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

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

#231

Post by RobertKerans »

jdeisenberg wrote: post #214
RobertKerans wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a poli…

See http://www.businessinsider.com/daniel-kahneman-on-hiring-dec... for a very different viewpoint. (The full details are in Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast and Slow")

Yeah, I've read it, and tbh, we do interview for a set of role-specific traits for each position; we aren't a million miles off what Kahnemann suggests - however there are environmental factors that do skew things (IT world in geographic area is small which heavily affects prior knowledge of experienced candidates; not primarily an IT company; not in a fashionable sector).

I must say I'm not advocating snap judgement at all. I just think it is very common (as Kahnemann states). What he states as an ideal doesn't necessarily make an awful lot of difference in many situations; the snap judgement can very often be the same as the careful one (though external factors that partly force/aid preselection bias things greatly in this respect).

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

#232

Post by JoachimSchipper »

lsiebert wrote: post #153
RobertKerans wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a poli…

I, seriously, don't understand how this works, unless your candidates appearance and accent are your main tools for judging a candidate. I would prefer to think that's not the case. If you were teaching a new member of the team to make such a decision, what would you point to? What's more important, is I don't understand how anyone could possibly improve their 30 second impression. I guess it could be that you believ…

> I don't understand how anyone could possibly improve their 30 second impression.

This is not actually very hard: start with good grooming, nice clothes, posture, confidence.

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that the hiring process seems... odd.

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

#233

Post by namelezz »

midnightclubbed wrote: post #176
smacktoward wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say you absolutely do owe them #1 -- since you've asked them to give up their time working with you to see if they're appropriate, you owe it to them to not waste that time by stringing them along with endless irrelevant meetings and document requests and "we're still working on it" non-responses. Respect their time: evaluate them, make your decision, and move on. #2 is more discretionary. Letting someone exa…

Yes yes and yes. On #2 if a candidate gets to a technical interview they are fairly likely to know if they crashed and burned or not. If they are not right for some other issue (they didn't communicate clearly, were rude, dwelt on negatives about previous employers) then there is not always a professional way to say it other than a straight NO. A decent candidate will learn from difficult questions and things they tr…

"providing all the help they should need to nail their next opportunity". Too bad most interviewers do not care that much to go that far due to legal risks, especially here in US.

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

#234

Post by _pmf_ »

lsiebert wrote: post #153
RobertKerans wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a poli…

I, seriously, don't understand how this works, unless your candidates appearance and accent are your main tools for judging a candidate. I would prefer to think that's not the case. If you were teaching a new member of the team to make such a decision, what would you point to? What's more important, is I don't understand how anyone could possibly improve their 30 second impression. I guess it could be that you believ…

> I, seriously, don't understand how this works, unless your candidates appearance and accent are your main tools for judging a candidate. I would prefer to think that's not the case.

Companies would like you to think this, too, and law makers would very much like to think that their rules regarding non discrimination have any effect. The real situation tells another story.

But it's OK, companies can just include a nice stock picture of an ethically diverse group of people in business attire working together, an all is well.

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

#235

Post by RobertKerans »

lsiebert wrote: post #153
RobertKerans wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a poli…

I, seriously, don't understand how this works, unless your candidates appearance and accent are your main tools for judging a candidate. I would prefer to think that's not the case. If you were teaching a new member of the team to make such a decision, what would you point to? What's more important, is I don't understand how anyone could possibly improve their 30 second impression. I guess it could be that you believ…

Yes, I admit there is an element of hyperbole (for 30 seconds probably read 30seconds - 5 minutes depending, and that alters if a candidate [ie for a junior position] is nervous and it takes time to get them to relax somewhat).

Appearance is important, and I've never been in an interview situation where it wasn't? Unless you're insinuating choice based on ethinicity (more aimed at _pmf_'s response to your comment). Which is completely irrelevant, as are accent/sex/other discriminatory factors that make zero difference to how someone is likely to work within a team.

As I've said in other comments, there is a serious element of external preselection based on geography and company sector, there's nothing particularly underhand going on.

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

#236

Post by RobertKerans »

_pmf_ wrote: post #234
lsiebert wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, seriously, don't understand how this works, unless your candidates appearance and accent are your main tools for judging a candidate. I would prefer to think that's not the case. If you were teaching a new member of the team to make such a decision, what would you point to? What's more important, is I don't understand how anyone could possibly improve their 30 second impression. I guess it could be that you believ…

> I, seriously, don't understand how this works, unless your candidates appearance and accent are your main tools for judging a candidate. I would prefer to think that's not the case. Companies would like you to think this, too, and law makers would very much like to think that their rules regarding non discrimination have any effect. The real situation tells another story. But it's OK, companies can just include a n…

If you're insinuating that this is the situation, then that's incredibly insulting (yeah, got to fess up, we hired that last guy because it would look good in the company brochure, we're just pretending he came across as a genuinely nice guy and someone who'd likely pick things up quickly, we all hate him really!)

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

#237

Post by RobertKerans »

kyllo wrote: post #146
RobertKerans wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a poli…

And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. So you just admitted that you make your hiring decisions based on a snap judgment. OK. But that doesn't mean you can tell in 30 seconds is whether someone is actually going to be good at the job.

That + CV gives an extremely good indication.

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

#239

Post by RobertKerans »

jen729w wrote: post #204
theseoafs wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know from the resume whether the person can do the job. Do you? I remember reading a bunch of articles that asserted most people that come in for programming interviews (even if their resumes look solid) are useless.

I'm a Wintel systems & infra person rather than a programmer, so maybe it's different. But yeah, generally, I can tell from the way the thing is written, from the depth of previous experience, from the types of companies the person has worked at, from the career progression. It also helps that I live in Melbourne, Australia - the IT world here isn't massive, and if you haven't worked with the person the odds are you…

I absolutely agree with this ,and where I live in the UK has an enormous effect upon hiring.

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

#240

Post by theatgrex »

twright0 wrote: post #187
selimthegrim wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe he or she is talking about Google.

Google's acceptance rate is well above .01%, just using basic reasoning. Google employs tens of thousands of engineers, which means they would have had to reject hundreds of millions of candidates for the role of software engineer.

You're hired!
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