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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

#351

Post by lambda »

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.

Source? As far as I know, it's legal, but you have to show a good reason to do so, and finely tailored policies, that aren't simply a broad "we don't hire anyone with a criminal record."

There are plenty of cases in which you may, or even may be required by law, not hire someone based on particular crimes on their criminal background check, such as sex offenders for jobs involving children or felonies for people who need to get a security clearance.

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

#352

Post by rlu »

While this is pretty shitty, and overall I completely agree that personality tests should not decide a hiring decision, I certainly don't think that we should lose sight of one thing:

It is 100% legitimate to not hire someone because they don't fit in with your team. They might be really smart and ace your interviews, but if they simply don't fit in then they don't fit in. This advice is given countless times in basically every single "how to give interviews" post I've read, and they come up on HN quite often. Remember the one a few days ago about how Stripe (?) uses "the Sunday test" on candidates? I thought that was pretty brilliant.

So, while the company in this story did something most of us agree is bad, they at least had good intentions. I'm not defending them, just reiterating that it's valid to reject someone based on how they fit in with your team. Just try to not do that by using a test...

[edit] also, the "fits in with team" decision should obviously be made by the team itself and not by HR. But I'm definitely not in the "abolish HR" camp, lol.

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

#354

Post by dylangs1030 »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #338
HelloMcFly wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spec…

>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.

You'd think that, but a quality psychometric test can't be gamed if it was developed in-house and is only taken once by the candidate. This particular company might not have had one of those, however.

Professional personality tests can't be gamed - you also can't find these on the internet, because they're very strictly copyrighted.

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

#355

Post by LaGrange »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #338
HelloMcFly wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spec…

Actually, spotting and weeding out sociopaths is one of the points. I know that you may believe that you're a good judge of character, but actually a smart sociopath (not the norm, btw) is likely to be able to game you just as easily as the test.

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

#356

Post by cupcake-unicorn »

Is there something I'm not getting here about UK Law? I've never run into something like this in the US, and wonder actually if it would be legal (especially taking into account the language barriers, as that'd be discrimination). I would surely hope that anyone offered such a test could opt out. It sounded like these guys were high up in the company, if not the founders, so why didn't they fix the problem themselves?

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

#357

Post by rayiner »

rlu wrote: post #350
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…

What is "Big Corp" though? I work at MS and they certainly don't do tests like this - and from my understanding neither does Google, Amazon, Facebook (is fb a "bigcorp"? perhaps not yet..). Dunno about IBM - wouldn't be surprised either way I guess. Perhaps the bigger lesson here is to not do personality tests. With that said, obviously gauging team fit is super important - but you don't need (and should avoid) a tes…

Facebook has 5,000 employees. Target has 350,000. So when I say "Big Corp" mean the latter. The primary users of these tests are companies like Target, Starbucks, etc, who hire large numbers of relatively unskilled people for jobs where personality factors are more important than anything else.

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

#358

Post by [deleted] »

enraged_camel wrote: post #349
JonFish85 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If I were a business owner and a customer judged me for allowing my employees to wear comfortable clothes around the office, I would not want them as a customer. Same with investors. Why? Because them caring about outward appearances would signal to me that they have a fundamental lack of understanding about what factors are relevant to running a successful business. Don't get me wrong: if an employee is visiting a c…

[deleted]

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

#359

Post by omegaham »

Steve_Baker wrote: post #281

"she later told me that I was anti-authoritarian and more likely to do what I thought was right rather than what I had been instructed to do. I am still baffled to this day about how that is an undesirable attribute" Pretty much sums up everthing that is wrong with Corporate America, American government and American society in a nutshell. Your betters (aka "leaders") want solders, not moral people. This is social Dar…

Military here.

One of the funniest things, to me, is that the military is having a lot of problems shifting mentalities. The "Shut the fuck up and do what you're told" model works for a draftee military, but it's complete garbage for a professional military. Today's soldiers are faced with circumstances that require improvisation, creativity, and original thought. Literature on the subject focuses on the "strategic corporal," the squad or even fireteam leader who is forced to make autonomous decisions.

Unfortunately, things are pretty slow to change in the military, so basic training is all about the STFUDWYT Model.

Then, when it actually comes to promotion time, they have to find the people who haven't been completely brainwashed. It's awesome to find that the kids who were seen as shitbags in boot camp tend to end up doing far better than the kids who wholeheartedly drank the Kool-Aid.

I have both in my shop right now. I can use the brainwashed kids, but I can't make them leaders because they have no capacity for original thought. They'll be minions forever.

That being said, I also have a kid in my shop who is certainly not brainwashed and is also completely intolerable to work with.

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

#360

Post by rlu »

rayiner wrote: post #357
rlu wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "Big Corp" though? I work at MS and they certainly don't do tests like this - and from my understanding neither does Google, Amazon, Facebook (is fb a "bigcorp"? perhaps not yet..). Dunno about IBM - wouldn't be surprised either way I guess. Perhaps the bigger lesson here is to not do personality tests. With that said, obviously gauging team fit is super important - but you don't need (and should avoid) a tes…

Facebook has 5,000 employees. Target has 350,000. So when I say "Big Corp" mean the latter. The primary users of these tests are companies like Target, Starbucks, etc, who hire large numbers of relatively unskilled people for jobs where personality factors are more important than anything else.

Fair enough. In that case, my last 'paragraph' is definitely what the takeaway from my comment should be.
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