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How to hire low experience, high potential people

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Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#161

Post by simonbw »

HPsquared wrote: post #82
rabi_molar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's the difference between being blocked by a wall (with 'no trespassing' sign) and being blocked by a muddy field. Some people find the former more stressful; some the latter.

Which one is which in this metaphor? Or is it just that they're different? My guess is that the wall is the startup, but I'm not quite sure.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#162

Post by CharlieDigital »

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?

Curiosity and ego seem to be inversely correlated.

If you ask relevant but technically hard and esoteric questions _without the expectation of an answer_ you can sometimes see it in the manner of the response. Do they probe the question? Do they explore the idea, even if they don't know the answer? Do they readily admit that they don't know?? Or do they become defensive? Do they fake their way through it? If they make a mistake and you point it out, how do they respond?

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#163

Post by mrandish »

nineplay wrote: post #57
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…

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…

> bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods.

I didn't read this as a bias against significant prior challenges, in childhood or after. I certainly had such challenges and I've always thought most people have. Since the author's stated goal is identifying high potential, early career candidates in the absence of prior success or obvious metrics, it seems essential to look for resilience.

To me, understanding how a person has contextualized and integrated prior challenges into who they are today is a key personality trait. So much of attitude is "the stories we tell ourselves to explain what happened to us." In my case, I've always felt my childhood had "some pretty rough patches" but in total "it wasn't too terrible." Yet, the few people I've shared the details with are usually aghast at how institutionally abusive it was. I don't deny the severity of it but it's pretty revealing about my personality that I don't now feel emotionally wounded by what happened. Perhaps it was just my coping mechanism but I've always felt "that's just shit that happened to me, it doesn't define me."

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#164

Post by _Nat_ »

glitchc wrote: post #16

So you're looking for a creative, self-starting, committed, open, persuasive team-player that can go their own way and work with the team to achieve big goals. Got it. /s P.S. The /s is sarcasm.

So you'd see applicants like those that the article describes as being very desirable?

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#165

Post by AlotOfReading »

hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #149
the_mar wrote: post #78

Earlier 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"

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.

Any competent HR department would have a fit if they knew these kinds of questions were being asked. It's way too easy to wander into illegal discrimination when you're making hiring decisions based on people's backgrounds like this.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#166

Post by mywittyname »

beisner wrote: post #131
mywittyname wrote: post #56

> Disagree and commit: I hate that this is such a common thought process. This is something that makes sense for soldiers in the military. But outside of this context (being a low-information cog in a gigantic machine), it's terrible. If you can't convince domain experts that the plan is sound, then maybe it's a bad plan. Honestly, disagree and commit goes against my... > Theory for excellence.

> I hate that this is such a common thought process. In most teams, not everyone is on the same page: - There are people with varying levels of experience, some may not currently have enough background to fully understand all the aspects that a plan addresses. - Many/most people have the tendency to let their various biases creep into team-level decision-making. For instance, if someone had a bad experience on a prev…

> Famously, section 5.11 of the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual [1] describes some pretty timeless ways to ruin an organization's productivity - all kinds of behavior that are kind of indistinguishable from the behavior I've seen arise from "disagreeing and not committing" in organizations.

Honestly, it seems like "disagree & commit" facilitates these bad behaviors. An "individual's opportunity to make faulty decisions" is a lot easier when that individual has the power to say, "shut up and do what I say" without repercussion.

A lot of these techniques are feigned incompetence. A manager can abuse D&C to facilitate a lot of these activities, for example by requiring a worker to use a tool that needs to be maintained.

And D&C doesn't prevent things like, starting fires around munitions or putting sawdust in fuel. That's a security issue. And C&D can be used to justify bypassing security procedures. For example, a manager telling a guard not to log their entry into a secured building.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#167

Post by brianmcc »

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…

High on both sounds like Spolsky's "Smart and Gets Things Done", and not surprisingly your conclusions rather agree :-)

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid...

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#168

Post by _a_a_a_ »

nineplay wrote: post #57
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…

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…

Word. Mine was nightmarish (siblings didn't have it any better either). Sounds like the Disneyfication of interviewing.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#169

Post by fragmede »

mrandish wrote: post #163
nineplay wrote: post #57

Earlier 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…

> bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods. I didn't read this as a bias against significant prior challenges, in childhood or after. I certainly had such challenges and I've always thought most people have. Since the author's stated goal is identifying high potential, early career candidates in the absence of prior success or obvious metrics, it seems essential to look for resilience. To me, understan…

I mean, sure, but for a job interview?

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#170

Post by nineplay »

the_mar wrote: post #132
garciasn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 was told that asking about resume gaps is a very biased question and a no-no, especially if it is a single gap, as opposed to a pattern. Usually the answer to a single resume gap is something personal and none of my business as an interviewer, it's not my place to pry if you were raising children, caring for dying relatives or battling severe depression

That whole line of questioning is a HR nightmare and I don't think they'd get away with it in any large company. You are _not_ supposed to ask open ended questions that could reveal a candidate as a member of a protected group. They tell you that their parents kicked them out because they were gay, they don't get hired, and they file a lawsuit saying that there were forced to reveal their sexual orientation and they were discriminated against because of it.

It'd be a pretty easy win.

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