How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire • Hacker News Board

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#101

Post by fecak » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 12:13 AM UTC

sekasi wrote: post #61

fecak wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what you wrote, you're probably being paranoid. I deliver lots of 'No' answers as well, and I don't see any issues with what you wrote. Legal liability tends to be around the generic responses where candidates may assume the worst (race, gender/orientation, age, etc.). A specific response that points to a lack of experience in a certain area seems a safer bet than 'not a fit' in most cases.

"Not a fit" is another way of saying "We don't like you" in a strange way. I stay far away from those sweeping personality statements personally.

Agreed, and I do as well. When a client asks me to relay a rejection due to "not a fit", I always ask for anything we can offer that would be useful to the candidate.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#102

Post by math0ne » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 12:13 AM UTC

computerjunkie wrote: post #22

seagreen wrote: post #6

"So, here is my answer to the question, “What do we owe the people who we do not hire?” 1. Information on where they stand. 2. An explanation of what they are doing wrong. 3. Help improving." Nope! You don't owe them those things. Good for the author that they tried it and it worked out, but it's not a general rule. Everything works smoother in lots of different parts of life if all parties understand the concept of…

Lets talk about a simple example. You apply for a visa to X country for a special occasion (eg; brothers wedding, graduation ceremony et.al). Two weeks later, you get a response saying "No", just no. Will you be satisfied that you never got any feedback to why it was refused, what you did wrong and what to do to fix it? Feedback, be it good or bad is crucial. I, myself appreciate this feedback, especially in this sce…

Funny enough thats how visa work in the US, you only get to know why they said no if you appeal...

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#103

Post by midnightclubbed » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 12:17 AM UTC

electic wrote: post #53

humanrebar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve This is my inclination: "We liked your attitude, you seem intelligent, and well-spoken, but we have concerns about your knowledge of , maybe start contributing to or experiment in and reapply in a year or two." ...my concern is opening up my company for legal liabilities. Am I just being paranoid?

This happened at my last company. It does in fact open you up to legal liabilities. The company had to settle 18 cases where applicants "disagreed" with the reason of their rejection.

Can you go into any specifics as to what was (allegedly) said to the candidates? 18 cases sounds like the company was either interviewing thousands of applicants or giving very strong reasons for legal challenges.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#104

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 12:21 AM UTC

shortcircuit01 wrote: post #78

This story reminds me of how broken software engineer interviewing is. Imagine if a company decided to hire software engineers by giving them five 6-sided dice. Then they have to come to the company building and roll each dice once every hour. And during that hour they have to dance and sing in front of someone while being recorded. If they roll all 6 on all 5 dice, their dancing and singing will be judged by the com…

[deleted]

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#105

Post by sgustard » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 12:24 AM UTC

tacostakohashi wrote: post #19

sosuke wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought so, and I figure it is a case of our sue-happy culture and a cover your ass tactic "anything you say can and will be used against you" kind of fear. I'd love to have reached out to some applicants in the past to offer help, but what if they don't want any?

It would be nice if, at the start of the application process, companies could ask you if you would like to agree not to sue them in exchange for open, honest feedback, e.g. notes from your interviewers. Sometimes its pretty clear if you are not a good match, but sometimes its really not, and it seems like it would be best for both parties if certain kind of feedback could be provided, e.g. you were close, please cons…

I believe one of your legal rights is you can't be compelled to sign away your legal rights in exchange for something like a chance at employment.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#106

Post by cbhl » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 12:24 AM UTC

JeremyMorgan wrote: post #31

FooBarWidget wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Wordpress blog used to go down because of HN. I fixed that as follows. 1. Use the Wordpress supercache plugin. 2. Put Apache behind Nginx, and limit the number of Apache processes to ~6. This way you're effectively using Apache as a "PHP app server", simulating an architecture similar to Passenger/Unicorn. Nginx acts only as a buffering reverse proxy, shielding Apache from slow clients. Why this instead of running…

Never configured Apache that way, that sounds really interesting. I was running the site on a fairly well tuned LEMP stack and was using a cache plugin (forgot the name) but it would still choke fairly often. Since the content of my site only changes a couple times a month I started migrating away from towards a static solution. I'm not trying to say WP is bad but I think if your content is relatively static and you…

I've had strong recommendations for nanoc and middleman. Additional static site generators can be found all over; one good resource is this list: http://blog.iwantmyname.com/2014/05/the-updated-big-list-of-...

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#107

Post by benihana » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 12:25 AM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #77

kazinator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there is the perspective from having heard "no": 1. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring a…

I don't think kazinator is wrong about this. And yes I take the commenters point below that they take hiring very seriously. Study after study shows that people are much less objective than they think. And that they have an impression that they rationalize. I have seen people be very strongly influenced negatively or positively by a word or phrase on the resume that in the scheme of things wasn't that important. I am…

They're not wrong in that people often rationalize their 'instinctual' choices, but to imply that nobody is cognizant of any of their thoughts or biases and that we're all slaves to our lizard brains is a bit of a stretch.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#108

Post by eropple » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 12:26 AM UTC

bbcbasic wrote: post #70

smacktoward wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about the great candidate that you couldn't hire because you only have X positions? Life's tough all over, you know? I mean, if you know of an opening they would be good for off the top of your head, sure, go ahead and refer them. But you're not obligated to go find them that opening.

Of course you are not obligated. However if I ran a company I would have an eye on both the short term and the long term. It is good for the long term interests of the company to be loved (by customers, employees and the community). Doing very cool things for people, especially when it takes little effort or money, is a great investment to create goodwill in the future.

Agreed. Heck, you know what I do in interviews when I don't want a job? "I don't think I'm the right fit, but here's somebody I know who might be." Or even, if I don't have anyone offhand, "here's the name and number of a recruiter I personally trust who I think can feed you applicants." I've called around, too, when I didn't think somebody was the right fit for me but was obviously worth hiring somewhere. I didn't go for "low-hanging fruit," I decided that, yes, the world needs this person working in an excellent and rewarding job, and I made it happen.

Being good to people is just so easy, but so many people hide behind "business transactions" as if that's a reason to turn their back on somebody. Be a fuckin' person, would you, guys?

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#109

Post by midnightclubbed » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 12:28 AM UTC

buckbova wrote: post #60

dccoolgai wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst is when you have to go through one of those interviews with some smug hoser across from you whose face is contorted into a rictus grin because you couldn't recall, immediately from memory, some obscure Junior Year Computer Science thing. It's just amazing how bad the hiring situation is - It makes me a lot less likely to look around because I just don't want to go through that.

This of course goes both ways. If you put on your resume that you have expert/mastery level experience in technology X, don't be surprised if I drill you on it.

Because a good percentage of those experts then surprise interviewers by not having even a basic level of understanding of the subject. Usually those resumes were 'edited' by an agency trying to get their 20%.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#110

Post by jzwinck » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 12:29 AM UTC

q2 wrote: post #93

wyager wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve Many recruiters don't do this for legal reasons. Anti-discrimination laws make it very risky for companies to explain their hiring rationale, even if it's perfectly reasonable. It would be too expensive to have the lawyers check over every rejection.

After all, we are humans and rejection hurts any one. Related case is, firing without reason, all of a sudden which also hurts. What explanation can the effected employee provides to his family/friends for this sudden change? In both cases, human mind keeps circling on what went wrong. Is there any misunderstanding or wrong perception? So providing reasons is humane in any such life altering transaction. Related to l…

> Before interview, there will be an agreement needs to be signed by interviewee, recruiter, company involved, so that, after interview, recruiters can provide reasons for rejections and as long as the reason is with in the laws of the country or appears reasonable, then involved parties will not proceed legally.

You don't need to sign an agreement: this is the status quo. The meat of the problem is when the candidate and the company disagree about what happened. It's a rare company that actually furnishes candidates with illegal reasons for rejection, so it's up to candidates if they believe they were illegally rejected.