Me != I
He got 1%, we can't hire him
301–310 of 594 posts
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Step 3: Grow, and attract some parasitic employees Step 4: Lose a trivial discrimination / disability / wrongful termination suit because you didn't keep the right paperwork.
Trivial? I've seen business go bust as a result of this sort of negligence. BTW, suing for wrong doing is NOT parasitic. Its often the only recourse avaliable with bad employers
I believe Spooky meant "trivially avoided" rather than "resulting in trivial damage."
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#303Oh god, I am shocked and horrified to hear that these sorts of tests may now be making their way into the tech industry. I've never encountered one of these personally, but my then-girlfriend who was a recent nursing school graduate looking for her first job ran into them and failed the first few of them. After reading about them online I'm convinced the only way for you to "pass" these tests is to be slightly psycho…
lolo I like: "It is maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free >> SA" Yeah, what is the point of having a court of law anyway, because the test taker knows all.
There are much worse ones. I seriously hope that the key is fake. You are supposed to Strongly Disagree with:
"When you are annoyed with something, you say so"
"When people make mistakes, you correct them"
"You are not afraid to tell someone off"
"Any trouble you have is your own fault"
"You avoid arguments as much as possible"
"You finish your work no matter what"
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#304There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person. HR people are valuable in a company. But their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers, and to take care of all the stuff like W-2 forms and whatnot nobody wants to deal with, not make…
Well, HR does have final say-so in terms of logistics. Like does the candidate require sponsorship to work in this country, do they have a criminal record, did their reference say they were an asshole, are they asking for more money than we can afford. Even judging personality and communication skills is not outside their expertise. The lesson of this article is to not use personality tests.
When groups designed to serve become self-serving control apparatuses, I think a company is deeply fucked. Probably irrevocably so, although I'd love to learn otherwise. It means people have forgotten the mission, and once that happens I think it's slow death by turf battle.
You also see this happen with IT, Ops, and software development organizations, not just HR. E.g., feature X is the company's highest business priority, but the DBAs don't like it and they control all schema changes, so they just say no.
In my view, HR's job is to help hiring managers find the people they need, and then to support those people when they're there. If hiring managers need help with making hiring decisions, then by all means offer them help. And if HR,or anybody, spots something that concerns them, they should speak up. But I think giving HR a veto is a clear mistake. So no, I'd say that tests just make this an obvious problem, rather than a subtle one.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#305Sometimes, the vocal majority on hn is highly skeptical, going above and beyond the call of "duty" to point out unsupported conclusions, anecdotal evidence, etc. Other times, they grab their pitchforks and attack the enemy (government, management, corporations, patent law) without so much as a glance at the data. 1. Are you certain that all technically qualified candidates will fit in with every company? Do you have…
1) Absolutely not, there's no perfect way to figure out if someone is a good fit for the company.
2) I expect that the HR process is evidence towards whether a candidate is a good fit, but not as good evidence evidence as the estimation of future coworkers regarding if they would be a good fit. I expect that written tests by HR regarding personality would be approximately useless, and that the people who created them haven't measured their sensitivity and specificity.
3) I expect that would vary wildly case by case.
EDIT: To unpack 2 a bit more, I'm sure there are personality tests that would be fairly useful in these cases, but I also expect that actual researchers who are doing things scientifically and only promise what they can deliver would be at such a huge disadvantage selling to HR departments that I wouldn't expect any uptake even without competition from unscrupulous types who think they've got everything figured out and don't feel the need to scientifically test their methods.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#306Oh god, I am shocked and horrified to hear that these sorts of tests may now be making their way into the tech industry. I've never encountered one of these personally, but my then-girlfriend who was a recent nursing school graduate looking for her first job ran into them and failed the first few of them. After reading about them online I'm convinced the only way for you to "pass" these tests is to be slightly psycho…
lolo I like: "It is maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free >> SA" Yeah, what is the point of having a court of law anyway, because the test taker knows all.
Or they could be modestly conversant with the basics of criminal law.
The courts are designed to let some portion of the guilty go free: E.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation
For example, in any case where the evidence was obtained illegally, a person who is provably guilty may not be convicted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#307Oh god, I am shocked and horrified to hear that these sorts of tests may now be making their way into the tech industry. I've never encountered one of these personally, but my then-girlfriend who was a recent nursing school graduate looking for her first job ran into them and failed the first few of them. After reading about them online I'm convinced the only way for you to "pass" these tests is to be slightly psycho…
I know that it's hard when you want a job, but personality tests should be declined the same way polygraphs should be (if they were legal to administer). Developers have an advantage right now in the supply and demand department, and this is exactly the way that power should be used.
Talented developers are in short supply in the core tech industry. Outside that, the world is filled with "programmers" and "analysts" struggling to find jobs in enterprise IT and niche-market product development. Post a job to craigslist and you'll be drowned in resumes.
My suspicion (never having seen one of these tests) is that it's being used in these situations. I doubt Apple or Google are going to start using them any time soon. My guess is your advice is pretty bad for the people facing a personality test.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#308Oh god, I am shocked and horrified to hear that these sorts of tests may now be making their way into the tech industry. I've never encountered one of these personally, but my then-girlfriend who was a recent nursing school graduate looking for her first job ran into them and failed the first few of them. After reading about them online I'm convinced the only way for you to "pass" these tests is to be slightly psycho…
Dude, your girlfriend may have been too immature at that point to realize what the right answers to Unicru were, but it's really obvious what the interviewer wants to hear after getting some life experience with assholes: bend over, don't complain, smile, etc...
I never got such a test, but if I did, I would try really hard to score 0% just because fuck you. Funny thing is that the capable guy being exemplified in this article probably did just that, after all, if you answer randomly the score will be higher than 1%.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
lolo I like: "It is maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free >> SA" Yeah, what is the point of having a court of law anyway, because the test taker knows all.
There are much worse ones. I seriously hope that the key is fake. You are supposed to Strongly Disagree with: "When you are annoyed with something, you say so" "When people make mistakes, you correct them" "You are not afraid to tell someone off" ... and Strongly Agree with: "Any trouble you have is your own fault" "You avoid arguments as much as possible" "You finish your work no matter what" This is what the wicked…
The key is correct. Remember you are a mindless drone, as such you are not expected to take charge. Them above, they know best.
Anyone remember that case when a prank caller called a McDonalds, telling them that they were management and that they should strip-search a female employee? McDonalds has an employee handbook with all the procedures for the robot, and if you can make it appear that what you ask is in the handbook you have hacked the robot. This is the background to that story. Excellent robots they have at McDonalds.
The reason for this procedure is that they want to pick up people from the streets and train them in a week. This is how you do it.
Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him
#310Not to be nitpicky, but rather to help: You are using 'me' and 'I' backwards. It's really distracting and made it difficult to get through the beginning of the post to the actual story. The rules are simple: Take Carl out of the sentence. Would you say "Me made myself available"? No. Then why "Carl and me made ourselves available"? Would you say "score extra points with I"? No. Then why "score extra points with Carl…
Thank you! I was hoping that I wasn't the only one bothered by this.