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He got 1%, we can't hire him

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

#81

Post by toyg »

illumen wrote: post #61
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the lack of invetors and VCs in Europe - it is the lack of ability to invest in RISKY companies - the very definition of "startup". European investors are just bankers (with a few exceptions).

lol. London does quite a lot of risky financial shit. Also you might have heard of a little company kicking the shit out of Intel... ARM. Based in Cambridge UK, that is also where most tech investments in Europe are happening (not London or Berlin). Also, Germany and Switzerland are much more quiet and private about investments. You won't hear about many of them. These days you can invest in a UK startup, and have th…

Please tell me more about "have the government pick up 100% of the tab if it fails". I'm aware of some incubators here and there (which are mostly a way to create artificial markets for well-connected "advisors" and Euro-funded "trainers"), and I know about the new R&D legislation (which is mainly benefiting BigCo, like anything else patent-related), but I don't see how you could drop the whole bill of your private enterprise on the Chancellor.

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

#82

Post by mortov »

bdfh42 wrote: post #8

I 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…

I worked with a UK company which decided to 'professionalise' their HR function which, of course, meant adding psychometric testing.

I was doing fleet management software at the time which meant I was also bundled with actually handing cars out to new hires when they arrived. What can I say, they were cheap-asses and I was young enough to enjoy goofing around in cars.

Anyway, almost immediately one of the hires was sent to me and I had instructions to give him a car. He had no idea why he was to come to me so introduced himself and the usual stuff before I told him he could choose from a couple of cars I had available. The blood drained from his face and it was obvious there was something wrong.

After a few awkward seconds he looked around to make sure no-one else was around and explained he was banned from driving due to multiple drink drive (DUI/DWI in North American) convictions. A car was out the question and I now had a problem I had to go back to HR with.

When I spoke to HR, they were indignant and stressed their psychometric tests had guaranteed he was excellent for an on-the-road salesman and there was no problem giving him a car. I then had to point out it would be a criminal offence for me to give him a car so that was not going to happen. I left them still saying, 'but the test is very clear, he is an ideal candidate'.

I've never believed in them after that and anytime I see them I know the sort of brain dead thinking which goes along with them is a red flag not to join any organization using them.

Sure, the test says give the DUI guy a car - what could possibly go wrong ?

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

#83

Post by willvarfar »

gringofyx wrote: post #49
wololo wrote: post #41

What was the test, out of curiosity? What tests are the most commonly given?

There were two tests - I don't know the names but maybe someone here knows more than I do about them. Firstly: You had to write a personal statement, something to describe yourself Test 1: Involved ticking (agreeing) with a list of statements from two perspectives. The first perspective was how you see yourself. The second perspective was how (you think) others see you Test 2: Involved rotating the letter R many time…

"ooh, actually I agree" is cold reading?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

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

#84

Post by redpola »

It's really not my attention to offend/troll, but I found it amusing that whilst reading the blog post I found myself thinking "The grammar of this article is so bad, I wonder if the author's first language is English"... just as I hit the same question in the text. :)

To add something constructive to the discussion:

I've hired tens of developers over the years. Recruiting is by far the most black art I've ever suffered in the IT industry. I've terminated interviews with the most technically-adept people because their attitude was so risible there was no way they could be part of the company; I've begged interviewees who would barely speak to open up because I had a hunch they were brilliant (I was right); and I've hired promising and smart junior staff over proven yet jaded senior staff.

Trying to encompass the delightful diversity which is presented to an interviewer in a few rules is usually folly to appease the suits. You will miss great hires that way.

Does that matter? Well, it depends. I spoke to or interviewed one person for every 20 resumes, and hired one in every 20 interviewees. So, miss one through a bunch of dumb rules and think about the 400 resumes you will have to wade through......

The bottom line is that people are diverse and weird- especially engineers!- and a good interviewer with a developed spidey sense will do better for the company by ignoring daft rules regarding recruitment.

TL:DR

Recruiting is really hard and difficult to define. You will lose good hires by implementing made-up rules.

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

#85

Post by bostik »

Wilya wrote: post #59
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people say "doing fizzbuzz" rather than just programming? Fizzbuzz is just a trick question to see if new programmers know how to use the modulo operator or not.

Knowing how to fizzbuzz doesn't make you a good programmer. But not being able to do it is a very strong signal that someone can't program in any professional setting, no matter what they pretend. It's a very simple and effective test to rule out people who think/pretend they can program, but really can't.

So... it's basically a bloom filter for developer aptitude? :)

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

#86

Post by Retric »

Xylakant wrote: post #73
antirez wrote: post #14

Improving a company 101: * Get rid of HR people. * Profit.

I respectfully disagree. Get some decent HR people and don't give them the last call on hiring decisions. Make it clear that HR is supporting the process, but not leading the process and that the last call is with the department/team that is looking for a hire. Let HR take all the tedious tasks of hiring from the developers, such as all the legalese, handling employee benefits, sick reports and all associated paperwo…

Be careful, if HR screens resumes then they effectivly have a last call on highering decisions by rejecting people before anyone else sees them.

From what I have seen the only useful function for HR in the highering process is a background verification check. Aka did John Smith work at your company from 2000-2004. Anything else is risky.

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

#87

Post by gringofyx »

gringofyx wrote: post #49
wololo wrote: post #41

What was the test, out of curiosity? What tests are the most commonly given?

There were two tests - I don't know the names but maybe someone here knows more than I do about them. Firstly: You had to write a personal statement, something to describe yourself Test 1: Involved ticking (agreeing) with a list of statements from two perspectives. The first perspective was how you see yourself. The second perspective was how (you think) others see you Test 2: Involved rotating the letter R many time…

I think the test was Myers-Briggs based http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator

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

#88

Post by [deleted] »

gringofyx wrote: post #60
Confusion wrote: post #51

I've taken several kinds of psychometric tests, but have never seen one that produces a single result, whose unit is %. What kind of psychometric test could that possibly be?

Even when I saw my own results, towards the end of my employment there, there wasn't a single overall metric result. Maybe she did some kind of averaging, or maybe she was told by management to invent a reason to reject him... since about 96% of the company was of British White origin - I shouldn't speculate though.

[deleted]

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

#89

Post by tehwalrus »

andrewingram wrote: post #21

I very much dislike the idea that you can't give special treatment to individual candidates. The job of a recruiter is to find the best candidate for the job, not to treat all candidates equally. Now obviously we can't go around discriminating against candidates based on attributes not relevant to their ability to perform (ie gender, race, religion etc), but that doesn't mean we can't make use of any extra informatio…

> The job of a recruiter is to find the best candidate for the job, not to treat all candidates equally.

I won't disagree, but I would like to restate that a little more carefully:

"The job of a recruiter is to measure which candidate is best for this job, fairly and without bias."

As you point out, there are quite a few reasons that people try to weedle out of actually hiring the best person, some of them not so savory (subconscious preference for white, male people - but it depends on the company, and the culture). It should be hard, but not impossible, to override the default procedure - and for exceptional cases only.

Certainly, in the Article, the flawed psychometric test should not have been grounds to reject the best-performing candidate in the room. But similarly, personality (or appearance) should also not be a reason to promote someone over their ability to do the job.

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

#90

Post by yardie »

naahuc wrote: post #38

This reminds me of an article I read a while ago. In essence it warned of hiring people that think the same as everyone else on your team, as you will get stuck with the same opinion almost every time. It advocated hiring different thinking employees to achieve a broader view to any given problem. These psychometric tests seem to go against that advice by only selecting people with very similar personalities and thou…

The job interview is the absolutely worst way to find different minded people. I temped at a fairly large electronics corp and they made me take the ridiculous personality test. I answered the questions the way you assume a large corporation would like and got the position. A few years later I applied to the same company again and took the same personality test.

I figured now that I've got some experience under my belt and I have references from within I'd be a shoe-in. So I answered truthfully this time and was rejected. I asked my references about what happened and HR told them I didn't pass the personality test.

When money is on the line people are quite flexible about their views. If you like ObjC, I like ObjC. If you like Starbucks, I like Starbucks.

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