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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

#81

Post by kthielen »

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…

lol this is not how interviewing works at Facebook, at least not as a general practice. I’ve seen fewer unthinking superficial snap judgements elsewhere than at Facebook.

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

#82

Post by ChuckMcM »

More of a perception change rather than an actual change I think. FWIW, I've always hired to "fill gaps" and not to "add stars". Now, do I want a great person who can fill that gap? Sure. But the priority is the gap, not the person.

There are those mythical people for whom "if you interview they will 'make' a position so they can hire you" is said to be true. In my experience, people who are hired because they seem like super stars rather than for a particular role, do not do as well. Why? Because it usually automatically puts them in conflict with the person who is already doing that role, and second, what they should be doing isn't immediately apparent leading to some meandering around which is perceived by upper management as being 'non-productive.'

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

#83

Post by jfrunyon »

barry-cotter wrote: post #59
yuliyp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are the one who said body of work, the other person said portfolio. Stuff that you can't share isn't a portfolio.

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

#84

Post by objclxt »

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…

> 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 not quite how it works. I was a hiring manager at Facebook for several years. It is made very clear to EMs that team selection is not a second interview or extension of the hiring process. We do not consider team selection part of hiring.

Now, obviously there is a degree of self selection. And if you have multiple engineers coming from boot camp you can, of course, choose an engineer you feel would be more successful. That’s OK.

But I couldn’t turn an engineer down because I felt they wouldn’t be a good ‘fit’ on my team: they’d already been through the hiring process. Conversely, it absolutely can and does happen that people go through the specialist interview loops and end up in a completely different role. For example, you could have spent your entire career writing iOS client code and join a backend server team, no problem.

That’s the theory, in practice of course for some people it does turn into a second phase of hiring, which is very much not the intention.

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

#85

Post by WalterBright »

wccrawford wrote: post #2

>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.

> Why would you hire someone unless you had a need for their talents?

If you have an opportunity to hire someone with stellar talents, even if it isn't directly aligned with your business, hire them anyway.

Modify your business plan to capitalize (!) on those special talents. Even if you don't, there is the opportunity for unexpected synergy.

After all, I've applied many things I learned designing gearboxes to the D programming language.

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

#86

Post by vladmk »

This seems like an oversimplification of what it takes to make a company grow and succeed. Is it either a) hire top talent or b) hire for weakness.

The question this article is posing is the wrong one, it’s neither a nor b. Companies need to hire based on what they need most, sometimes it’s profit, sometimes value, sometimes all of the above.

This article feels like it’s based on a strawman.

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

#87

Post by barry-cotter »

briefcomment wrote: post #63
barry-cotter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Article

Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms Lauren A. Rivera

This article presents culture as a vehicle of labor market sorting. Providing a case study of hiring in elite professional service firms, I investigate the often suggested but heretofore empirically unexamined hypothesis that cultural similarities between employers and job candidates matter for employers’ hiring decisions. Drawing from 120 interviews with employers as well as participant observation of a hiring committee, I argue that hiring is more than just a process of skills sorting; it is also a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators, and firms. Employers sought candidates who were not only competent but also culturally similar to themselves in terms of leisure pursuits, experiences, and self-presentation styles. Concerns about shared culture were highly salient to employers and often outweighed concerns about absolute productivity. I unpack the interpersonal processes through which cultural similarities affected candidate evaluation in elite firms and provide the first empirical demonstration that shared culture—particularly in the form of lifestyle markers—matters for employer hiring. I conclude by discussing the implications for scholarship on culture, inequality, and labor markets.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/000312241246321...

The book

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691155623/pe...

> Drawing on scores of in-depth interviews as well as firsthand observation of hiring practices at some of America’s most prestigious firms, Lauren Rivera shows how, at every step of the hiring process, the ways that employers define and evaluate merit are strongly skewed to favor job applicants from economically privileged backgrounds. She reveals how decision makers draw from ideas about talent—what it is, what best signals it, and who does (and does not) have it—that are deeply rooted in social class. Displaying the “right stuff” that elite employers are looking for entails considerable amounts of economic, social, and cultural resources on the part of the applicants and their parents.

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

#88

Post by onion2k »

vladmk wrote: post #86

This seems like an oversimplification of what it takes to make a company grow and succeed. Is it either a) hire top talent or b) hire for weakness. The question this article is posing is the wrong one, it’s neither a nor b. Companies need to hire based on what they need most, sometimes it’s profit, sometimes value, sometimes all of the above. This article feels like it’s based on a strawman.

The last section of the article covers your exact point, and suggests that some large companies might need a hybrid approach.

In smaller companies (or teams within big companies) the points in the article are absolutely correct though.

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

#89

Post by zerr »

objclxt wrote: post #84
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…

> 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 not quite how it works. I was a hiring manager at Facebook for several years. It is made very clear to EMs that team selection is not a second interview or extension of the hiring process. We do not consider team selection part of hirin…

Btw, I've heard fb is moving away from leetcode BS stuff for interviews. Can you confirm that?

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

#90

Post by onion2k »

wccrawford wrote: post #2

>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.

You only need to read a few dozen job adverts to see that tech companies are focused entirely on technical ability and don't hire for other skills. How often do you see "must know Typescript, expert in Docker, passionate about algorithms" compared to "must understand writing documentation, expert in sprint planning, passionate about user value"?

Skills that aren't tech are rarely valued by tech companies despite the fact companies need developers with those skills in order to deliver the best tech. Sometimes the best hire for the team is the second best developer but the best person-who-can-explain-things or person-who-can-run-meetings if explaining things or running meetings is holding the team back.

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