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How to hire an idiot

nukemanbill.blogspot.com

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Re: How to hire an idiot

#111

Post by JoachimSchipper »

tokenadult wrote: post #64

There is an art to checking references. Even if a company has a policy of giving bare minimum information, find out a TELEPHONE NUMBER of someone in that company who knows your candidate and start a conversation. I was given a specific script of questions to ask back in the 1990s when I was a community volunteer for my local public school district, doing reference checks on superintendent candidates. A consultant adv…

Also, our own Peroni (IIRC) mentioned that "is $candidate eligible for rehire by your organization" will be answered by nearly all employers. And it's quite useful.

[I have no personal experience, just passing this along.]

Re: How to hire an idiot

#113

Post by gaius »

bane wrote: post #82
Bartlet wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an "education" section is a boilerplate resume item. If it wasn't there, I'd at least ask for details.

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…

"Exposure to..." is also a red flag. I had one candidate who listed "Exposure to C++" at the top of the skills section of his CV. Turns out he meant that he ran programs written in C++ - he'd never written a line of it himself.

"Familiar with..." is often a warning sign too.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#114

Post by gaius »

daeken wrote: post #46
Bartlet wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an "education" section is a boilerplate resume item. If it wasn't there, I'd at least ask for details.

I don't have an education section on my resume, as I'm a high school dropout myself. Last year I was looking for a new job and shot my resume to probably a dozen different companies. Of those, the only company who asked about the lack of an education section was Bloomberg (of the ~8 people I had in-person interviews with, at least half of them asked me about it, in fact, which told me a lot about what the company was…

I always ask this, but not for the reason you think: it's so that I, as an interviewer, can adapt the interview to you. Recent example, one candidate had no idea what I meant by "principle of locality", but I probed a bit, and he understood it perfectly well: but lacking a formal CS education, he didn't have the vocabulary. Same with big-O notation, some guys have never heard of it, but show them a code snippet and they'll tell you straight away how efficient it is.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#115

Post by Graham24 »

alanh wrote: post #59
jwallaceparker wrote: post #41

Wow a similar thing happened to a friend of mine in what he calls the "flying dragon" story. About 5 years ago my friend Bob (not his real name - real name is Andrew) started an entertainment business to do shows like Cirque du Soleil. He advertised on websites looking for acts. A man came in saying he was an agent that represented a flying dragon. Bob was incredulous. He asked to see the dragon. The agent told him t…

> Bob (not his real name - real name is Andrew) Uh. What?

for £1000 up front, I'll explain the joke to you...

Re: How to hire an idiot

#116

Post by Daniel_Newby »

tptacek wrote: post #86
natrius wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always ask, not because it's required, but because the answer is often enlightening. Judging companies for asking isn't reasonable.

In the mid-90s I got reasonably far down the road with an interview at DE Shaw / Juno and stopped it cold when they demanded school transcripts. I guess I'm unreasonable, but, if you're looking for data points: hi, I'm a candidate who will turn you down cold if you require school information from me. For a long time, I thought this was a New York thing, but, no; I got an offer from a very excellent NY tech/finance co…

I read that Google asks for it, but they are a bit, er, happy when it comes to statistical analysis. IIRC they were not impressed by the statistical power of transcripts.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#117

Post by Daniel_Newby »

m0nastic wrote: post #66
jarek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is a lot of places will not make any further comment beyond confirming the employee worked there and perhaps the circumstances of their departure (resignation/laid off/fired). This is often for legal reasons.

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…

The answer then would be "Company policy prohibits me from giving a corporate reference. Here is my personal cell phone number if you would like a personal reference."

Re: How to hire an idiot

#118

Post by cookiecaper »

bane wrote: post #101
tptacek wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>you seem to put a lot of thought into what is on people's resumes. I actually really don't. I screen resumes pretty quick and just check for a few things. Can they format their resume like a grownup? Does the information appear to be accurate? Does it show relevant skills for the position we're looking for? Does it show an upwards career progression? Are their any oddball things that I'd like to talk with them about…

It sounds like you're a tech recruiter or another guy from big corporate heritage. I say this because your answers are a shining paragon of why most of the participants at HN avoid and loathe big corporate jobs.

Do you have any particular programming qualifications yourself? I'm curious. While it is of course a great sign that you are reading HN, it doesn't sound like you know how to rate candidates in an objective and independent fashion.

Let me tell you that many of the legends in this field didn't finish or didn't attend college (and some didn't even finish high school) merely because college is really silly.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#119

Post by Mordor »

No time for any of them - called out the sales director for being a bullshitter and amazingly kept my job for several years. Sold nothing, was like watching a galaxy imploding into a black hole. Stayed for the entertainment. Was well worth it.

Re: How to hire an idiot

#120

Post by Radim »

cookiecaper wrote: post #118
bane wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you seem to put a lot of thought into what is on people's resumes. I actually really don't. I screen resumes pretty quick and just check for a few things. Can they format their resume like a grownup? Does the information appear to be accurate? Does it show relevant skills for the position we're looking for? Does it show an upwards career progression? Are their any oddball things that I'd like to talk with them about…

It sounds like you're a tech recruiter or another guy from big corporate heritage. I say this because your answers are a shining paragon of why most of the participants at HN avoid and loathe big corporate jobs. Do you have any particular programming qualifications yourself? I'm curious. While it is of course a great sign that you are reading HN, it doesn't sound like you know how to rate candidates in an objective a…

Your "legends" have (had) no need to apply for jobs, so your point seems off-topic.

More importantly, I found your comment unnecessarily offensive. The post you're replying to was fairly amicable and argued to the point, imo.

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