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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

#451

Post by bad_user »

tokenadult wrote: post #367
wffurr wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprising and disappointing that the best methods were only barely over 50% correlation with performance on the job. What does the algorithmic whiteboard coding tech interview count as? Does it qualify as work sample and brain teaser combined with interview? I suspect it's too far removed from what software engineering is actually like to be a good work sample, and the prior knowledge required to solve algorithm pro…

Surprising and disappointing that the best methods were only barely over 50% correlation with performance on the job. That's probably about the best we could expect, as job-seeking behavior when a candidate desires a job is different from job-doing behavior over the long term after someone is hired and knows more about the company. The appalling thing is that companies still use procedures (personal unstructured inte…

Isn't 50% just like flipping a coin?

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

#452

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

mindcrime wrote: post #438
tptacek wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds good in theory, but in reality HR people are not especially skilled in picking up on the character issues that matter to teams; moreover, when you instruct the HR team that their role in the process is to screen for this kind of stuff, you end up with HR people creating sporadic roadblocks for hiring. Rayiner is absolutely 100% right about this. The real role of HR people is tax forms and health insurance…

The real role of HR people is tax forms and health insurance, and little else. Well said. And their role definitely should not include administering bullshit voodoo science "psychometric evaluations" and making any decisions based on them.

Psychometric evaluations are not voodoo science.

Honestly, as a PhD psychologist, they are the only useful (i.e. scientific) part of psychology.

For example, see Hunter and Schmidt (1998) http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%.... This (and if you've been around here a while, you've probably seen this) is a meta-analysis of the utility of particular selection procedures for jobs. That is psychometrics.

Unfortunately, much of the bullshit surrounding the particular psychometric tests used by HR departments has thoroughly debased a discipline that invented cross validation. Smith and Mosier, 1958 (Method 6, I believe).

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

#453

Post by HelloMcFly »

scott_s wrote: post #424
HelloMcFly wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been personally involved in validity testing for graphic designers, and while the validity coefficients were reduced they were still of practical significance, and had incremental validity over cognitive ability testing (which is always the best predictor, but tends to show racial bias). I will see if I can find any published research as I've not seen any and am now curious myself.

Is this an accurate description of what you mean by a cognitive ability test? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Abilities_Test If so, under which circumstances are they used? For a graphic designer, the natural "test" would be for fellow graphic designers and potential managers to look at an applicant's work samples, or to ask them to produce one. This method directly tests the applicant's ability to do the type…

Yes, in essence. When I refer to CATs I'm talking about measures testing g (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_intelligence). And I know it's hard to believe, but g-centric tests like cognitive ability test do a better job than other seemingly more relevant selection measures like work sample tests and assessment centers. The benefit of work sample tests, assessment centers, integrity tests, etc. is that their validity is decent and that a significant portion is independent of g-centric measures.

Here is a good article you can read on the subject: http://www.unc.edu/~nielsen/soci708/cdocs/Schmidt_Hunter_200...

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

#454

Post by danielweber »

pseut wrote: post #426
noir_lord wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was younger I applied a few places that had those McDonalds type tests, they are so completely trivial to subvert. The questions basically where a thinly veiled attempt to figure out how pliable and compliant you where. They should have just had one question "Do you like having a roof over your head?" because lets be honest you don't work those kinds of jobs because you enjoy them. All this psychometric stuff…

Think of them this way: they don't test your personality, they test whether you know what the obviously correct answers are for a personality screening test. Now imagine what must be going through someone's head when they answer "never/strongly disagree" to the question "How often do you try to treat customers and coworkers with respect?" and the tests start to make a little more sense as a screening mechanism.

And whether you can lie for them.

I took a PHP test for a recruiter once. Half the questions were "what would you get if you typed this into the intrepeter?", which you weren't allowed to do. It seemed to come down to an honesty test.

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

#455

Post by HelloMcFly »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #346
gbog wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 irrel…

Well, legally consistent application is very important. If getting an 80% if the cutoff for candidate A, and getting a 65% is acceptable for candidate B, then you're now setting different standards for different candidates. What if those different standards align with something like gender, or religion? It may not happen on purpose, but it's a problem. Statistically, you've created a model for consistent application,…

I'd like to apologize for my poor grammar in the above comment. I typed it while on a conference call, and am a bit embarrassed by it.

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

#456

Post by mathattack »

tptacek wrote: post #412
mathattack wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I was trying to get across. It's HR's job to come up with general salary trends by seniority, geography and anything else that management wants. It's management's (really the CEO's) job to apply it. Is it a company that want to pay median salaries with lots of benefits? Low base relative to the industry, but lots of bonus and equity? Lots of cash? All these are the CEO's decision, but they shouldn't be t…

This is really not HR's job. HR people are hired for experience with benefits management and bookkeeping; when they try to trend salaries, they inevitably wind up just sourcing extremely dubious data from extremely dubious sites. Most companies would be better off not pretending that HR has any other function than trying to minimize the cost of health insurance to the company.

Perhaps I'm biased because I've been in a few places where HR did the mainline jobs in the firm prior to becoming HR. Those scenarios turned out extremely well, though perhaps we didn't get the best deals in health insurance.

I've also seen (unhealthy) environments where HR's primary job was to protect the company from lawsuits. That's not great either.

In general I've counseled people not to put their career in HR's hands, but that's still a long way from calling it a near-useless function. It frequently turns out that way, but it has the potential to be much more.

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

#457

Post by JonFish85 »

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…

Because like it or not, first impressions are incredibly valuable. If I am looking at giving you, say, $100k worth of business, and I walk in and it smells vaguely terrible, people are disheveled and the office is a mess, then right off the bat you're down a peg.

Assuming you have a competitor that is clean & neat, with employees who are presentable, all things being equal I am more likely to choose them. You & your employees might actually do better work, but you're fighting an uphill battle from the get-go. And that to me is one thing that a successful business doesn't do: immediately put themselves at a disadvantage.

And it's not just customers or investors. It can be vendors, partners and, quite frankly, other employees. Ultimately it's a place of business and there are certain standards that need to be set that otherwise some employees might not set their own appropriate ones (whether it's smell, hygiene, shabby dressing, what-have-you).

To clarify, I'm not saying you have to have everyone in suits to have a successful business. I'm just saying that someone should at least be able to enforce a basic level of present-ability throughout the workforce. Even if that just means "Hey, ABC, you gotta start wearing deodorant to the office."

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

#458

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #381
asdfdsa1234 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you go into more detail? It's hard to imagine how a test could be devised that wouldn't be gameable by giving answers that would be expected of a person with a normal personality.

It's not particularly difficult to devise a personality exam that way - in the best case scenario, the candidate cannot game the test, and in the worst case scenario, they game it but the proctor is fully aware of the gaming, so you simply reject the test (or the candidate). Instead of trying to get rid of questions that are gameable, the psychometrists design the test with statistical consistency - things as obscure…

I'm a psychologist, and I game personality tests for fun.

The MMPI is harder than the Myers Briggs, but not that difficult. Additionally its really only optimal for clinical samples, at which it is very good.

However, everyone in the field knows that these tests can be gamed, the only open question is how many people game them consistently.

You can probably estimate the proportion of social desirability exhibited in job interviews by comparing to non-job situations (such as a sample matched on all relevant covariates (whatever they are) from the general population.

Nonetheless, believing in personality tests as an accurate indicator of personality is as misguided as believing that Facebook represents the social graph of all its daily active users accurately, i.e., somewhat misguided.

And I am aware of lie scale, and they are trivial if you actually read the question. Protip: If a question says always or never, its probably designed to trip you up.

I do agree that personality tests are more accurate than this thread makes them out to be, but they are certainly not as useful as your comment implies.

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

#459

Post by asdkl234890 »

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

Ugh.... I have some bad news about the world you live in.

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

#460

Post by redschell »

If anyone wants to see HR done right, you should read about People Operations at Google:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/01/...

I know it's a bit demanding to ask what are usually a bunch of unskilled supporting staffers to become proficient in analytics, but you can't expect to solve a problem without putting in some work.

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