This reads to me like codified psychopathy. Maybe it's profitable to assess people's insecurities or "experience caring for a dying parent" when hiring, but I wouldn't be advertising it.
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How to hire low experience, high potential people
391–400 of 433 posts
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if a question about a traumatic experience makes someone freeze up then they may not be able to perform certain roles What certain roles are needed to plunge into reliving the time they were raped or assaulted? When they were a war refugee? And while reliving being assaulted to navigate a professional space??
Off the top of my head: - HR professionals deal with a ton of shit, including assaults. - First responders, obviously. - Message board moderators? - Customer service of any kind. (The Karen memes are irritating, and really, really mean, but I swear I recognize every one those interactions from my years in those kinds of jobs.) - I was trauma-dumped plenty of times during my teaching career, as well as been loudly - e…
All of those things are made far worse if you’re actively having traumatic flashbacks, and do not benefit at all from having a traumatized childhood. The actual best things for the above is appropriate training and crisis intervention strategies.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I failed that as well back then! I still (mostly) remember the question that I knew was going to sink me. The scenario was that I caught a coworker stealing a pencil from the company, and the question was what I would do about it. I stubbornly chose whatever the ‘do nothing’ option was, and continued my time as a line cook for several more years. I probably dodged a bullet there.
You're correct. The pencil question is their signature gambit. When I interviewed at BB as a high schooler, I also answered this question incorrectly (but earnestly) and the hiring manager took pity on me, saying effectively "I like you, so I'll give you another chance. When the GM asks you this question you ALWAYS say 'stealing is wrong no matter what'".
You definitely dodged a bullet, btw! That job was my first lesson in corporate hell
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#394Thank you for sharing this insightful article, it was a pleasure to read. I learned a lot about hiring low experience, high potential individuals and I appreciate the effort put into crafting this informative piece. Looking forward to implementing these strategies in the future!
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you measure "are they cool" without just directly transforming all of your biases and stereotypes about the candidate into a numeric score?
"Cool" isn't a good word to use, but it is important to filter for people who can get along with others. Some candidates can't make it through an interview without being condescending to someone, making snide remarks, being arrogant, trying to start arguments about trivial things, or other negative behaviors. If they're doing this during the interview, you're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. It's going to be 100X…
> Some of the most toxic people I ever worked with were very charming in interviews
this may well be a feature of (social) economics and hence a necessary evil
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
neuroticism, no. asocial or antisocial behavior, yes.
Asocial? I guess autistic people are out! I assume you’re young: there are many reasons people might be perfectly good at a job but not want to socialize with those people, or any other people. This whole thread makes me sad as an unemployed autistic person. HN folks are horrible hiring managers! Edit: and now downvoted for showing you losers that your personal model of the world and the people in it might be lacking…
i'm mid-late 30s and neurodivergent myself.
i think you're not helping your case by this comment itself being antisocial.
my use of "asocial" was specifically the very common connotation attached to it of being hostile or inconsiderate which are the exact words used when you google its definition
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#397[dead]
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a similar shape but with quite different conclusions - low drive + low aptitude: never hire Hammerstein thinks some use can be made of these folks - low drive + high aptitude: hire for targeted use cases where you need expertise Hammerstein has this group as high leadership positions - high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster aptitude growth These are the ones who Hammerstein avoids - high drive + high…
At the risk of sounding like a LinkedIn post, it seems clear that the difference between General von Hammerstein and CharlieDigital is whether they have a fixed vs. growth mindset about their potential team.
Another difference is that in a software company, "high drive + low aptitude" people usually don't cause anyone's death.
But you probably shouldn't give them passwords to the production servers.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I now call this "vibes".
This is an interesting area because there's a lot of room for debate about what a good "vibe" is. Is being really positive all the time the right vibe? In many/most office environments, it is considered to be the right vibe. In a small startup where you're trying to validate PMF, it's not necessarily the best vibe IMO.
"Vibe" isn't so easy defined as being positive; more like the way you interact feels "natural" and doesn't lead to negative emotions.
In a startup, lots of mistakes will be made. A team with the right vibe knows and acknowledges this, but focuses on fixing the problems rather than finger pointing.
In that sense, "vibe" is not inherent to the individual, but I like to think of it as "we're on the same wavelength" when it comes to key things. So it really means "does this person fit with this team and this mission?" -- "vibes" sums that up for me.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#400Earlier 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…
But aptitude can be split into "experience" and "natural talent", which are different things and I think that's meant to be the whole point of the article.
In Chinese philosophy, there is a school of thought called "legalism" that was founded by Han Fei-tzu. There is a piece of writing in there that I'm quite fond of [0]:
If it were necessary to rely on a shaft that had grown perfectly straight, within a hundred generations there would be no arrow. If it were necessary to rely on wood that had grown perfectly round, within a thousand generations there would be no cart wheel. If a naturally straight shaft or naturally round wood cannot be found within a hundred generations, how is it that in all generations carriages are used and birds shot? Because tools are used to straighten and bend. But even if one did not rely on tools and still got a naturally straight shaft or a piece of naturally round wood, a skillful craftsman would not value this. Why? Because it is not just one person that needs to ride and not just one arrow that needs to be shot.
Better that you can identify candidates with potential and have a system of knowledge transfer and training to make them productive.
[0] https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/11/14/han-fei-tzu-d-233-bce-lega...