If anyone is actually interested in hiring a "low experience, high potential" person, I'm available.
How to hire low experience, high potential people
141–150 of 433 posts
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#142People'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…
> who happened to spend their summers working
It is a super cool story to hear in what jobs somebody already has worked in and a good indicator. I worked as a dancing instructor assistant and learned so much about people. This job does not correlate with my current job as a Java/Kotlin/Android dev but was taken quite well by everyone the interviewed me 10 years back.
You just have very little time during a job interview and mistakes are costly.
> Are they smart? > Are they cool? ... Are the right questions that need to be answered, but not asked directly. The article talks especially about what to ask to get meaningful answers.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#143People'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?
Have a diverse team and have them also score for cool?
Of course a bit of a chicken and egg with hiring the diverse team.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. I found the part where the author throws in "cared for a dying parent" particularly distasteful, it's like a benchmark for "palatable damage"
I could only see that being relevant when there are resume gaps that may be explained by being a SAHM or caring for a dying parent. But as it relates to actual work? No.
I actually took care of a relative, it wasn't the reason of the gap but it gave me some bonus points when I started my career.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#145> “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…
Most people I know would walk out of that trainwreck of an interview.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd quit such an interview. Those questions are going over the boundaries of a strictly professional relationship. The thing with low-experience, high-potentials is that they may be bit more insecure than seniors and therefore might think that such questions are normal which they are not.
Exactly. You are joining a company, not a cult. Basically they are filtering for people who can speak the same jargon correctly. I have heard a lot of stories about people failing DEI questions during an interview because they didn't know the "correct" phrases to use.
Who asks DEI questions? For engineering roles? As a sometimes hiring manager myself I'm genuinely curious.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#147With AR or HUD eyeglasses, there could be a stealthy app for interviewees, which does facerec of the interviewer across from you, quickly scours the Web for things they've written or been indoctrinated in during formative early career, for whatever pop psych, management fad, or astrological litmus tests they'll likely believe in for hiring, and then discreetly directs what notes to hit, outlines example 'life' stories, prompts when to make a particular facial expression, etc.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#148> “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…
There's a nauseating bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods. "Let me tell you about the years of physical/emotional/sexual abuse I've suffered though." That's just not going to happen - and if it did happen the interviewer is probably not going to come away with "What a brave person to overcome all of that!" but "What a damaged person, I don't need them around". Well done, you've weeded out people wh…
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Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a nauseating bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods. "Let me tell you about the years of physical/emotional/sexual abuse I've suffered though." That's just not going to happen - and if it did happen the interviewer is probably not going to come away with "What a brave person to overcome all of that!" but "What a damaged person, I don't need them around". Well done, you've weeded out people wh…
Thank you. I found the part where the author throws in "cared for a dying parent" particularly distasteful, it's like a benchmark for "palatable damage"
This interview style seems bound to create a psychologically enmeshed workplace with no healthy boundaries. Or a workplace full of people with charming, easily-shared backstories and nuclear families but no yucky problems. Would not want to work here, personally.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#150Earlier 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…
out of curiosity, do you often run into low aptitude + low drive but highly politically skilled ? do they get caught early ?
It has happened. But generally, at least in tech, it is possible to filter this out with a good tech screen.