Why Hiring Exclusively for Experience Doesn't Make Sense • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Hiring Exclusively for Experience Doesn't Make Sense

#11

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Jan 17, 2014, 5:17 PM UTC

joshyeager wrote: post #10

raganwald wrote: post #9

You can write a blog post explaining why any repeatable, empirical hiring method is flawed. I'll repeat that: If you can produce a repeatable, empirical method of hiring, you can also demonstrate flaws in the results. The only way to write about a process and not get shot down is to wave your hands very furiously while talking about things that can't be measured or repeatably selected like "attitude" or "fit." Things…

I would also add that (at least in heavily knowledge- and team-driven endeavors like software development) the right balance is that you should minimize bad hires as much as possible, even at the cost of missing out on many good people.

I'd completely side with the blog here, and arguee that hiring for experience time on a specific technology is a great way to increase the chance of a bad hire.

Both you and raganwald are right, but the industry standard is a practice that looks like it was created to do exactly what it should avoid. No amount of generic complaining can offset that.

Re: Why Hiring Exclusively for Experience Doesn't Make Sense

#12

Post by raganwald » Fri, Jan 17, 2014, 5:19 PM UTC

joshyeager wrote: post #10

raganwald wrote: post #9

You can write a blog post explaining why any repeatable, empirical hiring method is flawed. I'll repeat that: If you can produce a repeatable, empirical method of hiring, you can also demonstrate flaws in the results. The only way to write about a process and not get shot down is to wave your hands very furiously while talking about things that can't be measured or repeatably selected like "attitude" or "fit." Things…

I would also add that (at least in heavily knowledge- and team-driven endeavors like software development) the right balance is that you should minimize bad hires as much as possible, even at the cost of missing out on many good people.

For the sake of a constructive argument... If you woke up one day and decided to "hack" that problem by making it low-cost to do bad hires, what would you do?

Would you run a company like open source, perhaps, with a lot of remote people? Would you pay feature and bug fix bounties instead of salaries? Would you change the way communication and knowledge is shared so that getting up to speed isn't a huge burden on the people who are productive?

I think that the way most companies work, you're absolutely right that false positives are terrible. But that seems like a problem well worth tackling!

Re: Why Hiring Exclusively for Experience Doesn't Make Sense

#13

Post by raganwald » Fri, Jan 17, 2014, 5:24 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #11

joshyeager wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also add that (at least in heavily knowledge- and team-driven endeavors like software development) the right balance is that you should minimize bad hires as much as possible, even at the cost of missing out on many good people.

I'd completely side with the blog here, and arguee that hiring for experience time on a specific technology is a great way to increase the chance of a bad hire. Both you and raganwald are right, but the industry standard is a practice that looks like it was created to do exactly what it should avoid. No amount of generic complaining can offset that.

My own experience with "X years of Foo" hiring is that for a time, I was quite knowledgable about Java and the JVM, having worked on some very successful Java development tooling.

But all too often, I met with resistance when looking at Java opportunities because my résumé didn't have the right buzzword bingos for the gating process. I found it difficult to even get an interview with some companies!

Thankfully, things ended up working out in my favour.

Re: Why Hiring Exclusively for Experience Doesn't Make Sense

#14

Post by yummyfajitas » Fri, Jan 17, 2014, 5:30 PM UTC

kfk wrote: post #5

Can I also add don't hire solely by github? I know you people are makers and all, but building stuff alone is hard. Why not mentor people with empty githubs and fish employees from that pool? Set up a cool open source project, ask people with no experience to join, ask them to team up, then mentor them through, make them work for free but mentor them, then hire who you like and offer recommendations to other good pro…

Do I need to keep holding their hand after I hire them as well? Building stuff alone is often part of the job.

Re: Why Hiring Exclusively for Experience Doesn't Make Sense

#15

Post by manishsharan » Fri, Jan 17, 2014, 5:46 PM UTC

Can someone please post links to sites that provide online aptitude and attitude tests for candidates ? It would be nice to know if the candidate had aptitude for the kind of isues that our department handles.

Re: Why Hiring Exclusively for Experience Doesn't Make Sense

#16

Post by gms7777 » Fri, Jan 17, 2014, 6:32 PM UTC

dfox wrote: post #4

Okay, I usually really don't see HN comments about UX and usability of linked sites as constructive, but breaking arrow keys for scrolling is perfect reason why I obviously won't read the article.

Odd, arrow keys work just fine for me in three different browsers.

Re: Why Hiring Exclusively for Experience Doesn't Make Sense

#17

Post by semerda » Fri, Jan 17, 2014, 11:32 PM UTC

Shouldn't the title of this article be "Why Hiring Exclusively for Keywords Doesn't Make Sense".. Hiring should be based on Achievements. And that comes from some sort of Experience. Yes there are many folks that sit in a job "attending" it and after 10 years will put on their resume 10 years of x. What have they achieved in that time? Can they demonstrate it "today" if asked to get into a technical or product debate using that experience/skills? I don't think there is a single "this is how your hire" approach. It is a combination of factors inc yours as the hiring manager to get a feel for the candidate.

Re: Why Hiring Exclusively for Experience Doesn't Make Sense

#18

Post by semerda » Fri, Jan 17, 2014, 11:34 PM UTC

joshyeager wrote: post #10

raganwald wrote: post #9

You can write a blog post explaining why any repeatable, empirical hiring method is flawed. I'll repeat that: If you can produce a repeatable, empirical method of hiring, you can also demonstrate flaws in the results. The only way to write about a process and not get shot down is to wave your hands very furiously while talking about things that can't be measured or repeatably selected like "attitude" or "fit." Things…

I would also add that (at least in heavily knowledge- and team-driven endeavors like software development) the right balance is that you should minimize bad hires as much as possible, even at the cost of missing out on many good people.

Hire fast, fire fast.