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Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

benjiweber.co.uk

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Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#31

Post by WalterSear »

briefcomment wrote: post #18
zabzonk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you want to be perceived as hiring the best Only idiots perceive that consultancies hire "the best" - the best are off doing other things. > project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people No, you need a load of dimwits you can throw at a project and make some apparent effect.

They literally hire the people with the best grades and test scores from the top universities. Idk how much better you can get than that.

> Idk how much better you can get than that.

Don't hire recent grads.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#32

Post by lmeyerov »

briefcomment wrote: post #21
mpoteat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's well considered by a lot of people in the industry that a prospective's grades and even which school they went to aren't a good predictor of skill.

Unless you have them actually work with you for a month, they're certainly the best predicators available for new grads with no portfolios right? FWIW, the most effective colleagues I've worked with all scored really high on standardized tests. They're a great predictor imo

for startups, new grads with good portfolios and ok grades > new grads with good grades and ok portfolios

likewise, new grads with a story of upward trajectory & energy > new grads who coast on what their parents/school setup

the bet being made is they'll put in the hard work and achieve the personal growth to progress quickly, and they'll roll with the uncertainties of startups. grades do hint at the hard work, and youth suggests dealing with uncertainty, but not as well as succeeding at difficult and fuzzily-defined projects. if they've done that before, better chance they'll do it again.

outside of startups, priorities change. big orgs need people who won't risk the cash cow. consultancies need people with better credentials than their customers. etc.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#33

Post by barry-cotter »

andrew_v4 wrote: post #7

Two personal counterexamples, whether right or wrong: Management consulting - you want to be perceived as hiring the best - project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people - looking for demonstrated desire to jump through the hoops and do the marginal work that makes you the "top" Software Engineering - some overlap with the reasons above - adds to the moat: if they're happy working for FAAN…

> Management consulting - you want to be perceived as hiring the best

This is not really a problem when all four of the companies in your industry use the same short list of universities for hiring. The reality would be even less of a problem with a broader selection of universities but the system works fine for the companies involved.

> Software Engineering ... - the economics of many technologies are now defined by whether they can return enough to pay people competitively vs big tech. E.g. there are lots of cool deep learning applications that are tougher to try when you need to pay 300k / year for someone really good to run with them

Why the hell are you insisting on someone really good to even start? The pool of people in any given domain with even hobbyist level expertise in ML/DL/AI and some domain knowledge is not usually shallow but non-existent.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#34

Post by spdionis »

lmeyerov wrote: post #32
briefcomment wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have them actually work with you for a month, they're certainly the best predicators available for new grads with no portfolios right? FWIW, the most effective colleagues I've worked with all scored really high on standardized tests. They're a great predictor imo

for startups, new grads with good portfolios and ok grades > new grads with good grades and ok portfolios likewise, new grads with a story of upward trajectory & energy > new grads who coast on what their parents/school setup the bet being made is they'll put in the hard work and achieve the personal growth to progress quickly, and they'll roll with the uncertainties of startups. grades do hint at the hard work, and…

The best programmers I know never had a portfolio.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#35

Post by marcinzm »

johnsmith4739 wrote: post #30

Amazes me how little data-driven recruiting is. Just as the author puts it, a good hire is for culture ad, and that means being explicitly aware of what's missing. Tough stuff to really look inside and see what's missing. Most hires I see are either out of desperation or because the recruiter had a good chemistry with the candidate. A 1h interview means 0,3% of the time I will work with that person in one year. Talk…

I've both taken and been at a company that administered personality tests as part of the interview process. I found the results fairly useless to be honest. Although I did manage to score so low on one part of the assessment that an interviewer seemed to question my basic ability to function in society.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#36

Post by wikibob »

vjeux wrote: post #26

For what it’s worth, at Facebook the general hiring process is in two steps. There’s a centralized hire/no hire that most people are aware of and then a second phase where team selection happens. This is where all the “hire for weakness” steps that the author mention happen. Teams are looking at this pool of people for speciality, levels... that they need and where the matchmaking happens. There are also a lot of sma…

Is the 6 week onboarding bootcamp followed by team selection deprecated? When did that happen?

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#37

Post by barry-cotter »

briefcomment wrote: post #18
zabzonk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you want to be perceived as hiring the best Only idiots perceive that consultancies hire "the best" - the best are off doing other things. > project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people No, you need a load of dimwits you can throw at a project and make some apparent effect.

They literally hire the people with the best grades and test scores from the top universities. Idk how much better you can get than that.

That is not an accurate description of management consulting companies hiring process. If you wants to know more look at Lauren Rivera‘s research. It’s about practically nothing else except professional firm’s hiring practices. It is not based on “top schools” as defined academically. and It is based on a certain set of two schools which are very good, and having at least reasonable grades. So what they look for is a certain minimum of grades and class markers. Getting a First will not get you much of anything over a 2:1 in hiring undergrads. Better to be on the crew team or fencing.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#39

Post by barry-cotter »

spdionis wrote: post #34
lmeyerov wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for startups, new grads with good portfolios and ok grades > new grads with good grades and ok portfolios likewise, new grads with a story of upward trajectory & energy > new grads who coast on what their parents/school setup the bet being made is they'll put in the hard work and achieve the personal growth to progress quickly, and they'll roll with the uncertainties of startups. grades do hint at the hard work, and…

The best programmers I know never had a portfolio.

What? The best programmers you know got that way without accumulating a body of work?

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#40

Post by Impossible »

wikibob wrote: post #36
vjeux wrote: post #26

For what it’s worth, at Facebook the general hiring process is in two steps. There’s a centralized hire/no hire that most people are aware of and then a second phase where team selection happens. This is where all the “hire for weakness” steps that the author mention happen. Teams are looking at this pool of people for speciality, levels... that they need and where the matchmaking happens. There are also a lot of sma…

Is the 6 week onboarding bootcamp followed by team selection deprecated? When did that happen?

It sounds like OP was talking about the same process, although they skipped mentioning bootcamp and only mentioned team selection. They also accounted for specialist pre-allocated roles. My FB experience was different than many because I was hired to a specific team. I was also the first member of that team to go through bootcamp. It was a weird exception because many of the team members came from the Oculus acquisition, and at the time Oculus had somewhat separate culture. Afaik AR/VR still hires for specific teams and roles externally, although roles in that org are also regularly filled by bootcamp grads with the right experience and/or interests
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