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The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

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Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#81
post #53

Is it me or is there no author name? I mean, it could be deliberately anonymous but then that's usually noted. It was a really interesting read but I am probably just being grumpy and not a fan of medium.

It's in the "footer" of the page continuously as you scroll the entire article. Name is Deborah Branscum.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies hire contractors and then turn them into permanent employees.

I'm a startup founder and while this had been our initial approach to evaluating new engineers, our payroll company, PayChex, has specifically advised us to NOT do this. Why? Because it sends a red flag to the IRS to come after us for taxes for the period when they were a contractor. Crazily enough PayChex has told us that the real solution here is for us to "sign" the person over to a contracting company so we can h…

You can hire someone ad a short term contract employee. Your payroll company was trllijgt you to not fraudulently hire people as "independent contractors".

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#83

>Staffup Weekend put the lie to Stein’s pronouncement. As Nicholson later wrote me, “The fact that people stayed for 48 hours to work on something put them head and shoulders above the thousands of applications we receive, because the participants are people who show up and see things through.” And this event is an attempt to make showing up for a 48 hour 'work trial' a norm. This favors the younger, single populatio…

My first real job interview in 1999 worked exactly like this. A pool of candidates came in and were given the same 2 day coding assignment. We were paid for our time and worked on site. It was a great experience, but I tend to like working on interesting problems (which I guess is a valuable trait in itself).

It especially made sense at this company because they were using an obscure coding platform and needed to train everybody from scratch. So you were actually learning the language a bit while performing the test. Mentors went around and asked you your thought process as you worked an gave some helpful nudges.

I did get the job and to this day it was the best office environment of my life. I wish all tech companies were as well run as that one.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#84

One thing I've wondered is why companies hire people one at a time. Barely anyone works alone on anything, yet to decide whether to hire someone, you invite people individually through a funnel process and expect them to be able to work together. The best teams are not necessarily the ones with the most Ivy Leaguers on them. Why don't more companies let the applicants self-organise, and then hire the best teams?

Extreme case: Hire the A-team of programming http://atsytp.strikingly.com/

They're available, and have been for 6 months (?).

Also, negative points for not using the original A-Team in their background image.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would guess if you meet your tax obligations and employment law obligations you should be ok. If its an audit red flag, that's a risk even if you aren't breaking the tax rules associated with that transaction -- it increases the risk associated with any tax rules you might, knowingly or not, be breaking. Further, if you are using it to vet potential permanent employees in working conditions as much like the ones…

What you say makes perfect sense, but in that context how do "contract to hire" places do what they do legally?

One common mechanism is the use of third-party staffing agencies who are regular employers of the staffers for the contract period the way the payroll company upthread recommended.

Direct contract-to-hire is also done, but its fairly frequently not done legally, which is why it gets additional scrutiny.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#86

I strongly believe that hiring should be based on data. Based on the following 5 factors: 1.Intellect 2.Values 3.Motivations 4.Behaviours 5.Experience With these factors you can determine a persons Cultural Fit and predicted future performance. In fact, you could automate this through technology. For example, for predicting future performance we could test the high performers in our company then we have a template fo…

I have no idea why this comment got so downvoted. This is exactly the software I've spent the last year building and it works incredibly well for our customers.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#87
post #58

I strongly believe that hiring should be based on data. Based on the following 5 factors: 1.Intellect 2.Values 3.Motivations 4.Behaviours 5.Experience With these factors you can determine a persons Cultural Fit and predicted future performance. In fact, you could automate this through technology. For example, for predicting future performance we could test the high performers in our company then we have a template fo…

1.Intellect 2.Values 3.Motivations 4.Behaviours 5.Experience All of those are extremely subjective. And trying to replicate your existing staff will give you an unimaginative company of yes-men.

Because our current processes have resulted in such diversity in the workspace? /s

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#88
post #66

"We found zero relationship. It’s a complete random mess." Something overlooked is the millions (billions?) of non-productive labor hours that go into the failed traditional hiring process, when even the smartest guys in the room have to admit that upon statistical analysis its all a waste of time. That's an enormous staggering financial drain on the economy. Overall, across the entire economy, the overall minimum co…

From the NYT's article quoting Laszlo Bock: "Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring."

Google made the classic mistake of using the interviewer as the predictor of interest. Meanwhile, decades of research has shown it's not who does the asking but how and what you ask. For example, structured interviews are about 50% more predictive of job performance (r = .51) compared to unstructured interviews (i.e., the way almost everyone interviews; r = .38).

So why did Google run this experiment when they had an army of Industrial/Organizational Psychologists who already knew the research? They wanted to collect their own data and test the theories on their own employees, which I encourage and applaud.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#89

I strongly believe that hiring should be based on data. Based on the following 5 factors: 1.Intellect 2.Values 3.Motivations 4.Behaviours 5.Experience With these factors you can determine a persons Cultural Fit and predicted future performance. In fact, you could automate this through technology. For example, for predicting future performance we could test the high performers in our company then we have a template fo…

You, I like. That's exactly what the 85 years of research on hiring tells us are the strongest predictors of job performance and employee turnover.

Source: http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#90

I didn't even read the story after this gem: "In 2012, for example, consulting firm Leadership IQ announced it had tracked 20,000 new hires over time and discovered that 46% of them had failed within 18 months. In other words, most recruiting practices are about as effective as a coin toss." Now, what's wrong with this reasoning? :-)

You might be interested in this utility app that calculates the probability of a successful hire created by an I/O Psychologist: https://morgan.shinyapps.io/utility_calculator/

It takes the base rate of successful performance into account.

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