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In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

nytimes.com

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Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#191

Post by wahnfrieden »

donohoe wrote: post #127
tokenadult wrote: post #102

From the original New York Times article that Quartz has linkspammed here: "On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart." Long before this was reported in the New York Times, this was the fi…

From the original New York Times article that Quartz has linkspammed No, this is Linkspan: Link spam is defined as links between pages that are present for reasons other than merit.[9] Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, which gives websites higher rankings the more other highly ranked websites link to it. These techniques also aim at influencing other link-based ranking techniques such as the…

I think he meant to use the term "blogspam", which colloquially refers to paraphrasing or copying other content.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#192

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

ig1 wrote: post #46
objclxt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've skipped over the original NYT article, which the qz.com article being linked to here quotes from. He does say they're worthless. Here's the complete quote: One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation This chimes with m…

Makes sense, most companies only care about university grades for first jobs (because there's very little else to distinguish candidates at the stage).

I think it's a lot more useful to show em your GitHub than it is to show them GPA. That's how I got my first internship :D.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#193

Post by stephenhuey »

mseebach wrote: post #139
skrebbel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspected so. Still, as a super-amazingly competent genius engineer with no self esteem, I hope not many companies follow their lead.

What's the point of hiring a super-amazingly competent genius engineer if he's going to sit in a corner and think he's wrong all the time? If you don't offer your genius to the team, you might as well not have it. And no, parceling out work for you to go and excel at on your own is likely not a good use of your skill.

I'm sure loads of amazing projects throughout history have been pulled off with great assistance from amazingly competent people who were hesitant about their abilities. It'd be interesting to find out if more teams are successful with arrogant or humble people. Perhaps you're just more likely to hear about the successes of arrogant people thanks to their loud trumpeting about themselves.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#194

Post by killermonkeys »

edent wrote: post #3

The original article - http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-huntin... Distraction free reading and without all the annoying cruft of Quartz. Fascinating use of "Big Data" to cut through the bullshit. Wonder if it will change anything. I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR.

I asked these questions until a year ago. Brain teasers were never ok. They are defined as things that require a single insight and/or domain knowledge and could be communicated in a few seconds.

"Monopoly" is a perfect example of a brain teaser and anyone using that would be treated pretty harshly by the committee that reviews interview feedback. Estimate questions are not: there's no expectation of a "right answer" and the important fact is the working.

Some programming questions border on brain teasers to non programmers but that doesn't matter because you are asking programmers and again, it's the working that matters.

Finally different roles get different types of interviews. I worked in PM and there were analytical (these questions), product (design a better x) and technical (basic engineering interviews). The behavioral type was not one I encountered in PM or eng but maybe used elsewhere.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#195

Post by killermonkeys »

Retric wrote: post #165
hkmurakami wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR. from: "The trick Max Levchin used to hire the best engineers at PayPal" Levchin realized the best engineers wanted to be challenged both in their jobs and in the interview process. “We cultivated a very public culture of being incredibly hard to get in. Even though it was actually very hard to get good people to even interview, we made a point of broadc…

Looking for people with high IQ's with the right background is basically a waste of time. There are plenty of ways to define IQ's but 160 is around 1 in 30,000 and there are only something like ~200 graduating highschool each year. If 5 percent of them study programming you looking a say 10 new genius programmers every year. And plenty of them avoid SV for reasons as simple as the limited dating pool. The simple trut…

Yes lack of dates has always been a big complaint at the Palo Alto MENSA meet ups.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#196

Post by X4 »

X4 wrote: post #92

Why so serious? Isn't hiring about maxing out the potential of a company? Anyone can help maximing it out. I know for myself that having 'clue' reduces self-esteem. Which can be balanced by having the right co-workers. End result: Maxing out the potential. A(Technical intelligence) + B(Social Intelligence) = (Innovative potential)

Why does Google want the PERFECT candidate, isn't anything less better? Aren't they ok, with 90% of the human population?

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#197

Post by 31reasons »

I think companies would be better off hiring people not based on their IQ or skill level but by hiring people who love what they do, have done side projects and achieve flow in their work. People who achieve flow in their work will work harder and are more creative than others because they enjoy the process of solving problems. So the interview process should be to identify how often the given candidate achieve Flow (as defined by mihaly csikszentmihalyi)

http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.htm...

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#198

Post by fuzzywalrus »

Retric wrote: post #165
hkmurakami wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR. from: "The trick Max Levchin used to hire the best engineers at PayPal" Levchin realized the best engineers wanted to be challenged both in their jobs and in the interview process. “We cultivated a very public culture of being incredibly hard to get in. Even though it was actually very hard to get good people to even interview, we made a point of broadc…

Looking for people with high IQ's with the right background is basically a waste of time. There are plenty of ways to define IQ's but 160 is around 1 in 30,000 and there are only something like ~200 graduating highschool each year. If 5 percent of them study programming you looking a say 10 new genius programmers every year. And plenty of them avoid SV for reasons as simple as the limited dating pool. The simple trut…

To add: Genius isn't even a predictor of success. Granted, intelligence is a useful tool, its only one of many things that govern success. Sometimes "genius" can be in impediment to success.

Humans are hive minded despite our best attempts to assert otherwise. A modern computer or a modern bridge can't be built from scratch by one person. A genius can certainly help raise the bar, but a cohesive unit capable of achieving the end result is going to be a better optimization strategy.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#199

Post by [deleted] »

X4 wrote: post #196
X4 wrote: post #92

Why so serious? Isn't hiring about maxing out the potential of a company? Anyone can help maximing it out. I know for myself that having 'clue' reduces self-esteem. Which can be balanced by having the right co-workers. End result: Maxing out the potential. A(Technical intelligence) + B(Social Intelligence) = (Innovative potential)

Why does Google want the PERFECT candidate, isn't anything less better? Aren't they ok, with 90% of the human population?

[deleted]

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#200

Post by bane »

mikestew wrote: post #187
bane wrote: post #119

I was contacted by a Google recruiter a few months ago, I had no intention of changing my day job at the time, but for shits and grins I went through a couple phone interviews. The position they were hiring for wasn't an area I have any experience in (the recruiter had made a mismatch), but I thought the questions were reasonable for somebody who works in that field and were kind of fun. They were quizzy, but could b…

"It was a management position so there weren't any coding questions" Interesting; when I interviewed for a management position (test manager) it was nothing but coding questions, including the infamous "reverse a string" question. ("Would like that optimized for space or speed? In-place, or do I get a buffer? Can you tell I've heard this a zillion times before?") I can understand wanting a test manager to be more tha…

There's different kinds of management positions other than software development management. HN is notorious for forgetting that.
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