Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

He got 1%, we can't hire him

codingjohnson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 594 posts

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

#521

Post by crucini »

Xylakant wrote: post #212
tetha wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our recruiters learn about the field they are recruiting in and search and evaluate potential candidates. Our HR admins manage and monitor sickness days, vacation days, contract renewals, contract terminations and so on. The HR managers, well, manage the rest of the HR.

Personal anecdote: One of the first companies I worked to as CTO lost me because they didn't have an HR person. The person in charge let the contract renewal negotiations slip from scheduled meeting to scheduled meeting for more than 6 month and by the time the actual meeting took place all I could say was "Sorry, I just signed somewhere else." That was the shortest contract negotiation I ever had.

I'm not sure what you're arrangement was, but when I was contracting through an agency, HR was not involved. And contract expirations were a constant worry. It can take months to get the ball rolling for a contract renewal.

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

#522

Post by minor_nitwit »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #405
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…

"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." And yet they often do. Consider that for a moment and wonder why it is so common, especially in technical companies. What I have found over the years is that technical people hire people they think are…

Good post. These HR tests favor extroversion and obedience. In my experience, brilliant people are highly unlikely to exhibit these traits.

I work with a guy who pounds on his desk daily, curses at code, has OCD, walks about aimlessly, is anti-authority, depressed, and is a self-described autistic. In other words, he's the type to score 1%. However, if you have any advanced math problem he can solve it in minutes, whereas most people would either take days or never get the right answer. For me at least, I have no problem interacting with the guy and joke around with him often. But I do notice that with other people things will usually end up standoffish or awkward.

Perhaps, HR would be better served by using the personality profile to train the other workers in how to interact with a new hire and get the most out of them. The idea that a company should have a singular culture built of singular personality types, not only sounds like a flawed plan, but one that in the end is impossible to achieve.

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

#523

Post by dylangs1030 »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #513
dylangs1030 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it can certainly be gamed. It's just so hard without prior knowledge and preparation as to be statistically negligent. This is also why I said you should avoid giving the same test twice. But a single, cold test administration should be very difficult to game. You should also read upthread, what the actual psychologist said. It clarified my comment really well.

> But a single, cold test administration should be very difficult to game. Oh come on. This was posted in a different comment: http://www.physicschick.com/pole/2012xxxx/psych.txt The following are very obviously the "correct" true or false answers to these questions from the MMPI-2: T * My mother is a good woman. F * Evil spirits possess me at times. F * There seems to be a lump in my throat much of the time. T * At…

Those are the obvious ones. I've taken the MMPI. There's a lot more than just those. None of these are the seemingly innocuous ones I was talking about.

Again, I'll reiterate: can they be gamed? Yes. Is it likely? Emphatically, no.

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

#524

Post by kenrikm »

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…

At the previous company I worked for I was given one of these tests in the interview process. Later I asked the HR Director about the test and she told me "Well you did crazy good 100% accurate, however the software also factors in when people give answers that we want to hear you failed that because and it said you were not being honest, however I ignore that one because I think that if you're smart enough to know what the right answers are then you're most likely smart enough to know what would be best for the company given the chance"

Smart HR Directors will get it right however I feel sorry for any company that uses the results of those tests to actually make a decision.

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

#525

Post by foobarbazqux »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #523
foobarbazqux wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But a single, cold test administration should be very difficult to game. Oh come on. This was posted in a different comment: http://www.physicschick.com/pole/2012xxxx/psych.txt The following are very obviously the "correct" true or false answers to these questions from the MMPI-2: T * My mother is a good woman. F * Evil spirits possess me at times. F * There seems to be a lump in my throat much of the time. T * At…

Those are the obvious ones. I've taken the MMPI. There's a lot more than just those. None of these are the seemingly innocuous ones I was talking about. Again, I'll reiterate: can they be gamed? Yes. Is it likely? Emphatically, no.

Okay, I didn't know you've taken the MMPI, so fair enough. I would be surprised if answers to the innocuous questions were that important though; they strike me more as luring you into a sense of complacency and so that you end up answering honestly when it comes to the important ones.

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

#526

Post by anaphor »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #489
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All self-report data is inherently flawed, which is why you can't rely on one kind of data while trying to learn something about personality.

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

#527

Post by batguano »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #435
ChuckMcM wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." And yet they often do. Consider that for a moment and wonder why it is so common, especially in technical companies. What I have found over the years is that technical people hire people they think are…

You basically shift responsibility to HR people (who don't know shit about candidates) and they only hire mediocre bets to avoid blame. That's because they're not sharing wins from stellar candidates but they take blame for bad ones. I wonder why blame shifting seems so central to american way of thinking. You'll give talent away to avoid it.

> I wonder why blame shifting seems so central to american way of thinking.

FWIW, the story the OP told took place in the UK.

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

#528

Post by batguano »

karlkatzke wrote: post #510
foobarbazqux wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my main objection is to hiring people on the basis of their character, whether it's with a test or not. Assess for whether or not the person can do the job and make you a profit.

Can you spot the person who interviews well, but is a skilled sociopath who will destroy the morale of your team, causing other skilled talent to leave? That's the value of these tests ( when properly applied ): They allow an evaluator to make statistically accurate predictions of specific types of behavior. The key is the two words: statistically and specific. A single composite score will not tell you anything, but…

> there's a 68% chance that the person you're about to hire is a schizophrenic kleptomaniac

Sorry, I don't believe "psychometric tests" can do that either. At least not at the level that we're talking about: distinguishing an otherwise qualified person from someone who's got some sort of psychopathology.

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

#530

Post by cperciva »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #156
cperciva wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More generally, there's nothing worse than a social scientist who has illusions about being a scientist.

There's nothing scientific in this case - quite the opposite: pure cargo cult. Hence my choice of the word: monkey puts candidate in, a number comes out, monkey checks if number exceeds another number. No science - not even thought - nothing, just blind obedience to whatever process the monkey was trained to follow.

That's my point -- the HR monkey was a social scientist, and the fact that they were administering a test and getting a number out gave them the illusion that they were actually doing something scientific.

An actual scientist would have asked questions -- Do the test results correlate with performance? Is the test biased? What is the margin of error on the test? etc. -- and would very likely have come to the conclusion that the test should not be trusted as a reliable indicator.

Post reply on HN