We only hire the trendiest • Hacker News Board

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#491

Post by sago » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

donretag wrote: post #315

rsync wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I once had an internal recruiter tell me during a phone screen that my resume was weak since I went to a no-name school in the south called Georgia Tech." Wow. Just wow. What a (cognitive) bubble to be in.

Many engineering/science-oriented schools have the same issue. Urbana Champaign, Ann Arbor, even CMU. If you are not from a STEM background, you tend to only "recognize" the Ivy League schools and MIT/Caltech/Berkeley/....

You have to really not care about your industry to not recognize Georgia Tech or CMU, birthplace of some of the greatest technical innovations in the industry. Let's talk about how you hire HR people. I've never interviewed for another company (always run my own), but I'd never hire a HR person who didn't have a basic understanding of tech.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#492

Post by sago » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 6:47 PM UTC

koevet wrote: post #110

"Contractors are generally not the strongest technically" Where does this come from? I actually see a contractor as someone who had experienced way more "war stories" than the guy who has been sitting in the same chair for 10/20 years. As a contractor, you are exposed to more technologies, more business sectors, different working cultures.

"Contractor" can mean, entrepreneurial person who's made a career helping a range of companies who's internal developers couldn't get the job done.

Or it could mean, someone that a company took on with a day-rate because they needed a warm body, but didn't want to actually hire them either, in case someone better came along.

Or anything in between.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#493

Post by Retr0spectrum » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

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Re: We only hire the trendiest

#494

Post by balls187 » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #151

I'm living this right now. I'm unhirable right now due to my salary requirements (having 13 years of practical experience means that I won't take a job for $60k), and I was turned down for an internal transfer because "you have the skills and experience, but your answer to the interview question was too inefficient." That will teach me to not memorize algorithms I haven't used since college.

> I'm unhirable right now due to my salary requirements

There has to be more to this story.

"13 years practical experience" reads like someone who who describes themselves but doesn't have a formal CS background (just how it reads to me). I could speculate wildly, but it boils down to knowing how to market yourself.

Move to Seattle, we could use a dozen of you here.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#495

Post by nommm-nommm » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #466

mdpopescu wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace dish with drink (or worse, joint). Do you still think people who "decline to try" have a problem? That they should try in case they might like it? I'm really NOT keen on trying chocolate-cover ants, thank you.

Nobody should try anything they are uncomfortable with, and I think involving substances in the workplace (except in moderation) can be risky. But why not try one ant? I'd try one.

Food is so so so personal and cultural. It's insane to believe someone not eating/not eating a particular food has anything to do with workplace performance.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#496

Post by slackstation » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

There are individuals who are undervalued by the market. One should find them, hire them, create a consultancy and make a bunch of profit from it.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#497

Post by cwbrandsma » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

I think of this as "Hiring natural selection". If they don't hire you because "we don't like windows people", or "contractors are dumb", or , then you really didn't want to be there either.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#498

Post by knoble » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

knappe wrote: post #431

awinder wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the rationality point, I've definitely been one to talk openly when asked about times I've failed / would have done something differently. I've looked at it as a no-loss scenario: if I'm talking with a company and they can't accept that no one is perfect, then I'd rather not work for that company anyways. Interviewing in a sense is kinda like dating, one way to really screw things up is if you're both looking for…

There is one rather big key difference in dating versus interviews. You only get once chance to find out _everything_ about a company during an interview. Whereas dating has many "meetings". This is the real problem with interviews. They're an all or nothing.

First dates are probably most analogous to phone interviews. It's a testing of the water. If you've met the barrier of entry, you'll probably make it to the next one unless there is no chemistry whatsoever.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#499

Post by epalmer » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #378

grandalf wrote: post #345

I've found that the best predictors of a good hire are indications of the following characteristics during the interview/vetting process: - adaptability -- can this person deal with situations that are spontaneous and unplanned without losing his/her cool. - openness -- is this person instinctively scornful of new concepts/ideas or energized by the chance to be exposed to something potentially interesting. - resource…

> - rationality -- can this person admit to being wrong and speak about it authentically... can I imagine this person admitting to being slightly wrong and even very wrong about something and handling it gracefully. I think this is a super important characteristic for a great employee to have, but I don't know how reasonable it is to expect to see much of it in an interview. In an interview setting, the candidate is…

I worked in an organization where we used behavioral interviewing techniques to get to the core of how someone operates.

"Tell me about a time in which you..." works very well. If they resist answering the made mistakes questions we prompted them to understand that an honest answer is important. If they could not do that then they were not considered.

These were not developer roles but most were very technical / analytical roles for an organization that paid well and candidates knew up front they would be interviewed this way. In addition some jobs were "cased" where you had to solve a problem and talk about how you solved it to the interviewer. Great fun when I went through the two days of interviews. I ended up doing maybe 200+ behavioral interviews over 6+ years for the company. I saw this approach work time and time again.

Some people could not answer for themselves: "the team did..." "They did...". When pressed we usually discovered that the candidate did not have the ability to get the job done themselves.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#500

Post by fleitz » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 6:59 PM UTC

knappe wrote: post #431

awinder wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the rationality point, I've definitely been one to talk openly when asked about times I've failed / would have done something differently. I've looked at it as a no-loss scenario: if I'm talking with a company and they can't accept that no one is perfect, then I'd rather not work for that company anyways. Interviewing in a sense is kinda like dating, one way to really screw things up is if you're both looking for…

There is one rather big key difference in dating versus interviews. You only get once chance to find out _everything_ about a company during an interview. Whereas dating has many "meetings". This is the real problem with interviews. They're an all or nothing.

Interviews are like blind dates, you need to be in the social circle to have an idea of what you're getting into before you go to the interview.