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How to hire low experience, high potential people

worktopia.substack.com

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Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#101

Post by ElFitz »

notpachet wrote: post #18
bheadmaster wrote: post #7

> “Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. I don't think I'd be comfortable sharing th…

It depends on the role you're hiring for. I suspect a lot of comments in this thread, echoing your sentiment, will be written from the perspective of sharp-end-of-the-stick engineers for whom the idea of working on ambiguous organizational problems is an abstract concept, far from their day to day. Not saying that's you per se, but this is HN after all. This crowd loves for things to be clear-cut, especially when the…

> This is not a popular opinion among engineering types; we like things arrayed in black and white, passing tests and failing tests.

This, however, seems to be a popular opinion. And one that I particularly hate.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#102

Post by throwup238 »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #85
slibhb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear to me how "non-engineering types" can make use of stories about e.g. "caring for a dying parent" in the context of a job interview. I mean, can anyone (layperson or not) actually "psychologically evaluate" someone based on anecdotes from their life? I also worry that this stuff can be gamed. If an applicant gains an advantage by telling a story about how he "cared for his dying aunt while finishing a deg…

I don't care about the details the questions are meant to generate discussions. We can have you do stupid personality quiz instead. There are no bad answers to Myers Briggs. The test is stupid but also just a jumping point to dig into someone's personality

> We can have you do stupid personality quiz instead. There are no bad answers to Myers Briggs.

Why is that the alternative? All of the above sounds awful to me. Are you looking for an employer or signing up for a cult?

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#104

Post by agumonkey »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #54
smeeth wrote: post #41

People's intuitions around hiring aren't Bayesian enough. I think a good process reduces down to something like: - Are they smart? (understands quickly + communicates effectively) - Are they cool? (won't put poison in the keurig + pleasant to be around) - Are they high energy? (initiative + action bias) - Do they have the experience needed to be successful in the role? Those are pretty strong priors for success. If y…

I have a 4-quardrant way of thinking about this that's similar. - Y-axis is "drive" - X-axis is "aptitude" - low drive + low aptitude: never hire - low drive + high aptitude: hire for targeted use cases where you need expertise - high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster aptitude growth - high drive + high aptitude: hire on the spot There's an indirect way of testing for this which is to test for curiosity a…

out of curiosity, do you often run into low aptitude + low drive but highly politically skilled ? do they get caught early ?

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#105

Post by [deleted] »

rabi_molar wrote: post #25
poorman wrote: post #5

> Most smart people are actually terrible at having the drive/follow through to take things to completion. They’ll usually want to give up at the first sign of failure or slowness. You can also hire that really "smart" person from a large co to a startup and watch them be extremely successful in a low-friction environment for crossing the finish line.

What makes you think a startup is a low-friction environment rather than a different kind of high-friction environment where the corporate person could be absolutely miserable and unprepared for execution with resource constraints?

[deleted]

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#106

Post by dasil003 »

the_mar wrote: post #43
notpachet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the role you're hiring for. I suspect a lot of comments in this thread, echoing your sentiment, will be written from the perspective of sharp-end-of-the-stick engineers for whom the idea of working on ambiguous organizational problems is an abstract concept, far from their day to day. Not saying that's you per se, but this is HN after all. This crowd loves for things to be clear-cut, especially when the…

"working on ambiguous organizational problems" is pretty much what I do. What's that gotta do with my childhood? I hate personal interview questions with passion, because I had an unusual upbringing, and I don't want to make it my entire personality. So with questions that personal you are either going to be forcing me to lie (and yes, I have had to make up a version of my life story that's not traumatizing to the li…

Yeah I've been interviewing and building engineering teams for teams for over 20 years at this point. Overall the article highlights a lot of valuable personality traits and signals you can pick up on. Asking about childhood is just weird though. I get that the target is low experience people, so there may not be sufficient work experience to fall back on, but at least keep achievement related (eg. tell me about something you worked on in a group lately...)

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#107

Post by Shrezzing »

>“Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent.

This paragraph starts bad and somehow gets worse until a spectacular crescendo of unapologetically shamefully exploitative nonsense.

That it's posted in an article about techniques for interviewing 19-21 year olds makes it so much more insidious. The article in its entirity reads like a sociopath's guide to bullying teenagers.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#108

Post by CobrastanJorji »

smeeth wrote: post #41

People's intuitions around hiring aren't Bayesian enough. I think a good process reduces down to something like: - Are they smart? (understands quickly + communicates effectively) - Are they cool? (won't put poison in the keurig + pleasant to be around) - Are they high energy? (initiative + action bias) - Do they have the experience needed to be successful in the role? Those are pretty strong priors for success. If y…

How do you measure "are they cool" without just directly transforming all of your biases and stereotypes about the candidate into a numeric score?

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#109

Post by PartiallyTyped »

powerset wrote: post #63
CharlieDigital wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 4-quardrant way of thinking about this that's similar. - Y-axis is "drive" - X-axis is "aptitude" - low drive + low aptitude: never hire - low drive + high aptitude: hire for targeted use cases where you need expertise - high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster aptitude growth - high drive + high aptitude: hire on the spot There's an indirect way of testing for this which is to test for curiosity a…

How do you test for curiosity?

You take the person off the beaten path in the interview.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#110

Post by freeopinion »

Tip #1: You're never even going to get an application from these people if your job posting requires 7+ years with AI+Erlang+Azure.

If your codebase is C#, would you hire somebody with some Java and Swift, but no C#? If the answer is no, then feel free to scare people away who are not C# experts. But if the answer is yes, reword your job posting. Sure, be clear that you have a C# codebase, but be welcoming to other skill sets.

Just because you host your stuff on GCP doesn't mean that all applicants have to have experience on GCP. Unless it does. If you are trying to hire somebody who can jump in and solve a specific problem on day 1, then ok. But if you are hiring for potential, your new hire will be an expert in GCP two months after you hire them. You have a four month hiring process anyway. What's two more months?

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