Earlier quoted context omitted.
We wouldn't know if you've never touched it, only whether you can solve problems in it today.
So, no?
Implying that those who have never touched Rust cannot solve problems?
How to hire low experience, high potential people
341–350 of 433 posts
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It depends on the role you're hiring for. I suspect a lot of comments in this thread, echoing your sentiment, will be written from the perspective of sharp-end-of-the-stick engineers for whom the idea of working on ambiguous organizational problems is an abstract concept, far from their day to day. Not saying that's you per se, but this is HN after all. This crowd loves for things to be clear-cut, especially when th…
That probably makes perfect sense for you, and reflects most technical people's perspective, but it depends on the job. When I've interviewed developers and other technical people when I was in that business, I wanted to gauge if they'd be pleasant to work with, and vaguely "who they are," but that's about it. In a dev interview, I'd be suspicious of someone digging into what made me tick, if for no reason other than…
There's a difference into trying to understand what makes everyone tick, and going into deep personal details.
It might make sense from employer perspective, but why i should put myself at risk? It is similar to prisoners dilemma.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#343People's intuitions around hiring aren't Bayesian enough. I think a good process reduces down to something like: - Are they smart? (understands quickly + communicates effectively) - Are they cool? (won't put poison in the keurig + pleasant to be around) - Are they high energy? (initiative + action bias) - Do they have the experience needed to be successful in the role? Those are pretty strong priors for success. If y…
How do you measure "are they cool" without just directly transforming all of your biases and stereotypes about the candidate into a numeric score?
I think "cool" is synonymous with, "would they be a good fit for your team/culture" ... not a specific type/race/ethnicity/political persuasion...
Are they someone that's going to disrupt your team's focus on product and execution. No? Cool.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you communicated via email and the only consideration was the quality of their sample? Nobody at any point literally spoke to this person? We've had a ton of issues at my corp of people having other people handle their interview questions, code, or having AI listen to the conversation and answer questions by text as if we prompted it. Then they show up online after being hired and they have webcam problems or neve…
Our process runs mostly through email until the last challenge, which is interactive (for every role in the company we simulate some kind of design or problem solving exercise on Slack with an random member of our team, which is then rated based on a rubric by a panel that reviews the transcript; it differs from an interview in a variety of ways, most notably that the team member delivering the exercise doesn't ever…
Could you give some exercise examples? How complex do you make? Does it feel like doing work for you?
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
we don't ask doctors, nurses and technicians personally invasive questions to determine their ability to do their job because we can just ask them how they dealt with with emotionally-difficult work situations in the past. is there any work where that is not the case?
When it's your first job in the field? We still don't use personal experiences as shitty proxy for how you're able to handle work situations
right, but for someones first job i would also not expect any experience how to handle work situations at all. regardless of how i would be able to find out it seems a bit much to ask.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#346Usually the places that are trying to hire HiPos do IQ tests-once-removed like https://www.criteriacorp.com/candidates/ccat-prep. There is plenty of evidence that general cognitive ability strongly correlates with job performance.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#347We 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…
Plus you get a bunch of free work out of every applicant if you delegate real issues out as work-sample tests :P I'm pretty sure the new Audi A8 cup holders are from my mechanical design engineer third round volkswagen interview a couple years ago
It's nearly impossible to scope useful, shippable work that can be accomplished in a job interview. Otherwise, you're asking for 20+ hours of work, which means that only fools / suckers will do your interview.
Do you really want a company full of fools and suckers?
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#348We 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…
Just remember that all interview techniques have bias; what works well for one company / role may not work well for your company / role.
That being said, it sounds like your interview technique works well for you.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#349We 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…
Just remember that all interview techniques have bias; what works well for one company / role may not work well for your company / role. That being said, it sounds like your interview technique works well for you.
That may be, but I don't believe interviews work well for anybody.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#350Or the shortcut: hire based on nepotism