is at least worth consideration. You can't solve social issues by assigning a label.
Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews
#89I wonder why they just didn't get rid of normal job interview questions and let a natural conversation unfold. Surely they want to at least meet the person and get a feel for their character.
The problem is that you can't have a natural conversation with someone where there's high stakes. Job interviews are incredibly asymmetrical conversations, where one party has very low stakes (often they're choosing between several candidates who all have met earlier qualification hurdles, and only one candidate is needed to fill the position) and someone has very high stakes. There is no way to make the high stakes candidate behave as though the conversation has low stakes, and so that will always shift the conversation.
Also, people can often let biases influence them:
http://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/why-job-interviews-don...
Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews
#90As an Aspie/ADD, I have never passed any formal interview, even for an intern position (sic!). (You can compare and contrast it with my GitHub/Resume/blog to make a judgment.) Fortunately, many times (even for mid-size companies or research institutes) the hiring was less formal. For small startups, where it is informal, I didn't feel at a disadvantage. For big, I don't believe I can pass through the first filter. It…
> I've heard it so many times about people interviewing others, as "(s)he is smart, passed all test, but weird, I don't like to work with her/him". At this point, it is systemic discrimination. No, that's a misnomer. Systematic discrimination implies the system itself codifies this behaviour - but instead, what is codified is _team fit_, which is often based heavily on intuition. Humans are capable of being good judg…
You're discussing from a position that puts team efficiency (and company efficiency) above any other value. You may in fact be right that certain kinds of diversity can hurt team efficiency (for an obvious example, if you already have a team of white power types, hiring a black man on that mteam will lead to morale issues).
However, in practice, and especially for large companies, optimizing only for efficiency is simply not acceptable behavior. Since the ability to find a place to work is so important for any individual in our society to have a chance at a decent life, companies' social responsibilities must have them potentially sacrifice some efficiency to prevent discrimination of large groups.
Note: I am not in any way claiming that disadvantaged groups are less efficient at work, there is absolutely not evidence of that. I am claiming that sometimes, to accept disadvantaged groups in a workplace may create some discomfort to the people who were already in that workplace, since statistically they were likely to hold biases against that discriminated group.