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Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

newscientist.com

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Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#51

Post by scienceoflife »

tptacek wrote: post #11
bcg1 wrote: post #10

I like the idea, although personally I wouldn't be excited about being "interviewed" like this. I am supportive of its existence however because it has definite upsides (i'm sure there are more, just enumerating a few): 1) eliminates some cultural/gender/language/fashion/appearance/disability biases 2) its not subjective 3) no difference between local and out-of-town candidates I'm glad that the toolbox for candidate…

The biggest misconception we've managed to foster about what we're doing is that Starfighter is a form of interview. It isn't. At all. A better way to think about it is that it's a sort of Venn intersection between "Github resume", "Coursera course", "Dwarf Fortress", and "recruiting firm". Our crusade against the tech job interview is roughly analogous to Google's "organizing all of the world's information". It's a…

I thought I recognized this. I wanted to work for Matasano at one point but found the CTF environment incredibly difficult if you come from a Web Dev side of things. Hopefully starfighter is different.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#52

Post by patio11 »

pyrocat wrote: post #49
tptacek wrote: post #5

Patrick gave an interview to The New Scientist when we announced last week. We're a little worried about Starfighter Fatigue and are definitely trying not to get too much onto the front page (Erin's diligently writing the game details post, which we want to be the next thing people see from us). In the meantime though, if any of you have questions, we're watching and will answer.

What percent of your team is women?

Erin Ptacek is a co-founder of the company, with Thomas and myself. We're the only people formally working on Starfighter at the moment.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#53

Post by waterlesscloud »

ConfuciusSay wrote: post #18

This is awesome. I'll definitely become an avid player, right after I contribute meaningfully to several open source projects, have an active GitHub profile, while keeping my Stack Overflow reputation high, and having a fleshed out CodeCombat profile, and of course making sure my LinkedIn page is up to snuff. I hope when I get this awesome job my employer doesn't mind me keeping all my profiles updated on company hou…

The idea here is that this will remove the need for pretty much all of that. My read on it is that it's meant to be an entirely new replacement funnel, not an additional one.

They're going to have a tough road ahead of them selling everyone on that idea, both employers and potential employees. But if they get some high profile success stories, it's possible. Hiring is faddish, there's no reason these guys can't leverage that to their benefit.

Personally, I think it's really cool they're trying this. And that the two HN posters I disagree with the most often (maybe because they post so often) are the ones doing a startup I think is really interesting. They've chosen a domain area that can have huge leverage effects on the industry as a whole (and thus the economy as a whole) if it works. I dunno if they're thinking of it like that, or would admit it if they are, but it's one of those frighteningly ambitious ideas.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#54

Post by thomasjames »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #53
ConfuciusSay wrote: post #18

This is awesome. I'll definitely become an avid player, right after I contribute meaningfully to several open source projects, have an active GitHub profile, while keeping my Stack Overflow reputation high, and having a fleshed out CodeCombat profile, and of course making sure my LinkedIn page is up to snuff. I hope when I get this awesome job my employer doesn't mind me keeping all my profiles updated on company hou…

The idea here is that this will remove the need for pretty much all of that. My read on it is that it's meant to be an entirely new replacement funnel, not an additional one. They're going to have a tough road ahead of them selling everyone on that idea, both employers and potential employees. But if they get some high profile success stories, it's possible. Hiring is faddish, there's no reason these guys can't lever…

"There are too many competing standards for x, so we are proud to announce a new standard, which will supersede all existing x standards and unify everything." -The founders of every competing standard ever introduced for anything in the history of things.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#55

Post by waterlesscloud »

thomasjames wrote: post #54
waterlesscloud wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea here is that this will remove the need for pretty much all of that. My read on it is that it's meant to be an entirely new replacement funnel, not an additional one. They're going to have a tough road ahead of them selling everyone on that idea, both employers and potential employees. But if they get some high profile success stories, it's possible. Hiring is faddish, there's no reason these guys can't lever…

"There are too many competing standards for x, so we are proud to announce a new standard, which will supersede all existing x standards and unify everything." -The founders of every competing standard ever introduced for anything in the history of things.

And sometimes it works out that way.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#56

Post by thomasjames »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #55
thomasjames wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are too many competing standards for x, so we are proud to announce a new standard, which will supersede all existing x standards and unify everything." -The founders of every competing standard ever introduced for anything in the history of things.

And sometimes it works out that way.

Yup, ever since I started using XML for every task imaginable I never looked back.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#57

Post by edgarvaldes »

thomasjames wrote: post #54
waterlesscloud wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea here is that this will remove the need for pretty much all of that. My read on it is that it's meant to be an entirely new replacement funnel, not an additional one. They're going to have a tough road ahead of them selling everyone on that idea, both employers and potential employees. But if they get some high profile success stories, it's possible. Hiring is faddish, there's no reason these guys can't lever…

"There are too many competing standards for x, so we are proud to announce a new standard, which will supersede all existing x standards and unify everything." -The founders of every competing standard ever introduced for anything in the history of things.

Standards

http://xkcd.com/927/

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#58

Post by dismal2 »

32bitkid wrote: post #31

I know this article is referring to a different kind of gaming, but back in the day, I used to give potential candidates a NES controller and Tetris when they were in the waiting room before the interview... You can tell a lot about how a person deals with time constraints, pressure and approaches problem solving by watching somebody play tetris for 4 minutes. Not that Tetris would be the only input into the decision…

What if Tetris is a meaningless "problem" for them

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#60

Post by yareally »

autoreleasepool wrote: post #43
krstck wrote: post #26

Such a cool idea, and I enjoyed Microcorruption, but ended up getting stuck in the second or third level and couldn't even figure out the right questions to ask to get help. (I stepped into the irc channel at some point and asked some simple question, but got an answer that I couldn't even parse. So I realized I was out of my league and needed to learn more basics first.) My one concern is about something that was me…

I'm with you. There's no way I'd play a game where my every move was fair game for employers to scrutinize. That's too much stress and it would suck the fun out of everything. The thought of a game like that irritates me to no end. This is one reason I pay for a private github. I hate that if I'm learning a new technology, have "too many" commits on something simple, or am generally messing around it looks "bad" to e…

I'd argue that if an employer cares about public repo commits to personal repositories, one is probably better off not working for them (at least from my perspective of an ideal employer). If an employer thinks all their developers are infallible and instantly experts in everything they're learning, that sounds like a pretty awful culture. I know I've made silly/trivial commits to my github and it has yet to hurt my employability. I'd much rather work for a company that knows its employees aren't perfect and development can be a trial/error process at times (these kind of places do exist and I live and work in the Mid Western US).

I do agree somewhat about game scrutinization, since it's active process by an employer verses employers passively looking at your github profile.

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