He got 1%, we can't hire him
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He got 1%, we can't hire him
1–10 of 594 posts
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#2Yup, nothing worse than a HR monkey with a meaningless number. "Bow before my all-powerful metric, puny mortals!"
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#3> The problem here is that we didn't have the final say.
Yup ...
There is going to be a real big shift in the next twenty years. We look at things like Developer Anarchy and say "what let the programmers run the company?" - but that's the wrong idea. It's let those with software literacy run the company - just as 500 years ago those who were literate took over running companies
For a while we shall see parallel organisations within one company - the illiterate traditional management model, and a more productive, clearly vital org that consists of all those who "get it" - whatever their job title
I wasted too many years trying to join the well renumerated traditional side - and regret the half attention I found I could pay to programming. But I have seen the light
Stop working for companies that are not dedicated to software literacy. Schumpter will be round soon enough to have a word with them.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#4Where do you work that psychometric tests are required of candidates? It's the first I've heard of something like this (outside of various gov't/military jobs).
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#5Where do you work that psychometric tests are required of candidates? It's the first I've heard of something like this (outside of various gov't/military jobs).
Here in the UK, it's not uncommon in large companies.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#6I don't get it -- was this at an operating company hiring people, or at the author's recruiting company (which seems to be a depressingly common way to hire people in Europe)?
If a recruiting company is so incompetent as to require personality profiling, and worse, enforce it so rigidly, it would explain why Europe lags so far behind the US in tech startups, despite having at least as many (if not substantially more) brilliant developers per capita.
If it's an operating company, then it maybe explains why European companies use recruiting agencies so much. Still seems like a huge tax on companies -- having decent internal HR would go a long way.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#7The outcome might feel wrong, but I think it might be actually better for the guy.
If he got hired, but would have his pay stuck because HR and higher management would not understand his value(e.g. not boasting his accomplishments everywhere, prioritizing business relevant issues over internal political issues etc), he would end up rage quitting and "wasting" years he could have spent at some more open company.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#8I was hired as a senior manager into a well known company that used psychometric testing to filter job candidates. To start off with I was happy to go along with it when hiring into my own team - after all the filter had resulted in them recruiting me and I was pretty sure I was a "good hire" - a post testing bias you might think.
You would be right. It took me a while but I began to notice that a high percentage of key hires in other areas of the business were notably failing to make the sort of contributions expected of them. They must all have done "well" on the psychometric test of course but was it possible that this was over influencing the selection process and eliminating better candidates - of course we could just have been attracting the wrong applicants.
My recruiting was able to balance any psychometric testing bias by only short listing people we thought were likely up to the job technically and who would fit in with the team. Other areas probably did not have the luxury of having the capacity to "test" that someone could probably do the job as well as pass the more dubious psychometric test.
After I left that company I was pretty sure that I would avoid businesses that used psychometric testing - in the same way as I would refuse to interview for any business that used something like graphology - more obviously bogus science?
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#9I don't get it -- was this at an operating company hiring people, or at the author's recruiting company (which seems to be a depressingly common way to hire people in Europe)? If a recruiting company is so incompetent as to require personality profiling, and worse, enforce it so rigidly, it would explain why Europe lags so far behind the US in tech startups, despite having at least as many (if not substantially more)…
It was at a (large/medium sized) company I used to work at, not the company I work for at the moment (recruiter). To be honest my interview for this position was just a really good conversation - my interviewer started out with a bunch of technical questions and eventually I said to him "Don't you have anything harder?". And then after that we just chatted about tech, it ended with him saying "I'll give the good news to your recruiter"
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#10Yup, nothing worse than a HR monkey with a meaningless number. "Bow before my all-powerful metric, puny mortals!"
More generally, there's nothing worse than a social scientist who has illusions about being a scientist.