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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

#321

Post by em-bee »

zer00eyz wrote: post #32
pavel_lishin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. Yeah, you would have to claw this out of me with a hammer. There's absolutely no way I would be comfortable sharing that level of intimacy with a stranger.

That isnt everyone. Some folks had a lot of adversity in their lives and are OK with talking about how they delt with it. Some people pay others to listen to this and call it therapy. There are other ways to ask these sorts of questions: did you ever have a job that you dont want to go back to but would not give up the experience of? (Do you know how shitty a job can be, were you an amazon driver or a pickle shoveler…

therapy vs sharing my experiences are very different things. when i am willing to talk to a therapist then it is because the therapist is not allowed to share that with others.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#322

Post by em-bee »

the_mar wrote: post #290
eszed wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ability to function during emotionally-difficult circumstances can be a job requirement. (Likely not software engineering, hence the scorn on this forum!) It's unlikely the interviewers are curious about the interviewee's story, but if a question about a traumatic experience makes someone freeze up then they may not be able to perform certain roles.

Off the top of my head, working in an emergency department of any major hospital is guaranteed to be filled with emotionally-difficult circumstances. Yet we don't ask doctors, nurses and technicians personally invasive questions to determine their ability to do their job. For someone starting a job in an emergency department, having prior personal experiences with life or death situations is a very poor indicator of…

we don't ask doctors, nurses and technicians personally invasive questions to determine their ability to do their job

because we can just ask them how they dealt with with emotionally-difficult work situations in the past.

is there any work where that is not the case?

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#323

Post by the_mar »

em-bee wrote: post #322
the_mar wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head, working in an emergency department of any major hospital is guaranteed to be filled with emotionally-difficult circumstances. Yet we don't ask doctors, nurses and technicians personally invasive questions to determine their ability to do their job. For someone starting a job in an emergency department, having prior personal experiences with life or death situations is a very poor indicator of…

we don't ask doctors, nurses and technicians personally invasive questions to determine their ability to do their job because we can just ask them how they dealt with with emotionally-difficult work situations in the past. is there any work where that is not the case?

When it's your first job in the field? We still don't use personal experiences as shitty proxy for how you're able to handle work situations

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#324

Post by yterdy »

tristor wrote: post #283
danielvaughn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed a trend where the lower the position, the more invasive the questions become. I think it's a power dynamic - they can ask the questions because they know the applicants are more desperate. For example, before I was an engineer, I was scraping by on odd jobs after the 2008 crash. Around that time I applied for a job at Red Robin (basically a fast food restaurant for those who don't know). One of the quest…

I hope that stuff has stopped somewhat but it was definitely all the rage during the mid-late 2000s. I applied for Best Buy GeekSquad when I was starting my career and “failed” their stupid hour long online psych eval that was probably (or should be) illegal. Considering my intelligence and the trajectory of my career they would have been lucky to have me, but I am glad I didn’t get the job, so I would say these are…

Nope. Had to take one for BB, CVS, T-Mobile, as late as 2022.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#325

Post by pcthrowaway »

testfoobar wrote: post #229
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"

The author appears young. I would give them the benefit of the doubt. It has been my experience that people who have lived a fortunate, trauma free life cannot really understand the trauma experienced by others. They might appear to understand, say all the right words, and so on. Then a few days later or weeks later be confused or upset because of how you react to something. A good friend once said to me, "Wow, that…

Not just trauma necessarily, but many of our defining moments include things like, leaving a religious community we grew up in, coming out as LGBTQ+, being too broke to pay bills and taking out a risky loan, experiencing racism/sexism/ageism.

Not things I'd be inclined to talk about when those things are ripe for opening myself up to discrimination.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#326

Post by joenot443 »

ryandrake wrote: post #201
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…

Even if the candidate doesn't have a horrific childhood, the question is totally inappropriate and irrelevant. Like "get up and walk out of the interview" inappropriate. This, and the general level of mysticism throughout (really? "Spike potential" WTF), causes me to dismiss the whole article.

Shopify's made the Life Story a major part of their interview process for over a decade now, it doesn't as if they'd ever had problems attracting talent. [1] I think you might be in the minority if you feel that highlights from someone's past are irrelevant predictors in their future performance and that asking about them in an interview is inappropriate.

Personally, I'm really glad I didn't "get up and walk out of the interview" when they asked me to talk about my youth, it ended up being one of my favorite internships and helped position me towards a career in big tech :)

[1] https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/interview-candidate

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#327

Post by emeril »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #165
hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

this 100% - you technically can't even ask someone how they are doing on an interview as that's not job related

I could definitely see arguments for asking these sorts of questions in how they could be job related but not worth the legal risk

I haven't had (nor ever likely will) have the luxury of working somewhere where potential/smarts is too relevant past a relatively low threshold

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#328

Post by joenot443 »

TehCorwiz wrote: post #92
kapp_in_life wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think I'd be fine weeding out people who can't read a social situation and decide to traumadump to their future coworkers.

Like the interviewer probing private traumatic experiences in a largely one-sided interrogation?

Surely you can understand the difference between a voluntary interview and an involuntary interrogation? This is a pretty poor comparison, I think.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#329

Post by [deleted] »

em-bee wrote: post #295
finnthehuman wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i would not want to work in a place where people fake their personality just to fit in. You know that statistically some number of the people you work and collaborate productively with, and get along with. They would, if given the option, never interact with you again for the rest of their lives. You know this, right? I am a boring robot engineer because it’s easy to do. The “how was your weekend” conversations are…

You know that statistically some number of the people you work and collaborate productively with, and get along with. They would, if given the option, never interact with you again for the rest of their lives. You know this, right? i don't know that because i don't care. what i care about is that we can get along at work. at that point that is all that matters. chances are that the longer we work together the more we…

[deleted]

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#330

Post by CharlieDigital »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #307
CharlieDigital wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are the ones who Hammerstein avoids My experience has been that aptitude can be developed. In the context of "low experience" (generally junior engineers), the ones that succeed are the ones that put the work in to learn and get better. But I can appreciate Hammerstein's perspective, especially if there isn't an added nuance of Carol Dweck's "fixed" vs "growth" mindset. A high drive, low aptitude individual -…

"A high drive, low aptitude individual", even if they have the best mindset in the world, shouldn't be placed in a sensitive position. As even a small chance of messing up with 'high drive' will really cause a lot of issues.

These are generally junior-level engineers so it's a non-sequitur.
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