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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

#481

Post by penrod »

buyx wrote: post #228
kabouseng wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I thought my company was one of the few doing it in SA...

Software consulting places and body shops (unfortunately the line is increasingly blurry) don't generally do them. There was small software company in Jhb that used to send candidates for invasive IQ and personality tests to a psychologist, but they don't exist anymore. Many big corporates have psychometricians on staff. At least one even has a department dedicated to psychometric testing. There's plenty of demand fo…

"I also wouldn't be surprised if many of the tests contain an element of uncorrected racial/cultural bias, and the psychometric industry has been exploiting the inability of the government to enforce the law (Employment Equity Act), which makes discriminatory testing illegal."

Why would the psychometric industry want to exploit such a lack of enforcement by vending a discriminatory test? Do you think their customers are interested in using tests that give bogus results?

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

#482

Post by mindcrime »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #476
mindcrime wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Typical "those guys know nuthin and we got it all figured out" comment that seems all too common on Hacker News. Calling psychometric evaluations voodoo is akin to doubting climate change or casting a wary eye on vaccines. The evidence, methodological rigor, and results are there for all to see, but it just doesn't mesh with your gut feeling. Of all the things in the field of psychology to call voodoo, this is almost…

Like everything, competent implementation and use are key, so I'm sure you have had experiences that give you reasons to doubt their efficacy. But every field suffers from some form of that in some way or another, and the degree of transparency into the process varies greatly.

Fair enough. BTW, I'm not the one who downvoted you, FWIW.

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

#483

Post by jongraehl »

bad_user wrote: post #451
tokenadult wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Is a correlation of 0.5 like flipping a coin? No, it isn't. A coin flip would have a correlation of 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_and_dependence

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

#484

Post by danielweber »

hga wrote: post #477
ChuckMcM wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with Rayiner here, I'm just sharing how I've seen this sort of stuff get put into place. When you ask "How the hell did HR get to have veto power over hires?", I have found more often than not there is a story of "that guy" or "that gal" who got through the "old process" which is now some legendary part of the company history.

One thing I try to determine about startups is their ability to fire people. Lots of the problems you mentioned sound like they were in part due to the company finding that difficult, and of course it should be noted that any process like this, about humans and done by humans, is going to have errors on occasion. The real trick is realizing and correcting them.

Yes. I've been at start-ups unwilling to fire people and it sucks.

I've had people suggest that "willing to fire" is a bad sign, because we can be even better by just always hiring the right people! Which is a self-reinforcing style, because now you really can't admit you hired the wrong person.

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

#485

Post by cantankerous »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #461
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 psycho…

Which is why we screen people for submission to authority? I don't doubt that they "work" for certain easily-measurable traits of personality. I'm also certain that (1) the tests will be abused and (2) HR people are screening for attributes that are probably more useful in a factory setting.

To varying extents, submission to authority is why you get a paycheck.

If an organization has a successful process of doing something and they bring somebody in who bucks their methods without regard for the establishment, that can be problematic. Sure folks can come in and disrupt organizations for the positive, but I'd say that's probably not the majority of organizational disruptions. Most of them are just obnoxious and unproductive.

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

#486

Post by ChuckMcM »

hga wrote: post #477
ChuckMcM wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with Rayiner here, I'm just sharing how I've seen this sort of stuff get put into place. When you ask "How the hell did HR get to have veto power over hires?", I have found more often than not there is a story of "that guy" or "that gal" who got through the "old process" which is now some legendary part of the company history.

One thing I try to determine about startups is their ability to fire people. Lots of the problems you mentioned sound like they were in part due to the company finding that difficult, and of course it should be noted that any process like this, about humans and done by humans, is going to have errors on occasion. The real trick is realizing and correcting them.

100% agree, but I think the real trick is not taking it personally. Too many people think that having to fire someone reflects badly on them, it doesn't[]. It only means that it didn't work out for some reason. I try to explain to people "work" and "not work" are two different places, like killing you in World of Warcraft has nothing to do with killing you in "real life", and not being able to work with you doesn't mean I don't enjoy or want to hang out in non-work situations. But that is a hard thing to separate for many people, they are their work and that means work is them.

[] The exception is when it does, they clearly hired someone for some bogus reason, but there will always be exceptions.

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

#487

Post by ryguytilidie »

Recruiter here. I cannot imagine working in an organization where this is reasonable. The idea that I would EVER tell an engineering team that they can't have the candidate they love is just mind boggling. This is exactly the type of HR people that the industry needs to be rid of. We should be helping teams get the people they want, not hurt it. If this was my role in a company I would resign immediately.

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

#488

Post by andrewingram »

codygman wrote: post #444
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 problem here is that it's very hard for people to not discriminate at all based on attributes not relative to ability such as gender, race, religion, etc. For example, many people have racist tendencies but rationalize them as something else. "There is a big group of male magentas dressed the same over there, I should avoid them because they are almost certainly a gang" is rationalized as: "I don't avoid the grou…

It's indeed very hard to avoid discrimination. I'm not proud to admit that I have racist, and even sexist tendencies. I have just enough self-awareness to recognise that I've done it after the fact, but it's much harder to stop myself in the process of discrimination and behave differently.

I imagine a significant number of people are similar to myself in this regard, I would love to see more discussion about it. Because I feel it's the subtle prejudices we all have that create the real problems, rather than the smaller (but louder) groups of overtly prejudiced people.

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

#489

Post by dylangs1030 »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #458
dylangs1030 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow, I have to defer to you then :)

Is there anything you've got offhand that I can read further about this? I didn't know you could actually game them.

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

#490

Post by token_female »

codygman wrote: post #444
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 problem here is that it's very hard for people to not discriminate at all based on attributes not relative to ability such as gender, race, religion, etc. For example, many people have racist tendencies but rationalize them as something else. "There is a big group of male magentas dressed the same over there, I should avoid them because they are almost certainly a gang" is rationalized as: "I don't avoid the grou…

Obligatory: If you think you don't do this, take this test and get back to me:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

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