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This bakery will hire anyone

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Re: This bakery will hire anyone

#81

Post by powertower »

21echoes wrote: post #79
powertower wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bakery, requiring little to no skills, and nothing more than being able to repeat physical activity, and only 35% make it through the program (a 10 month on-the-job job). I don't think this is the "success" story it's being made to be.

that's like saying that a company that only hires 10% of those it interviews is a failure. they have a waiting list of applicants, which allows them to set their quality bar high enough to reject the bottom 65% of applicants. the only difference is here the "interview" is a 10-month paid apprenticeship, while at most companies it's a 2 or 3-day unpaid blitz of tests.

> that's like saying that a company that only hires 10% of those it interviews is a failure

> the only difference is here the "interview" is a 10-month paid apprenticeship

That's a major difference, which makes the analogy fail - since the two thing being compared are nothing like each other.

Re: This bakery will hire anyone

#82

Post by arsenide »

gadders wrote: post #29
Stratoscope wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you both for the courage to post this, and for the link to Johann Hari's article. It is a real eye-opener. (If anyone is tempted to skip it because of the HuffPo link, take my word for it, this is well worth reading.)

Don't skip it because it's HuffPo, skip it because it's Johann Hari. He's a plagiarist and a cyber stalker. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari

Why are you judging the merits of an article by the author and not the content?

Re: This bakery will hire anyone

#83

Post by jMyles »

rayiner wrote: post #77
addicted44 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a list of groups of people who are traditionally ignored by most companies, but are hired by this one. If Harvard grads were traditionally unemployable, but employed by this bakery, they would also be on the list along with felons, immigrants and addicts.

But I was responding to someone arguing we shouldn't put addicts and felons in the same list.

OK, I suppose you're right - both lists are very noisy with little signal. I just meant to point out that addicts aren't fundamentally criminal.

Re: This bakery will hire anyone

#84

Post by powertower »

carapace wrote: post #75
cubano wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is. The most obvious metric of its "success" is the simple conditional 35% > 0%. And while I agree, the motivation behind the CEO's thinking is based on bottom-line thinking, and not do-gooder motivation, its still nice to see SOME outside-the-box thinking on this issue.

"Brady also said that it was immaterial whether or not open hiring was a better way to do business. His goal is to make sure his business also helps the community and helps people out of poverty. With that goal, there’s an imperative to try new things. “There’s a lot of recognition that the things people have been doing aren’t working,” he said."

When you pay a low wage for a job that literally anyone of the street can do after about 10-30 minutes of training, you can hire and fire all day long, it will not affect your bottom line.

So it is true that it's immaterial to his business - whether it's open hire, or day laborer, or something else.

But I'm not sure how exactly this method helps anyone? Because most of the employees are gone after 10 months.

Does this mean they've made enough money to move into a better job?

Or does this just reinforce the stereotypes about convicts, drug addicts, and the mentally ill?

Re: This bakery will hire anyone

#85

Post by Dylan16807 »

gadders wrote: post #29
Stratoscope wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you both for the courage to post this, and for the link to Johann Hari's article. It is a real eye-opener. (If anyone is tempted to skip it because of the HuffPo link, take my word for it, this is well worth reading.)

Don't skip it because it's HuffPo, skip it because it's Johann Hari. He's a plagiarist and a cyber stalker. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari

What cyber stalking are you talking about? This page only talks about plagiarism and wikipedia vandalism. Making negative edits about people you don't like on wikipedia involves exactly zero stalking. Is information missing here?

And it sounds like the 'plagiarism' was him using quotes he did not personally acquire, which is pretty minor and wouldn't turn me away from reading anything.

Re: This bakery will hire anyone

#86

Post by TylerE »

Varcht wrote: post #47
jim_greco wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers can't afford to be picky anymore. The unemployment number is now 5.5% and we've had a year of 250k+ jobs added per month. If you want to use anecdotes about Walmart, even they have been forced to increase their wages to retain talent recently. The axe against ex-cons is an ingrained bias that hurts competitiveness. It is an unfortunate 'reality' that it is a bias that is tolerated in America today.

I wouldn't get too excited about that unemployment number. Only ~63% of Americans are even trying to work and a lot of those that are, are under employed. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/628-labor-force-pa... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-06/americans-not-labor...

You lose any credibility when your first link is to a partisan whackjob site like cnsnews. Not that zerogedge is any better.

Re: This bakery will hire anyone

#87

Post by Dylan16807 »

jMyles wrote: post #83
rayiner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I was responding to someone arguing we shouldn't put addicts and felons in the same list.

OK, I suppose you're right - both lists are very noisy with little signal. I just meant to point out that addicts aren't fundamentally criminal.

>addicts aren't fundamentally criminal

I think you have your ranking backwards. Having committed a crime means you screwed up. Being an addict means a life-destroying drive that never truly goes away.

Re: This bakery will hire anyone

#88

Post by 21echoes »

powertower wrote: post #81
21echoes wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's like saying that a company that only hires 10% of those it interviews is a failure. they have a waiting list of applicants, which allows them to set their quality bar high enough to reject the bottom 65% of applicants. the only difference is here the "interview" is a 10-month paid apprenticeship, while at most companies it's a 2 or 3-day unpaid blitz of tests.

> that's like saying that a company that only hires 10% of those it interviews is a failure > the only difference is here the "interview" is a 10-month paid apprenticeship That's a major difference, which makes the analogy fail - since the two thing being compared are nothing like each other.

Plenty of companies have quarter to year-long contract-to-hire paths for all new hires. Are all of these companies also failures? This is how all skilled work was for centuries, if not millennia. Were all businesses and guilds back then failures as well?

Either way you seem to be missing the point-- being able to choose who you retain vs. who you fire is a factor of applicant volume, not some objective measure of the quality of a company/hiring practices. Being able to reject more candidates if anything means you are better, as you have enough applicants who want to work there that you can be selective.

Re: This bakery will hire anyone

#89

Post by powertower »

21echoes wrote: post #88
powertower wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's like saying that a company that only hires 10% of those it interviews is a failure > the only difference is here the "interview" is a 10-month paid apprenticeship That's a major difference, which makes the analogy fail - since the two thing being compared are nothing like each other.

Plenty of companies have quarter to year-long contract-to-hire paths for all new hires. Are all of these companies also failures? This is how all skilled work was for centuries, if not millennia. Were all businesses and guilds back then failures as well? Either way you seem to be missing the point-- being able to choose who you retain vs. who you fire is a factor of applicant volume , not some objective measure of th…

So basically what you are saying is with the way this bakery hires/fires and the way Microsoft and Google hires/fires - while there might be some slight differences between the two - at the end, the overall effect is the same.

And that what's really happening here with this no-interview no-skills-asked-for open-hire policy (and its high turnover rate), is that they are keeping the cream of the crop and shedding the wheat from the chaff.

It could be.

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