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

brookeallen.com

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

#111

Post by eropple »

wyager wrote: post #64
sekasi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in Australia, not in the US. I don't know the intrinsic legal differences here, but I do know a few things about my local market. I feel really strongly about trying to help people improve, and it's really challenging to do that if you can't bring up the reasons for rejection. If you're being dicky about it "You're not good enough in memory management", that instantly makes people defensive. If you're trying t…

>If you're trying to help them forward and give them useful tips for improving their portfolio and skillset, the conversation is almost exclusively positive and 9/10 times I get a thank you very much in the end. No doubt, and I know a lot of US recruiters wish very strongly that they could have these kind of interactions with potential hires. However, the difficulty of friendly, open interviewer-interviewee discussio…

It's a better example of people rationalizing away humanity under the guise of "preventing liability" regarding things that, in practice, will never happen.

Bill S. Preston told you everything you need to know. People are not out to get you. Acting as if they are is toxic and inhumane.

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

#112

Post by driverdan »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #21
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #7

The first time I got a front page link to my site on HN, it did this exact same thing, which prompted me to move away from Wordpress. Static HTML ever since. But to comment on the article, I think this is a fantastic idea. I do wonder though how he found so many enthusiastic people. Maybe it's just a new era, but I have a hard time finding people who even want to do a 1 hour coding challenge. He got these folks who w…

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…

Nginx + PHP-FPM isn't necessarily hard to setup, just different. It will be much faster than nginx in front of apache.

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

#113

Post by gamblor956 »

humanrebar wrote: post #41
sekasi wrote: post #28

I've done a LOT of interviewing, recruiting and ultimately a lot of saying "no" to people. Over the years I've landed on a series of personal rules on how to do just that. 1. Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve 2. Always let people down gently reinforcing positive notions as well, you never know what state of mind they are in. 3. Always respond to requests for more information This takes me a…

> 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?

It could, and you'll want to talk to labor lawyer for specifics about what is and isn't acceptable.

For example, when you talk about the candidate "seeming intelligent" that could suggest that appearances may have played a role in the evaluation, especially if you can't narrow down more specific reasons.

It's best to stick to objective factors such as the candidate's lack of experience in .

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

#114

Post by tacostakohashi »

sgustard wrote: post #105
tacostakohashi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The idea would be that its optional, and the company would still treat candidates choosing either optional equally during the hiring process - it would not be a condition of applying.

So, you aren't signing away your legal rights in exchange for a chance at the job, you get that either way. You are agreeing not to exercise some legal rights in exchange for feedback, not in exchange for your application to be considered.

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

#115

Post by [deleted] »

sekasi wrote: post #50
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?

I've never had any issues in years and years. I guess as long as you're being positive about it, and try to reinforce the shortcomings versus the positives it ends up being a good conversation. Always do it over the phone, email doesn't cut it.

[deleted]

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

#116

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

sekasi wrote: post #74
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…

Seems you've had some bad runs. I can pretty much debunk 1 and 3 personally. Good companies and people take hiring very seriously.

What would be a polite way to say "I didn't hire you because you have no idea how to program?" I mean I've interviewed people who we didn't hire for that reason... You can't say that though because its mean... Instead you get "your skills didn't align with our needs."

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

#117

Post by ibudiallo »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #21
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #7

The first time I got a front page link to my site on HN, it did this exact same thing, which prompted me to move away from Wordpress. Static HTML ever since. But to comment on the article, I think this is a fantastic idea. I do wonder though how he found so many enthusiastic people. Maybe it's just a new era, but I have a hard time finding people who even want to do a 1 hour coding challenge. He got these folks who w…

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…

In my case, I did two things:

1. Add memcached 2. Serve static files via nginx

It allowed me to handle 2.9 million requests

I documented it here: http://idiallo.com/blog/handling-1-million-web-request

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

#118

Post by bvanslyke »

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…

Palantir?

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

#119

Post by WalterBright »

midnightclubbed wrote: post #103
electic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A person does not need 'very strong' reasons for legal challenges. They can be spurious, with the plaintiff hoping the company will find it cheaper to settle than defend themselves.

A system where the loser pays the winner the amount the loser paid their own lawyers will stop most of this nonsense.

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

#120

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

jlees wrote: post #91
sekasi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"Not a fit" can get dangerously close to "You're not the same gender/race/orientation/age-range as our core team" (especially if that happens to be true).

Or... you're not a potential drinking buddy. ;)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/12/03/employers-...

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