Live data from Hacker News

Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

benjiweber.co.uk

61–70 of 168 posts

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

#61
post #58

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

From a single interviewers perspective: this does not work. At the company I work at, and in my own interviews, being succinct and articulate in the points you’re making goes a long way. Ending early is not a bad sign.

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

#62
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.

George Bush is top shelf, in your book, then, due to the top university?

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

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm interested, do you have any particular studies in mind?

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

#64
post #58

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

From a single interviewers perspective: this does not work. At the company I work at, and in my own interviews, being succinct and articulate in the points you’re making goes a long way. Ending early is not a bad sign.

oh you assume I still wanted the job

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

#65

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.

While I have little doubt they're indeed broken in the way you describe, as long as the results are consistent they could still be useful to hire for diversity.

You would care more about your team members having a wide variety of results, rather than the qualitative interpretation of the results themselves.

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

#66
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…

This is one of those areas where more companies need to realize they're not a FAANG. As Joel has pointed out in the past, you're not getting the cream of the crop as a normal company. Likewise you probably neither need nor even want the top. However what you do need is to plug a few holes here and there.

As a hiring manager I find it much better to think in terms of a skill mesh. I'm always looking to bring the collective whole forward. A candidate can do that by bringing new skills to the table, by being awesome at existing skills, or some mix of all of the above.

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

#67
post #3

Did you see the movie MoneyBall? That's the point.

Moneyball's point was subtly different than this, and I was hoping the article would actually touch on it. The article suggests hiring the best candidates that have skills that mesh well on the team; Moneyball explicitly searches for people whose flaws can be overlooked. This way, you get a team member whose performance outpaces the open-market salary.

In other words, you don't hire candidates whose strengths match your weaknesses, you hire candidates whose weaknesses you care about less than the competition does. Like, the best example from the movie was the pitcher with an effective but highly unconventional delivery mechanism.

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

#68
post #66
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…

This is one of those areas where more companies need to realize they're not a FAANG. As Joel has pointed out in the past, you're not getting the cream of the crop as a normal company. Likewise you probably neither need nor even want the top. However what you do need is to plug a few holes here and there. As a hiring manager I find it much better to think in terms of a skill mesh. I'm always looking to bring the colle…

Plenty of "top" candidates don't work and don't want to work at a faang company.

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

#69

>Instead of “how can we find the smartest people?” think about “how can we find people who will make our team stronger?” I would have thought that was obvious? Why would you hire someone unless you had a need for their talents? I guess I'm probably thinking small-business. At the biggest companies, they probably just hire and hope to fit them in because hiring for exact needs doesn't really scale.

My experience is this obvious perspective vacates with any level of moral maze. The hiring processes kind of require it --> getting headcount approval requires defining a role and arguing how it will lead to better outcomes and then finding/interviewing candidates takes months of time. If your priorities shift in that time...well now you have to shoehorn whatever candidates you get into the role definition you gave b…

> And then priorities shift again before they start. Leaving you not knowing what they'll be working on, but also certain you'll need extra hands on something sooner rather than later... > AND SO: "give me a smart generalist that specialized in these 8 technologies that make up the entirety of our product" becomes the only viable hire.

I mean, unless you were going to fire this person when the project you got head count for is finished, that's pretty much what you should have hired for anyways?

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

#70

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…

Any websites which irritatingly change the page title back and forth to "You have 1 message waiting" (or anything else, really) get immediately added to my blocklist.
Post reply on HN