What happens when you stop relying on resumes • Hacker News Board

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#171

Post by ghthor » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

davemel37 wrote: post #162

NhanH wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know a solution. What strikes me is that as broken as the system seems, we still manage to hire good people most of the time. Interestingly, the simplest conclusion would be that everyone is good, most of the time . So if we throw hiring out the windows and pick employee randomly, we might still get to the same result. Which actually isn't too outrageous, since if we have 10% unemployment, wouldn't it mean…

True, but the costs (both direct and ancillary) of making a bad hire are so high that anything we can do avoid making the wrong hire would be worthwhile. You might be right that randomly picking candidates might be just as efficient, but I can't imagine anyone taking that risk.

What are the costs associated with a bad hire? Is there a way to minimize the potential damage and allow for a wider net to cast?

Could the on boarding process be more akin to a mentor-apprentice relationship and utilize open source as the avenue, with the burden of work placed on the apprentice. Your company has both closed and open source projects that many of your engineer's contribute to and manage. An apprentice level candidate works on and applies a patch with the feedback from the mentor level engineers. At some sufficient level of acceptance based on performance the apprentice is brought in for a culture fit type interview and potentially offered a position.

From the view of the apprentice this may seem like MORE work then writing resumes and prepping for technical interviews. But from my point of view as an apprentice I'd be learning skills that seem more useful than gaming resumes, screening and technical interviews, and adding to my portfolio that may never get glanced at. Skills like communication and coordination with a team, Real world coding experience and pushing to production. From the viewpoint of the mentor, I see candidates that have already been introduced to the internal workflow and show the communication necessary to work with my engineering team.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#172

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 2:19 PM UTC

cbhl wrote: post #106

analog31 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, I don't think there's a conclusion to be made about the actual method used here. I suspect that it worked because it was different, not because it carried a fundamentally strong signal. If everyone did this, project descriptions would be gamed even more than resumes—it would select for people who prepared for the selection process² more than anything else. I find myself almost irresistably drawn towards the…

The process being broken isn't a deal-breaker for companies, which can still hire from the 90% that can deal with the broken system. It's a deal-breaker for the 10% that are bad at playing the game / jumping hoops / resume writing / interviews, because they can't get a job.

It's also a golden opportunity for anybody able to hire those 10%.

Maybe most companies shouldn't be different. But there's plenty of value in not being like everybody else.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#173

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 2:28 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #165

davemel37 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the costs (both direct and ancillary) of making a bad hire are so high that anything we can do avoid making the wrong hire would be worthwhile. You might be right that randomly picking candidates might be just as efficient, but I can't imagine anyone taking that risk.

Bad hires are certainly a concern. I think this is the reason why people buy screening products such as personality tests. Paying $100 for a screening test that promises to prevent the $100k cost of a bad hire seems like a pretty good bargain. It reminds me of Pascal's Wager, where you give a little bit to the church in order to avoid the infinite risk of hell. The test seemingly has to be 0.1% effective, to pay for…

And, as always, lets pretend false positives do not exist.

Do you know what's even more expensive than a bad hire? It's letting an extraordinary hire go away because your snake-oil test did not work. But that loss won't make onto a spreadsheet, then, who cares?

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#174

Post by vonmoltke » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 2:47 PM UTC

cbhl wrote: post #106

analog31 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, I don't think there's a conclusion to be made about the actual method used here. I suspect that it worked because it was different, not because it carried a fundamentally strong signal. If everyone did this, project descriptions would be gamed even more than resumes—it would select for people who prepared for the selection process² more than anything else. I find myself almost irresistably drawn towards the…

The process being broken isn't a deal-breaker for companies, which can still hire from the 90% that can deal with the broken system. It's a deal-breaker for the 10% that are bad at playing the game / jumping hoops / resume writing / interviews, because they can't get a job.

Except many of those companies are simultaneously bitching about "lack of talent".

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#175

Post by vonmoltke » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 2:55 PM UTC

davemel37 wrote: post #162

NhanH wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know a solution. What strikes me is that as broken as the system seems, we still manage to hire good people most of the time. Interestingly, the simplest conclusion would be that everyone is good, most of the time . So if we throw hiring out the windows and pick employee randomly, we might still get to the same result. Which actually isn't too outrageous, since if we have 10% unemployment, wouldn't it mean…

True, but the costs (both direct and ancillary) of making a bad hire are so high that anything we can do avoid making the wrong hire would be worthwhile. You might be right that randomly picking candidates might be just as efficient, but I can't imagine anyone taking that risk.

> True, but the costs (both direct and ancillary) of making a bad hire are so high that anything we can do avoid making the wrong hire would be worthwhile.

That's a load of highly-enriched equine fertilizer. I have had this discussion here before. I asked for information. I didn't get much. Some worst-case hypotheticals that, to my knowledge, have never happened anywhere. A buttload of management failures surrounding bad hires where management was responsible for the vast majority of the costs, not the hire. A couple legitimate bad hires where the costs were significant, but not in the same ballpark as people like you parrot.

Also ignored in this conversation: what is the cost of keeping your req open? How much money are you losing, directly or indirectly, by not having someone in that role? Why do you think someone can't grow into the role?

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#176

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

My submission would be:

I was a help desk pleb at a well known inkjet/scanner/camera company 15 years ago and this company "extended" their clipper database to record third party cartridges, but recorded them in .ini format. That's right, one file per record, in key=value pairs. I was bored and accidentally mentioned to the guy whose job it was to copy and paste the data from each of all 90,000 ini files into an Excel spreadsheet that Perl could do it, and I'd even use references to hashes to do it. He had no idea about that last bit, but I did it for him on the proviso that he didn't tell anyone, and reduced 10 weeks of work to 30 seconds. They unfortunately made me employee of the quarter but neglected to tell me so I missed my awards ceremony.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#177

Post by mikehawkins » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 3:05 PM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #46

First of all, I definitely agree that resumes are woefully overused and overrated. They have structural problems and incentivize people to use "negative selection" criteria where people are eliminated based on not having a specific feature rather than selected for excelling on something¹. This article neatly demonstrates that resumes are not necessary and that not using them can unlock new sorts of candidates. Howeve…

"Ultimately, I think the real moral is that more companies should do their own thing, even if that thing is not great in the abstract. Being different carries a value of its own, and it breeds biodiversity that's healthy for the system as a whole. (Of course, many of the things companies try are really bad for various reasons, but that's a different story…)"

This really resonated with me - especially as a start up, doing what feels right just makes sense, especially when that's consistent with your team's culture and even sense of humor.

Real example - when we're not getting a sense of the 'real' person we're interviewing, we take them out for a friendly game of foosball. It's brilliant at removing nerves, but also gives us great insights into their team skills, competitiveness, and more.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#178

Post by vonmoltke » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 3:14 PM UTC

rspeer wrote: post #123

rokhayakebe wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I cannot see an expert in anything other than marketing sitting down and crafting their resume. "Appearance starts where performance ends." Let me illustrate: Growth Engineer One line Resume: "I was employee 7 at Snapchat when we had 6 engineers and 400,000 users. During my tenure as the only growth engineer, our userbase grew to 10 million users over the next 6 months." SEO resume: "I joined XYZ when it was…

I am not really sure what you're illustrating with these examples. But I'm guessing you're saying that anybody worth hiring will have a stellar accomplishment where you can look them up by name. This is really not the case. I've found that some people's greatest accomplishments are trade secrets that they can't show you. Some people's greatest accomplishments are in hobbies you don't quite understand. Some people are…

> I've found that some people's greatest accomplishments are trade secrets that they can't show you.

My greatest accomplishments in the domain I want to work in are trade secrets of the US Government. :) I can talk at length about my current domain, though, which I want to get out of. :P

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#179

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 3:17 PM UTC

tjradcliffe wrote: post #84

msandford wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they're right -- I, too, have observed a disconnect between how polished people sound when they talk about their work and what happens when they actually have to write code. I've done a lot of work that people would probably find very interesting and useful. But I tend to choke on whiteboard code interviews because they're so high stakes. Any time spent thinking about the problem looks bad, so you have to t…

> The problem is that you never find out because if someone bombs the coding part you simply chuckle and say "well that person is clearly a liar, or something!" and they don't go any further in the hiring process. This. I've been job-hunting lately and getting asked to do "technical challenges" and such like, which are useless to me because they are entirely asymmetric. They tell me nothing about the company except t…

I've known a couple physics phds about whom I have very low opinions re: their mathematical abilities.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#180

Post by vonmoltke » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 3:22 PM UTC

m3talridl3y wrote: post #134

pbreit wrote: post #116

What surprises me is how many people dislike cover letters. When I go through applicants, a decent cover letter demonstrating some enthusiasm about the company and a unique point or two is appealing.

It surprises me how many employers think that any of their engineers give a crap about the actual business. The better ones have some form of passion for creating good code, the actual business is an implementation detail.

The domain, product, or use case is what draws me in. But then, I'm of the "classic" engineering mindset; a maker. Code is a means to an end, not an end in itself.