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How to hire low experience, high potential people

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Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#331

Post by CharlieDigital »

gen220 wrote: post #314
CharlieDigital wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 4-quardrant way of thinking about this that's similar. - Y-axis is "drive" - X-axis is "aptitude" - low drive + low aptitude: never hire - low drive + high aptitude: hire for targeted use cases where you need expertise - high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster aptitude growth - high drive + high aptitude: hire on the spot There's an indirect way of testing for this which is to test for curiosity a…

This is The Way™! I've heard this alternatively described as "slope" (for drive, which incorporates the curiosity, lack of ego, excitability) and "intercept" for "aptitude". Implication is that if you're high-slope, you'll eventually become high-intercept. If you're a startup, you want to bias towards a mix of high slope, low intercept and positive slope, high intercept. I think it's also worth pointing out that peop…

Both can definitely change over time and that change can be influenced by a variety of factors including the types of projects, company culture, "vibes" with the rest of the team, and so on.

I think the industry really wants an objective, formulaic way of identifying these individuals, but the reality is that a lot of it does still come down to subjective factors since there's so much variability along so many different facets.

What I can say personally is that I've had pretty good success hiring, but I wouldn't claim that my "intuition" can be systematically applied by anyone to achieve the same success.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#333

Post by em-bee »

i_h8_lc_grind wrote: post #291
tptacek wrote: post #179

We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring people at every level of experience without having to make decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their first job in our field. I'm a little grumpy about…

This is good to know. I think a lot of people are tired of wasting their lifespan on grinding lc-medium/hards. Is there a website with a list of companies that don't participate in the leetcode/FAANG interview process? I feel like there is a need for one.

i seem to remember an HN post about such a site, or at least one about a site that evaluates companies hiring processes. also related, about companies development practices.

try searching the HN post history. (and report back if you find something :-)

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#334

Post by em-bee »

skellera wrote: post #173
mywittyname wrote: post #56

> Disagree and commit: I hate that this is such a common thought process. This is something that makes sense for soldiers in the military. But outside of this context (being a low-information cog in a gigantic machine), it's terrible. If you can't convince domain experts that the plan is sound, then maybe it's a bad plan. Honestly, disagree and commit goes against my... > Theory for excellence.

If you trust that the people you are working with are working towards the same goal, disagree and commit is important. You are not going to be right 100% of the time. If the group is saying X is the right way to go and you’ve already given your reason why you think Y, you should disagree and commit. If you sit there complaining for weeks that they should be doing Y without any new information, you’re just being a shi…

indeed, only working in unity allows a team to face and fix mistakes and bad decisions, because then there is noone shouting "i told you so" when something fails.

unity in a team is more important than being right.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#335

Post by Uinchuling »

hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #149
the_mar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I found the part where the author throws in "cared for a dying parent" particularly distasteful, it's like a benchmark for "palatable damage"

This interview style seems bound to create a psychologically enmeshed workplace with no healthy boundaries. Or a workplace full of people with charming, easily-shared backstories and nuclear families but no yucky problems. Would not want to work here, personally.

>a workplace full of people with charming, easily-shared backstories and nuclear families but no yucky problems

Are you suggesting that this is bad? What do you hope to gain by seeking out obnoxious people with traumatic backstories and broken families with yuck problems? Misery loves company?

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#336

Post by the_mar »

joenot443 wrote: post #326
ryandrake wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the candidate doesn't have a horrific childhood, the question is totally inappropriate and irrelevant. Like "get up and walk out of the interview" inappropriate. This, and the general level of mysticism throughout (really? "Spike potential" WTF), causes me to dismiss the whole article.

Shopify's made the Life Story a major part of their interview process for over a decade now, it doesn't as if they'd ever had problems attracting talent. [1] I think you might be in the minority if you feel that highlights from someone's past are irrelevant predictors in their future performance and that asking about them in an interview is inappropriate. Personally, I'm really glad I didn't "get up and walk out of t…

"At Shopify, all candidates begin the interview process with something called the Life Story, an interview in which the candidate sits down and discusses their work history, passions, and aspirations."

None of that sounds like the actual stories about childhood. It's totally appropriate to discuss past work experiences, aspirations and passions as a "Life Story".

Moreover the “Tell me a little about yourself” suggested interview opener is open-eded enough that the candidate can decide what they want to discuss and highlight. Majority of people do not answer that question with "my first memory was when father left when I was 3 years old..."

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#337

Post by hdhdhsjsbdh »

Uinchuling wrote: post #335
hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This interview style seems bound to create a psychologically enmeshed workplace with no healthy boundaries. Or a workplace full of people with charming, easily-shared backstories and nuclear families but no yucky problems. Would not want to work here, personally.

>a workplace full of people with charming, easily-shared backstories and nuclear families but no yucky problems Are you suggesting that this is bad ? What do you hope to gain by seeking out obnoxious people with traumatic backstories and broken families with yuck problems? Misery loves company?

Why should someone’s present self be defined by things entirely out of their control (e.g. childhood trauma)? You seem to assume that “obnoxious people” and “traumatic backstories” go hand-in-hand; on the contrary, some of the most obnoxious people are those who have never faced anything in their lives other than minor and routine inconveniences. Neither person is inherently superior to the other, I’m just saying that I’d personally rather not work at a place that selects exclusively for “perfect” people along a metric unrelated to their job performance.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#338

Post by shrimp_emoji »

ryandrake wrote: post #207
AlotOfReading wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any competent HR department would have a fit if they knew these kinds of questions were being asked. It's way too easy to wander into illegal discrimination when you're making hiring decisions based on people's backgrounds like this.

You'd think this was true, but I've seen some crazy shit in interviews, even at companies that were big enough and had a robust enough legal team, where you'd think they'd have their shit together. I once interviewed at a medium sized, name brand Silicon Valley darling everyone on HN has heard of, where an interviewer outright asked me if I was married and if I had kids! Like, holy shit, just read your interview trai…

*Leans back and puts bare feet up on the table*

Are you a virgin?

https://youtu.be/fwYy8R87JMA

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#339

Post by em-bee »

mywittyname wrote: post #166
beisner wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate that this is such a common thought process. In most teams, not everyone is on the same page: - There are people with varying levels of experience, some may not currently have enough background to fully understand all the aspects that a plan addresses. - Many/most people have the tendency to let their various biases creep into team-level decision-making. For instance, if someone had a bad experience on a prev…

> Famously, section 5.11 of the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual [1] describes some pretty timeless ways to ruin an organization's productivity - all kinds of behavior that are kind of indistinguishable from the behavior I've seen arise from "disagreeing and not committing" in organizations. Honestly, it seems like "disagree & commit" facilitates these bad behaviors. An "individual's opportunity to make faulty deci…

for me disagree and commit only applies to team decisions. a dictatorial team leader or manager is an entirely different problem. in such a case it is up to the team under the leader to figure out how to deal with that.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#340

Post by evilduck »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #241
ryandrake wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think this was true, but I've seen some crazy shit in interviews, even at companies that were big enough and had a robust enough legal team, where you'd think they'd have their shit together. I once interviewed at a medium sized, name brand Silicon Valley darling everyone on HN has heard of, where an interviewer outright asked me if I was married and if I had kids! Like, holy shit, just read your interview trai…

The way I understand it, you can legally ask the questions, you just can't consider protected status for hiring purposes. The interview guidelines prohibit asking because "we didn't ask" is a stronger defense than "our interviewers have mental firewalls". This case is strictly worse because the questions are explicitly being asked to evaluate eligibility for hiring.

It's still a major blunder by an HR manager but maybe there's a chance that they had already decided to hire the person but hadn't made an official offer and it was a mistimed getting-to-know-you chat? I don't know, it seems insane to even ask.
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