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How to hire an idiot

nukemanbill.blogspot.com

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Re: How to hire an idiot

#91

Post by m0nastic »

nl wrote: post #78
jarek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow-up: 3. Is this situation like resume/cover letter advice, where everyone has their own favourite system and each person's advice for the perfect application is different?

No - being confident that your referees are going to say good things about you is always good advice.

At the risk of this sounding like a bullshit platitude, if you find yourself having to really cautiously cherry-pick your references, you might want to evaluate if that says something about your work (it may or may not).

I may have just been really lucky in my career, but there isn't anyone I've worked with (either as a coworker, manager, or as an underling) who I wouldn't feel comfortable being a reference. That's not to say there aren't people who I wouldn't chose to be a reference (maybe we didn't work together very closely), but seriously, nobody who if I were on trial and the prosecutor called as a "surprise witness" I'd cringe and worry that they might say something negative about my work.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#92

Post by tptacek »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #80
lotharbot wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further, "check references" needs to be deeper than just asking if the guy actually worked there. Ask about his role and responsibilities. Ask how he helped the company's bottom line. Ask real questions.

If you are hiring someone for a sales position, talk with their customers not their former employer.

I guess, but the first real question in any sales interview is "what was your number at your last job", and a 15 second reference check with the former employer would quickly surface the fact that the person didn't have a number at all.

Have you ever actually called a salesperson's customers? They provided you customer references? How'd it go?

Re: How to hire an idiot

#93

Post by m0nastic »

tptacek wrote: post #90
m0nastic wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've posted about this before, but I wanted to again bring it up as a note of caution for people who might be looking for work. My present employer (who I've finally decided to try and make my former) has a policy forbidding any employee from serving as a reference to any former employee. They are literally not allowed to comment in any way, but are told to forward all inquiries to a phone number which will verify em…

I understand how the company arrived at it, but that's a horrible, damaging rule.

As I've now been discovering lately. I don't think it's very common (I haven't heard of any other companies that do it, for instance), but I'd really hate for other people to wind up in the same situation.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#94

Post by bane »

tptacek wrote: post #84
bane wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is absolutely a boilerplate resume item. I can't even count the number of time irregularities in just that one section ended up providing deep insight into a good or bad candidate. Everybody who has an education puts it on their resume even if it's 30 or 40 years old and they jam it at the bottom in a small font. For example: A weird school name - "International University of America", "University of New Yo…

I spend a huge amount of time every week reading resumes and talking to candidates and it simply is not my experience that everyone who "has" an education puts it on their resume. The only people who ever put their GPA on their resume are people with one or fewer jobs after college. Unless the best conversation you're prepared to have with a prospective employer is about your years in school, leave your GPA off your…

As somebody who also spends a lot of time in the resume weeds, I have to absolutely, but respectfully, disagree while keeping my feet warm this cold night on the burning embers of shredded resume fodder.

To be clear, lack of an education section does not equal lack of an education and lack of a formal education does not equal lack of an education.

Almost to the person, people who made it to an interview despite having problems (or a missing) education section fell apart under minor probing questions like "describe your part in a project you worked on at a previous employer you were particularly proud of" or "I see you attended courses at XYZ school, can you talk about the courses you took and why you didn't finish up?"

When these folks are hired, they almost always turn out to be disasters in one way or another...often becoming the worst possible employee, not quite bad enough to be fired.

More often than not their resumes turned out to be mostly made up resume puffery or gross omissions to cover up various consistent problems in their employment and education histories such as termination for cause or having partied their way out of school.

People with a solid education section, even if it's just High School and perhaps a supplementary "job related interests" section tend to do much better under probing because they aren't making anything up.

Every so often you might find somebody with an honest to goodness good reason for something, but it's almost not worth your while to wade through the future career grocery store baggers in the 1200 tall resume pile.

Best things to look for in experienced people, a steady career progression. Nobody starts out as a superstar, but good employees tend to be ones that move up over their career. 15 years as a "Programmer I" is not a good sign.

If somebody has an incomplete schooling on their resume, but a solidly progressing career over a number of years, it's probably worth talking to them, at least to find out why they didn't finish. It's often due to major life changes (kids, illness, divorce, etc.), but if you push a little you'll uncover lots of people who either

a) thought they were too smart for it all (they aren't, trust me)

b) partied their way to a mid-sophomore year expulsion

Best things to watch out for outside of the mandatory education section: a laundry list of every technology/language to come out in the last 30 years. better yet, if they make a matrix of all of these languages vs. their personal aptitude in the languages and they rank an 8 out of 10 or better in all of them. Run away, run far far away from this person. I've seen dozens of these guys hired over the years and they all turn out to be turds.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#95

Post by tptacek »

m0nastic wrote: post #91
nl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - being confident that your referees are going to say good things about you is always good advice.

At the risk of this sounding like a bullshit platitude, if you find yourself having to really cautiously cherry-pick your references, you might want to evaluate if that says something about your work (it may or may not). I may have just been really lucky in my career, but there isn't anyone I've worked with (either as a coworker, manager, or as an underling) who I wouldn't feel comfortable being a reference. That's n…

As someone who was once (not too long ago) blindsided by an unexpectedly- somewhat- negative reference, and who has seen a couple other people similarly blindsided, and where in all these cases the backdoor reference, while not a coached reference, was someone you could have seen it coming for (a manager, a close coworker, etc):

It's probably a good idea to secure agreement that, should a reference call come in, you're going to get 100% positive feedback. You can accomplish that without demanding 100% positive references; just say something like, "hey, Joe, I'm getting pretty far down the road with a potential gig and they're smart and might track you down for a reference... anything I'd need to be concerned about?".

Once a person tells you to your face that they're not going to say anything bad about you, they're a lot less likely to.

Whereas, if you don't have the conversation at all, your coworkers can tank you without even meaning to. People who aren't experienced giving references might even think it's a good idea to balance out positive things with some (they think) minor negatives. You probably want to nip that idea in the bud, if you can.

Incidentally: if you get called on to give a reference and you're wondering if maybe it'd be a good idea to sprinkle some talk about quirks and idiosyncrasies into a reference: don't. Just give boring good references.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#96

Post by m0nastic »

tptacek wrote: post #95
m0nastic wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of this sounding like a bullshit platitude, if you find yourself having to really cautiously cherry-pick your references, you might want to evaluate if that says something about your work (it may or may not). I may have just been really lucky in my career, but there isn't anyone I've worked with (either as a coworker, manager, or as an underling) who I wouldn't feel comfortable being a reference. That's n…

As someone who was once (not too long ago) blindsided by an unexpectedly- somewhat- negative reference, and who has seen a couple other people similarly blindsided, and where in all these cases the backdoor reference, while not a coached reference, was someone you could have seen it coming for (a manager, a close coworker, etc): It's probably a good idea to secure agreement that, should a reference call come in, you'…

That's actually a good point. You should definitely make sure that you've talked to anyone you're going to list ahead of time.

I've done a couple dozen security clearance interviews for co-workers or past co-workers (which is basically a hiring interview on steroids), and the rule of thumb there is absolutely that you want to give as boring an answer as possible.

When I read this series of comments, for some reason I thought of the series finale of Seinfeld (the courtroom), which brought to mind that it might be useful to evaluate if in your career you've left a bunch of people who you wouldn't want a prospective employer to contact.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#97

Post by tptacek »

bane wrote: post #94
tptacek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend a huge amount of time every week reading resumes and talking to candidates and it simply is not my experience that everyone who "has" an education puts it on their resume. The only people who ever put their GPA on their resume are people with one or fewer jobs after college. Unless the best conversation you're prepared to have with a prospective employer is about your years in school, leave your GPA off your…

As somebody who also spends a lot of time in the resume weeds, I have to absolutely, but respectfully, disagree while keeping my feet warm this cold night on the burning embers of shredded resume fodder. To be clear, lack of an education section does not equal lack of an education and lack of a formal education does not equal lack of an education. Almost to the person, people who made it to an interview despite havin…

I have no idea how to respond to this, which I promise I did read, other than to say that across my whole career, some of the very best and most qualified people I've hired didn't have their "Education" on their resume. Some of them had degrees from very solid engineering schools, others didn't, but I didn't find that out until after we had hired. You're suggesting you'd shred their resumes. If you're serious, you're a fool. I don't believe you're serious, though.

Your hiring process sounds broken. For instance: you seem to put a lot of thought into what is on people's resumes. We don't. Resumes exist to secure job interviews. Your interview process is what selects good candidates, not your resume analysis.

Finally, a reminder: it is 2011, and for at least the least 18 months, it has been a white hot competitive market for talent. In my recruiting role, my job is to sell candidates on the notion that we're a great place to do application security. It is not my job to look for reasons not to talk to people based on their resumes. In fact, that is the opposite of my job. The notion of finding new and clever ways to screen people out of the process based on their resumes ("look, Bob! this candidate listed 'coursework in computational linguistics'! if he couldn't hack it to a degree, he'd never hack it here!") is crazy.

Maybe the problem is, you've plugged the top of your funnel into horrorshow sources like Monster.com and Craigslist (actually, Craigslist is better than Monster.com). Stop doing that.

I might have a negative impression of a candidate whose resume was riddled with misspellings. But I'd still talk to them.

We are very, very, very, very good at screening, by the way. Not a little bit good. Very good.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#99

Post by willpower101 »

"Every time I relate this experience, I get a lot of head nods."

o.O is what you get from me. Is everyone you relate this story to you a half-wit? Quite simply, who hires without adequate research? (apparently many more people than I realized)

Re: How to hire an idiot

#100

Post by sarcasmatron »

As a hiring manager, I always try to either (a) hire 90 day contract to full-time; or (b) hire under a 90-day trial or probationary period. At the end of the period I ask myself if I would still hire that person. If my instinct is "no", I trust my instinct. It's good for morale when everyone knows that the 90 days is a meaningful evaluation period.

As a job-seeker, I always make sure that I contact my references and give them a heads-up that the call is coming in, along with a copy of the resume I submitted for the job and the job posting. It's out of courtesy to the person I'm asking to provide me with a reference.

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