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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

#331

Post by techdragon »

KeliNorth wrote: post #322
lambda wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. I can think of one. If they are responsible for doing a criminal background check, and have found serious criminal activity in the prospective employee's past. That's not to say that some prospective hires can't be rehabilitated; but in certain cases, hiring someone with a criminal background is just too much of a risk, a…

I used to work for a pre-employment background screening agencies. It's illegal to reject someone based on any criminal history as long as the person has not lied about their background. Unfortunately, it's not illegal (federally, with the EEOC, each state may have their own differences) to discriminate by personality test. This is definitely something I saw prevalent in the hiring world: if it isn't outright illegal…

Its ironic that in an America that lets legal shenanigans turn all kinds into criminals, that the same legal weaselling lets people get away with what is completely illegal, just because they say they didn't do it for the illegal reason, just some other reason they choose at the time.

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

#332

Post by techdragon »

KeliNorth wrote: post #322
lambda wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. I can think of one. If they are responsible for doing a criminal background check, and have found serious criminal activity in the prospective employee's past. That's not to say that some prospective hires can't be rehabilitated; but in certain cases, hiring someone with a criminal background is just too much of a risk, a…

I used to work for a pre-employment background screening agencies. It's illegal to reject someone based on any criminal history as long as the person has not lied about their background. Unfortunately, it's not illegal (federally, with the EEOC, each state may have their own differences) to discriminate by personality test. This is definitely something I saw prevalent in the hiring world: if it isn't outright illegal…

Its ironic that in an America that lets legal shenanigans turn all kinds into criminals, that the same legal weaselling lets people get away with what is completely illegal, just because they say they didn't do it for the illegal reason, just some other reason they choose at the time.

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

#333

Post by Fuxy »

lutusp wrote: post #316
Fuxy wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about psychology is awesome i am quite interested in the field however HR's use of psychology by just ticking boxes is not correct. They don't understand it so they are unable to apply it without ticking boxes. That form is completely useless in London for example where about 50% of the population is a non native English speaker.

> What are you talking about psychology is awesome i am quite interested in the field however HR's use of psychology by just ticking boxes is not correct. I think you should ask yourself some hard questions about psychology. It's true that psychology's current practices are rather unreliable, but it's not obvious how to solve that problem, given the field's subject, the human mind. If the target were the brain, that…

If you're trying to say psychology is not an exact science I agree. You can't use psychology to make exact predictions of how people will behave however the more you learn about psychology the better you get at figuring out people and make a educated guess what motivates them.

For instance i find myself using MBTI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator ) a lot when meeting new people and tailoring my approach in a way that is meaningful to them.

The solution is simple teach HR psychology but don't make it the be all end all solution in hiring people it should however be a tool in their tool box and they should use their best judgement. Or thrust the IT staffs judgement at least.

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

#334

Post by Zimahl »

KeliNorth wrote: post #322
lambda wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. I can think of one. If they are responsible for doing a criminal background check, and have found serious criminal activity in the prospective employee's past. That's not to say that some prospective hires can't be rehabilitated; but in certain cases, hiring someone with a criminal background is just too much of a risk, a…

I used to work for a pre-employment background screening agencies. It's illegal to reject someone based on any criminal history as long as the person has not lied about their background. Unfortunately, it's not illegal (federally, with the EEOC, each state may have their own differences) to discriminate by personality test. This is definitely something I saw prevalent in the hiring world: if it isn't outright illegal…

It's illegal to reject someone based on any criminal history as long as the person has not lied about their background.

I'm not sure if you are in the US, but that's not true here. As a specific example: if the crime involved money and the position is with a financial institution. We have a big problem in the US where felons can't get jobs which can obviously lead to a lot of recidivism.

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

#335

Post by gbog »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #313
rayiner wrote: post #218

There 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…

I understand why you think that way, but there are reasons HR-related folks get involved in these types of things. Note that I cannot speak for this particular company or their processes, but I can speak generally. Properly validated psychometric tests are valid predictors of job performance (by which I mean objectively and factually correlated with actual work performance), and a properly constructed work-relevant t…

> If you don't consistently apply it, it becomes worthless.

Why?

Having read Thinking Fast and Slow and been convinced by this book's many useful views, I would agree that a simple questionnaire-based ranking is actually better than any subjective assessment of candidates. And it should be as neutral as possible, ie not letting one's "first impression" influence the ranking (because it is almost always based on irrelevant physical features).

But even then, there is no reason for this neutral evaluation to become worthless if not 100% consistently applied. There is the broken leg case: If you want to evaluate the probability of someone going to see a movie tonight, you just base yourself on simple statistical facts (how frequently people go to the movie in this country), and should not try to infer more from subjective context, except if the guy in question broke his leg this morning.

These tests and evaluations help much in reducing system bias due to halo fallacy, framing effect, and even time of the day for the evaluator (it has been proven juges are more lenient after lunch!), but they still are only helpers, they do not need to be decision-blocking.

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

#336

Post by bitwize »

columbo wrote: post #198

I used to work for a company that writes and administers these tests. This company broke the cardinal rule. #1 - Only give personality tests in their native language. This is unacceptable , a personality test is NOT a language aptitude test. Personality tests will have questions like this: True or False I am happy when others are taking advantage of me. Non-native speakers may not appreciate that "taking advantage" i…

The correct answer, in any case is "True". Employees who object to their bosses taking advantage of them are a liability risk and are automatic no-hires.

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

#337

Post by JonFish85 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #283
rayiner wrote: post #218

There 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…

>>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, Don't forget enforcing dress codes and other such nonsense policies in the "employee handbook."

Don't forget enforcing dress codes and other such nonsense policies in the "employee handbook."

I personally don't have a problem with this. Someone has to be responsible for making sure that the office doesn't look like a sty / homeless shelter. When investors/customers/interviewers stop by, there's a certain level of professionalism that needs to be present. So if there's a rule that people need to wear a top, they should be the ones to enforce that, in my opinion.

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

#338

Post by foobarbazqux »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #313
rayiner wrote: post #218

There 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…

I understand why you think that way, but there are reasons HR-related folks get involved in these types of things. Note that I cannot speak for this particular company or their processes, but I can speak generally. Properly validated psychometric tests are valid predictors of job performance (by which I mean objectively and factually correlated with actual work performance), and a properly constructed work-relevant t…

The problem with psychometric tests is that they're easy to game by answering them with the values the company is almost certainly looking for. Any company issuing a psychometric test is looking for obedience, hard work, discipline, profit orientation, civility, non-threatening creativity, etc. etc. etc.

So what you get by discouraging a broad diversity of personalities is a mix of people who actually have those specific characteristics and sociopaths. The latter group ends up running the company, and of course they issue utterly sociopathic "psychometric evaluations", which are basically just encoded discrimination against entire classes of people, regardless of job fitness, because the people up top are such incompetent leaders that they need subservient workers to obey their crazy orders without question.

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

#339

Post by bsbechtel »

This comment will probably get lost in the noise on this thread, but this one line says it all:

"The psychometric test was supposed to produce a "true" reflection of how someone saw themselves, and I was told it couldn't change over time - i.e. whatever it determined was fixed, immutable and infallible."

Any HR person that believes humans are immutable, fixed objects should be fired on the spot. Humans beings are adaptable organisms capable of far more than we can ever imagine. Any person who has the power to hire and fire other people who fails to understand this is not qualified for the job they have been asked to do.

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

#340

Post by B-Con »

mgkimsal wrote: post #64

"The psychometric test was supposed to produce a "true" reflection of how someone saw themselves, and I was told it couldn't change over time - i.e. whatever it determined was fixed, immutable and infallable." 20 years ago I took the Meyers-Briggs test multiple times (well, once a year for 3 years). My numbers changed a little bit each time - I was fairly strong I and N, but very weak 'T' and 'J', to the point where…

> I had a couple people tell me though that "it never changes". Which is ridiculous because it's obviously not true, and depends totally on how you interpret the questions, and that's based on how you're feeling when you take it.

The official MB position is that your type itself doesn't change, even if your answers do. Your perception of yourself and of the questions can change, but your type itself does not.

Frankly, I don't buy that, I don't see any strong evidence, from theory or practice, to suggest that it must be that way. However, IMO, it's a pointless subject. Whether you change or not really has no impact on anything. Just use the typing system and take the most accurate results you get. If your score changes, whatever.

Note: I'm a very strong MB enthusiast and I think it's a fantastic personality typing system. Oddly, I've never taking the actual MBTI (that is, the actual test), though.

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