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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

#51

Post by devoutsalsa »

johnsmith4739 wrote: post #42
marcinzm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Personality tests are broken - there is no way a functioning human being will answer them truthfully. Not for the lack of trying... our subconscious will try to protect us and we'll answer in a way we imagine it is socially acceptable.

@johnsmith4739 You've arrived at home after a long day at the office. As you take your wallet & keys, you realize that you've accidentally taken home a granola bar that you obtained from the snack room at work. You had intended to eat it at your desk, but for some reason you forgot. On a scale of 1 to 10, how guilty do you feel for having unlawfully stolen property from your employer?

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

#52

Post by BikiniPrince »

void_mint wrote: post #8

Knowing to hire for weakness instead of "top talent" implies a level of reflection almost no medium+ sized company actually has. Most companies don't need top talent, and the talent they have isn't anywhere close to the top.

Nor can they afford top talent.

I was going to chime in on all the terrible thoughts here, but that is rather pointless. High grade performers can earn quite a bit.

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

#54

Post by lmeyerov »

tester756 wrote: post #49
lmeyerov wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

portfolios = projects they can reference if they don't have impressive projects.. maybe not so good? when i think of the best cs ugrads i've known, and would be great at startups: * cool projects outside of classes, especially self-initiated, like doing their own startups * cool libraries or algs that got popular or, not quite as good, published * hardcore mode attempts at class projects, e.g., well beyond extra mile…

>if they don't have impressive projects.. maybe not so good? lol, you realize that for I'd say almost all projects the interesting part/core is small % of the whole, meanwhile the rest is just boring code that needs to be done? ofc it's not the nicest thing that you arent completing your side projects and just doing the interesting stuff, but you may have experience in industry, so you know how to do that boring ass…

Interestingness helps but not the point

Startup conditions are chaotic and every new person takes management + training overhead. Internship applicants who have well-done and challenging projects have shown the energy, self-management, know-how, & self-learning to get projects done in mini-versions of these conditions. So every hour spent on them goes a lot further, and both sides benefit more.

Conversely, if someone can't get their projects done, the projects are too low quality for where it matters, or their skill are on too-different of a thing, at best, it's non-evidence. So you'll have to fall back to evaluating weaker signals like grades. At worst, lacking or failing at projects is a red flag that they'll struggle on the adult-sized projects as well.

For 'interestingness', probably more relevant is 'tied to the mission', but I think being youthful covers 80% of that for intern-level folks.

Failure to figure out fit may mean everyone loses. Interns are more about recruitment pipeline for companies, and I'm not sure that's the wisest way to solve that for a lot of startups if that's the goal. Likewise, startups not ready to invest in their interns (management overhead, training, etc.), or fail to screen for a good match in skills, can easily be a bad experience and opportunity cost for the students, who may have had a more pleasant, productive, and rewarding experience at a more mature company.

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

#55

Post by marcinzm »

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…

I'd argue that:

a) You don't need really good unless you're doing cutting edge work at massive scales. There's lots of deep learning talent floating around that is good but not aligned with the FAANG interview process.

b) If you interview process is a clone of FAANG then, well, you're not going to have a good time. See previous point and also you probably don't need a FAANG interview process unless you're at FAANG scale.

c) If the company has other issues then, again, you're not going to have a good time but that's not due to how much you're paying but everything else.

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

#56

Post by dukeofdoom »

Talent is everything. Without Elon Musk, or Von Braun there are no key rocket program break throughs.

Not that I know much about rockets, just that there are key talented people that push the world forward. You need the worker bees. But someone at the top has to be the visionary genius.

If was the manager of a soccer team that came in last in the League. One way of improving would be to replace my weakest players. And the team would probably marginally improve. But it doesn't usually happen that way. Chances are your best players are not talented enough either, and you should replace those too. Or Perhaps, trading two of your good players for one more talented. Which is typically what happens.

So not sure if I would agree with the premise of the article.

Also, If I was building a stock portfolio, one not terrible way of doing it would probably be around how many PhDs the companies have on the payroll.

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

#57

Post by Spooky23 »

tjpnz wrote: post #50
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.

Is the school thing a strictly American phenomenon? In New Zealand for instance all that tends to matter is which city/town you want to live in and whether the institution offers the field you want to major in (medicine for example is only offered by Otago IIRC). I've only been asked for grades once in the previous 12 years where at which point I withdrew my application.

In some cases, school is a legal way to discriminate. The top tier companies incorporate recruiting into their culture.

If you recruit at Brown, you’re going to get a different candidate than some CUNY school. They all tested well in high school or have parents with good networks, and they tend to look and quack alike.

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

#58

Post by jes5199 »

I recently discovered that, in a topgrading-style interview, it’s possible to filibuster!

They expect to be able to ask 4+ questions about every job from the past ten years. But I will happily ramble for 20 minutes about minutia for each of them. It was wonderful

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

#59

Post by barry-cotter »

yuliyp wrote: post #44
barry-cotter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Different people have different ways of learning and working. Some people build a bunch of stuff. Others build toys, others may just focus on their primary jobs and don't have a portfolio of things they can share.

All of those qualify as a body of work. The last one isn’t a body of work you can share but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

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

#60

Post by w0mbat »

I think this guy might be on to something.

Every time you add a person to the team who is more stupid than you, it pushes you further up the stack rank.

Why hire people with loyalty when you can hire people who can't quit because they can't find their way out of the building?

Don't waste money on high salaries, just find people too dumb to realize you are paying them in Monopoly money.

Soon you will be the top performer by a huge margin, and it's bonus city, baby!

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