He got 1%, we can't hire him • Hacker News Board

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#11

Post by RafiqM » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 9:45 AM UTC

You may have lost out, but he won big time - any company that lets it's decisions be made in that way is probably a bad company to work for.

Metric obsession when applied to people is not good, because unlike your conversion rate, people can't be defined by metrics.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#12

Post by rdl » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 9:46 AM UTC

penguat wrote: post #5

Aqua_Geek wrote: post #4

Where 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.

What would be awesome would be taking a variety of (cheap, painless, ideally totally passive) tests on a control population, your applicant population, your offer population (specifically those who turn you down), your new hires, and your ongoing employees (especially if you can sort your employees once hired into good/bad).

It would ideally be descriptive vs. prescriptive, so you could uncover things like "we get mainly recent-college-grads applying, but our strongest employees are those who joined mid-career", or "we have very few minorities who apply, but those who apply and are offered positions tend to be strong and stay with the company a long time".

Pretty meaningless unless you are hiring at Google scale, though.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#13

Post by gringofyx » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 9:46 AM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #7

The 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.

You're right, smarter people who were hired before the introduction of the psychometric test became frustrated and weren't recognised for their abilities. I knew one very anti-social but exceptionally skilled developer that rage-quitted in a spectacular "hissy-fit"

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#14

Post by antirez » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 9:47 AM UTC

Improving a company 101:

* Get rid of HR people.

* Profit.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#15

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 9:47 AM UTC

These psychometric tests are often unscientific and bull sh*tty. If I interviewed with someone who gave me one, I would be highly tempted abort the interview early; this is not a company I would want to work for.

This is in the UK; a found a lot of weirdness goes on there that wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else. Its the anti-authority types who are most likely to think out of the box, and are actually praised for by many American companies (at least vocally, implicitly they might not like them so much, of course).

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#16

Post by rdl » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 9:48 AM UTC

gringofyx wrote: post #9

rdl wrote: post #6

I 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…

I wonder if recruiters recruiting recruits for recruiting are substantially better at it than when the same recruiters recruit for clients -- the way real estate agents tend to be substantially better when selling their own houses vs. for clients, and how doctors tend to make better medical decisions (less painful, better holistic outcomes, less cost) for themselves or family vs. regular patients.

Maybe part of it is that a recruiter should fully understand the role of a recruiter, but very few really understand the developer/devops/etc. roles they recruit for.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#17

Post by valleyer » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 9:51 AM UTC

Is "me and X" as the subject of a sentence valid British English grammar? It comes across as really uneducated.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#18

Post by icecreampain » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 9:52 AM UTC

I can only speak for tech companies, but my experience is that once a company becomes large enough to hire HR people and middle management, that's a sign that money is being wasted paying for unproductive types rather than creating and improving sold products and services.

Hiring HR people because "that's what a serious, large company does" and having a certain amount of mid-tier bosses because "we [the top] need better control over what's happening down at the bottom" (read: "we need detailed control of people that have been self-sufficient and productive on their own for several years"), is an excellent time to start looking for other work.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#19

Post by nomedeplume » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 9:53 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #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 organ…

I recently spent a year working for an "elite" Silicon Valley startup company. The VP engineering had read enough Joel Spolsky to get through the door.. but he didn't practice software literacy.

I would love to work for a shop, even in an underling capacity, that really gets software dev right. It would be worth delaying my startup dreams just so I can do it right at scale.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#20

Post by gringofyx » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 9:54 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #16

gringofyx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder if recruiters recruiting recruits for recruiting are substantially better at it than when the same recruiters recruit for clients -- the way real estate agents tend to be substantially better when selling their own houses vs. for clients, and how doctors tend to make better medical decisions (less painful, better holistic outcomes, less cost) for themselves or family vs. regular patients. Maybe part of it is…

This has not been my experience - this is not intended as a slur against my employer (who are fairly awesome). But when you're in a recruitment company you get to see all the processes and the problems with those processes. I would probably recommend that all companies do their own recruitment.