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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

#491

Post by comrade_ogilvy »

munin wrote: post #463
meowface wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, they likely get a lot of applictions, and some portion of those applicants may be mentally ill in some way, possibly on drugs, or may otherwise be truly abysmal employees who don't care about anything. Tests like those can weed out people who clearly shouldn't be considered. They have no place at a serious company hiring for a technical position, though. Usually 10 or so minutes of face-to-face talking is…

the problem is discrimination lawsuits. an old person contests a no-hire decision with "I wasn't hired because I was old" option A: Hiring manager says "well I just thought you were a jerk" option B: An objective and universally applied test scores the applicant as being 95% jerk, which is above the 60% cutoff that the company uses globally which would you rather defend yourself with?

You might be correct about the reasoning. But those records are likely to work against if a suit ever hit full speed, because those scores could easily support the plaintiffs. "Gee, everyone over 55 ever hired has a 75%+ score. But your 25-54s range wildly from 56% and up."

Once the company asserts this defense, the plaintiffs ask for demographic details on every employee in the company, and what the scores were at time of hiring.

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

#492

Post by michaelt »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #453
scott_s wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Wikipedia article talks a lot about correlation between performance in different subjects in school.

I've also read that two of the strongest predictors of performance in school are your parents' performance in school, and (after controlling for that) your parents' income.

Do studies of general intelligence usually control for the impact of parents' education and income?

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

#493

Post by afterburner »

ajuc wrote: post #119
Lerc wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people trust their employer to take a negative result on such a test as a sign of a poorly functioning test rather than a poorly functioning worker.

But if you work at the company for some time your employer has much better metrics to grade you than hiring process.

Sure, as long as the people that know you run the interview and don't share the results with anyone that doesn't it's fine...

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

#494

Post by wpietri »

snake_plissken wrote: post #344
wpietri wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I feel like this validates my comment? The two notions regarding criminal law you post are not maddening, but thoroughly reassuring.

They are reassuring from a systemic design perspective, or from the perspective of someone who is accused but innocent.

But in the individual case of an obviously guilty person going free, it is legitimately maddening.

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

#495

Post by nordsieck »

scott_s wrote: post #320
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…

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 test will be on the whole will be more valid than subjective judgments from most technical professionals. Do you have any support for this where the employees are both technical and creative? I'm obviously thinking a…

http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/selecting-tal...

As, I'm sure you can tell, this isn't specifically for technical and creative employees, but in general it appears that structured interviews, IQ tests and work samples significantly out perform unstructured interviews.

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

#496

Post by vacri »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #452
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.

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…

Another boring comment shitting on psychology - and theoretically by someone who should know better. It's really tiresome.

cut/pasting from another comment of mine:

by saying that psychological research is itself useless, you're also throwing away things like A/B testing, UX testing (including Apple's much-vaunted usability stuff), research into grief management, team-building research, research into cognitive recovery therapy after acquired brain injury, work looking into ameliorating sexism and racism, perception research for HUDs in fighter aircraft (my honours research), some pain management research, research into dealing with PTSD, research into crowd control and management...

Someone with a PhD in the topic should be well aware of the breadth of the field that is 'psychology', and to say that the only useful thing in the field is psychometric testing just displays your myopia.

Half the stuff that HN talks about is psychology, from A/B testing to building staff relationships. It is far from 'useless', particularly given this audience.

It is ironic in the extreme that the people that shit on psychology do so because they see it as a 'pseudoscience' that 'doesn't observe things properly', yet so very few of them actually see psychology for what it is - instead just falling back on their own narrow stereotype of it.

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

#497

Post by jamesli »

nknighthb wrote: post #382
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…

> their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers I worked for a while for Company A, which was founded by a team that included senior engineers and senior management from larger company B, licensed technology from B, did critical contract work for B, and at one point was supposed to become the primary manufacturer of B's products. Company A shut down. My resumé went into company B's HR department,…

> their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers

For recruiting technical people, it is ideal that the recruiters has relevant technical background. The reality is mostly the opposite. So you never know how many good candidates are filtered out because their resumes are lack of flashy keywords.

If the recruiters don't feel hurt, I prefer to screen the resumes by myself. The worse scenario is that you are scheduled for a phone interview. When you look at the resume, it is full of flashy keywords while lack of experience in "serious" projects. I fully understand the candidates are eager to get a job. But after you spent dozens of hours to talk to these unqualified candidates with flashy resumes, it becomes a negative flag. Well, these flashy resumes are a result of the tech-recruiting industry.

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

#498

Post by ha-ha-ha »

nknighthb wrote: post #382
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…

> their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers I worked for a while for Company A, which was founded by a team that included senior engineers and senior management from larger company B, licensed technology from B, did critical contract work for B, and at one point was supposed to become the primary manufacturer of B's products. Company A shut down. My resumé went into company B's HR department,…

In many places HR is just a dump for unproductive people that can't be fired.

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

#499

Post by crucini »

bentcorner wrote: post #394
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…

> The reason why this works is because while people will answer "Would you consider yourself hard working?" with "Always" or some other unrealistically gamed superlative, they won't realize that other questions that are seemingly unrelated are highly correlated with that quality Can you provide a deeper example? I'm honestly curious - what sort of question is innocuous enough to be answered honestly, yet useful enoug…

Here are some:

http://www.physicschick.com/pole/2012xxxx/psych.txt

By googling those, you can go deeper into the rabbit hole.

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

#500

Post by freejack »

We run a psychometric test on every candidate that walks through the front door. The ones that get hired get their test results in a sit down with HR and the option to share the test results with their colleagues. I don't get to see them unless the hire shares them with me. The purpose of the test and its results is to start the new hire down a road of self-discovery and awareness (if they so choose) that we can leverage into ongoing development and improvement together (again, if they so choose). Its worked brilliantly so far.
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