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The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

nytimes.com

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Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#91

Post by tianlins »

throwaway9475 wrote: post #13
inopinatus wrote: post #7

Articles like this - and the comments that follow - always overlook the primary value of job interviews, which to me is answering the question: "Do I want to work for this company?"

Sure, because poor management, crippling technical debt, and a toxic work environment are totally plainly presented to you in an interview. /s

This might not be true given just a couple of hours staying in the office and talking to people. Management issues / technical debt are not visible until you work for the company.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#92

Post by AuthenticApe »

uncensored wrote: post #42

How do you know that the person you'll be marrying won't cheat on you and won't leave you in hard times? If you apply the methods we use today for interviews you'll end up with a 50/50 chance at best, a coin toss. Yet why do some marriages last forever (till death do us apart) while others fail miserably or crumble even after 20 years? The search for the global optimum cannot be performed by asking a set of questions…

Arranged marriages, be it in Jewish, Indian or few hundred years ago almost everywhere in the world have lasted much longer than autonomous marriages because in those, multiple experienced people who had a history of good relationships chose partners for their kids. Based on their experience, they could determine ideal partners for their kids... not only for a certain period but for the lifetime.

Applying the same idea to hiring should improve hiring.

1. Get the most experienced people in the hiring team... i.e. the people who have the most experience working with people in the position already.

2. Interviewing the candidates should not be the biggest part of the process. Take time to interview their mentors, previous employers and coworkers.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#93

Post by santoshalper »

As someone who has worked at every level of IT (startup to Fortune 500 executive), hired thousands of people, and personally interviewed hundreds of candidates of all levels of experience, the conclusion I have come to is that interviews are almost entirely worthless.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#94

Post by tianlins »

m-j-fox wrote: post #60

Known useless indicators: * Resumes * Skills tests (hacker rank) * Whiteboard interviews * Unstructured interviews * Employee referrals No wonder headhunters have such a good business. Not that they're more discriminating, but they can pretend to be the solution to an intractable problem.

I agree with most, but referrals are one of the most important indicators. "A hire As, B hire Cs". A known issue, however, is the workforce diverse given the heavy use of referral methods.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#95

Post by mquander »

anonymoushn wrote: post #12
rb2k_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done interviews at a few of time, I'd say that's mostly false, at least for the last 2-3 years. As far as I can tell, there's always a pre-defined pool of questions. Some of them are pretty 'open ended', but still targeted towards getting a good impression of a certain area of knowledge. That being said, I had an interview with Google at some point in the past where one of the interviewers almost seemed appall…

Recently I failed an interview at Facebook because I chose to serialize a binary tree into a list of N items, rather than a list of N items and O(N) sentinels. Most of the interview was spent convincing the interviewer that this could possibly be correct.

Why did you conclude that you failed because of that? That sounds like a pass with flying colors. Did you specifically get feedback about that segment?

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#96

Post by Spooky23 »

It's the whole process that's useless.

Remember a few years ago when this forum was drowning about how to find and hire "10x" people? 98% of employees were useless in the face of the 10xer.

The reality is, most of the time screening for general aptitude, self-motivation and appropriate education is good enough.

I've probably built a dozen teams where 75% of the people were random people who were there before or freed up from some other project. They all work out. IMO, you're better off hiring for smart and gets thing done and purging the people who don't work.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#97

Post by keyboardhitter »

cricfan wrote: post #70

I wonder if we can extrapolate to marriages and to how arranged marriages (at least in India) having a higher success rate. Usually the parents on either side decide on a match based on family background, financial stability, education background etc,. rather than letting the to-be married decide.

Perhaps, but then one would have to define a "successful" marriage, which is very subjective (even if only Indian families are scrutinized).

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#98

Post by mquander »

z3t4 wrote: post #50
anonymoushn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently I failed an interview at Facebook because I chose to serialize a binary tree into a list of N items, rather than a list of N items and O(N) sentinels. Most of the interview was spent convincing the interviewer that this could possibly be correct.

i recently failed a programming test after acing all tests except one where i needed a text diff and pulled in a library instead of writing my own in less then ten minutes. they said i need to get better at algos. which is fair. but i dont know anyone that can program a decent working text diff in less then ten minutes.

Based on your description, it sounds possible they were just looking for a Levenshtein distance implementation, which is definitely in the Universal Weird Corpus of Interview Questions and for which people who prepare for interviews a ton would have a good shot.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#99

Post by gjkood »

cwyers wrote: post #90
Merad wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has to be one of the most employee-hostile hiring strategies I've ever read.

You're pretty much limited to hiring either only the jobless or someone with the ability to work two jobs at once for an extended period of time while you hold your tryout. There are a lot of people who can't devote that kind of time to a second job (some candidates burn a week's vacation!) And it's not some mere formality, according to their stats they hire about a third of the people they try out.

And don't forget anti-moonlighting clauses in current employment contracts.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#100

Post by thomastjeffery »

> Alternatively, you can use interviews to test job-related skills, rather than idly chatting or asking personal questions.

Alternatively? How is this not the focus of an interview?

Sure, confidence and social skills are important, but obviously they cannot predict a person's actual ability.

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