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Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

psychologytoday.com

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Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#31

Post by xzyyyz »

emestifs wrote: post #19
Rinzler89 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry no, that's why you have a trial/probation period even in Europe, ranging from a month to a couple of years when you can fire them without any cause or severance. It's precisely so you can gauge their performance on the job without any risk to the employer. So what's the issue here? But companies are being needlessly pedantic about only wanting to hire "the best of the best" and nothing else will suffice as if t…

And in US employment is at-will, no? What exactly is the risk for a company? Rogue employee stealing IP? Any employee can do that already. Can't fire a low performer? We just saw more 300k people in the industry let go in 2022/2023/2024. And at-will, trial period already exist. If anything the risk is for the employee. But if companies stop trying to be Google and stick to their actual level of prestige, employees wo…

There is a lot of harm:

1. In order to get a job, a person need to quit one. If there is a risk (in form of trial period), why to accept such an offer? As result, best candidates pass, or at least stick to existing positions longer. Or pay raise must be more significant.

2. Reputational harm: read about Amazon's hire-to-fire practice. And try to guess, why a lot of people do not consider employment with Amazon.

3. Work harm: any new employee is investment. It has to be onboarded, and it is a heavy load for the accepting team.

Of course, it heavily depends on the job market segment. I know software eng. only. If most candidates are unemployed, trial period could be a blessing. In the current market, why would I even apply (and spend my time on the interview?

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#32

Post by klipklop »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #25
noah91734 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be great. It's odd to me that we in the US get the worst of both worlds: despite at-will employment laws and almost no employment contracts, it's difficult to get hired because companies are so afraid of bad hires, and companies don't exercise their right to fire people who don't work out. We hire like it's hard to fire people!

>We hire like it's hard to fire people! I think you're quite mistaken here. Come to Europe and see, the job market is basically frozen, while people on HN say in the US they have so many jobs options right now that they can be picky about only choosing the ones with 100% WFH, while here I can't even get replies to jobs demanding commute to the office every day. You don't know how good you have it over there.

Things are rapidly changing in the US. Getting a high paying 100% WFH job only a very small percentage of folks can land. The rest are sitting in (hours of) traffic or on a dangerous underfunded pub trans system to get to work every day.

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#33

Post by pan69 »

inurely wrote: post #20
ARandomerDude wrote: post #16

Interviewing is important. That said, I've worked at small companies (4 people) and large ones (30K+ people), and in my experience the overwhelming majority of candidates can be screened effectively by going through their resume with them and asking them simple questions, like: 1. What was the problem you were trying to solve? Why did you solve it this way? 2. If you were the decision maker, why did you choose this t…

> No need to get into your hobbies I know you are trying to be 'one of the good ones' by saying this, but my hobbies are significantly more interesting and reflective of my ability than the work I did collecting a paycheck by appeasing the frontend framework gods for some crapp that is long dead now. And the people in charge of hiring with this "resume first" mentality will likely keep it that way. Why does "previous…

If you think that your hobbies are a significant contributor to the role you are applying for, put it on your resume.

I'm sure that OP meant discussing things that are not directly on your resume or are tangibly related to the application/role and don't have any real merit in being discussed and/or add any real value in being discussed as most people's hobbies have nothing or little to do with their professional life.

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#34

Post by Nasrudith »

RajT88 wrote: post #5

> The task is rendered even more difficult by the fact that most people lie in job interviews. Woah what? Seriously? Back when I was starting my career, I had an acquaintance tell me that "everyone lies" and to feel free to pad my resume, because "everyone does it" and if I didn't do it, then my overall impression will be discounted anyways down to below what my actual capabilities were. I always chalked that up to h…

I have taken a course in interviewing when I was trying to get jobs. The techniques presented were all but asking to be deceived as all of the signs of trustworthiness had nothing to do with actual trustworthiness and had to do with playing them off, subtle mirroring of mannerisms, and similar. When you start asking for things that like or things that people can't truly control like "enthusiasm" or "confidence" regardless of your stated intents what you are really selecting for is bullshitters, as natural chance of a match up is the distant competitor

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#35

Post by Nasrudith »

jowdones wrote: post #6

And not interviewing is worse than useless and extremely unfair.

Isn't much of the unfairness just because most not-interview recruitment they skip it in favor of people who they know through connections? How would interviewing be less fair than say, using a civil service exam or similar?

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#36

Post by drewcoo »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #29
kagakuninja wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article points out, we think we are making rational decisions, when in fact we are heavily influenced by subconscious biases. In particular, we favor people we like. That gives an edge to candidates that are friendly and attractive. Since I am an introvert and on the autistic spectrum, traditional interviews are an uphill battle. Even reasonable ones like you describe.

>Since I am an introvert and on the autistic spectrum Unfortunately interviews are a way for companies to also screen out people on the spectrum without committing legal discrimination. A lot of employers are looking to hire more than just a silent machine that takes Jira tickets as input and outputs code to git, but people tend to hire other people who are similar to them in culture, behavior and personality (humans…

"Culture fit"

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#37

Post by gosub100 »

emestifs wrote: post #30
Rinzler89 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What exactly is the risk for a company? Maybe getting sued if they fire candidates fitting DEI or other protected class?

That's a reasonable assumption. I wonder if it's really going to hold up in court though. Basically wouldn't that imply once a non-white, non-male is hired you're basically with a high probability asking to be sued if you ever terminate their employment? That seems too broad to hold up in court. Couldn't the company say this person failed to meet expectations, so we decided to part ways? But, yeah, sure that's a risk…

Most cases are resolved out of court, for a multitude of reasons. One being damage to public reputation and employee morale.

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#38

Post by gosub100 »

Nobody has mentioned ATS yet. For one, it's totally opaque to the applicants. Second, it's an egregious from of discrimination for the sole purpose of laziness. If a company won't even look at your resume if it's missing some silly programs. It eliminates all critical thinking and causes non traditional background applicants to be ignored. Not to mention that whoever sets the ATS rules could share them with select people to give unfair advantage.

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#40

Post by theoldlove »

Ajay-p wrote: post #4
EhsanEtezad wrote: post #2

I am doing my PhD in Organizational Psychology so let me add here: The title is misleading a bit. The predictor power of an interview changes as a company gets better at doing interviews. What do I mean by getting better? (1) Asking the same questions (2) Having a BARS scale for scoring, which means you define the characteristics of a good response versus bad response before interviewing anyone (3) Interviewers recei…

"Interview is okay if it's done correctly" IMHO and experience, it is rarely, if ever, done correctly. Most of the interview process now is a popularity contest, including how attractive you are, whether or not the team likes you, if you're physically fit, and a bread basket of other criteria that has very little to do with the actual job. And if you have a disability, it can be a dehumanizing and discriminatory proc…

Lots of the big tech companies do interviews with randos first and then do a “team match” round if the candidate passes. I don’t see how it helps with disabilities.
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