We discuss hiring frequently here on Hacker News. Almost everyone who reads this site has looked for a job at least once before, and many people who read this site have had occasion to hire someone into a company. I read the new blog post kindly submitted here after noticing how fast it was gaining upvotes, and I see a list of gripes with the tech hiring process that we have discussed many times before here on Hacker News. But the author buries the lede by putting his best point, point 10, at the bottom of his ten-point list. That point,
"10. Not challenging/testing candidates
"When you’re recruiting in tech it’s crucial to test your candidates."
is the most important point, and it generalizes to all kinds of hiring. A well liked FAQ post I have posted to comment threads before here on HN notes (shortening here)
"The review article by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, 'The Validity and Utility of Selection Models in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings,'[1] Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 124, No. 2, 262-274 sums up, current to 1998, a meta-analysis of much of the huge peer-reviewed professional literature on the industrial and organizational psychology devoted to business hiring procedures. There are many kinds of hiring criteria, such as in-person interviews, telephone interviews, resume reviews for job experience, checks for academic credentials, personality tests, and so on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after they are hired in a wide variety of occupations.[2]
"EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, with its legal rules about hiring, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test.
"The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work reasonably well. One is a general mental ability (GMA) test (an IQ-like test, such as the Wonderlic personnel screening test). Another is a work-sample test, where the applicant does an actual task or group of tasks like what the applicant will do on the job if hired. (But the calculated validity of each of the two best kinds of procedures, standing alone, is only 0.54 for work sample tests and 0.51 for general mental ability tests.) Each of these kinds of tests has about the same validity in screening applicants for jobs, with the general mental ability test better predicting success for applicants who will be trained into a new job. Neither is perfect (both miss some good performers on the job, and select some bad performers on the job), but both are better than any other single-factor hiring procedure that has been tested in rigorous research, across a wide variety of occupations. So if you are hiring for your company, it's a good idea to think about how to build a work-sample test into all of your hiring processes."
Note that a work-sample test can be a lot less time-consuming, and lot more possible to standardize, than some of the procedures suggested in the blog post submitted today.
The author of the blog post writes, "Regular work: have your candidate work a couple of afternoons or days side-by-side with a team member. I’ve seen companies like Automattic asking for candidates to come work with them for several days (and paying them for their work of course)."
Previous comments from Hacker News participants suggest that that procedure takes too long for many competent job-seekers to be willing to do that. It probably also has the defect of not allowing objective comparisons between different job candidates.
"Live tech testing: having a series of live tech tests or a technical questionnaire with a couple of tech employees from your company."
Maybe "live" is not the key idea here so much as "genuine," and it may be better still to have the test be standardized to compare applicants well.
"Moonlighting: creating a mini-project within your company for the candidate to perform. Give him/her a deadline and analyse the results."
This has the same problem as the first suggestion: lots of time commitment required from the applicant, with little comparability among different applicants (depending on the nature of the task).
The list of common mistakes is suggestive of problems, but if you'd like a better list of answers about what to do about them, see another recent thread here on HN[1] and the various comments there.
AFTER EDIT: It looks like the main post here is receiving a penalty either from user flags (not from me) or from detection of a voting ring. Maybe I'll be the only person to discuss this post today.
Hey @tokenadult, thanks for the feedback!
You are right, the point 10 is important and should've been placed a bit earlier.
What we mention here stems from our experience. Yours might be different and suggest some issues our suggestions. Thanks for pointing it out and suggesting the more extensive blog post.
"10. Not challenging/testing candidates
"When you’re recruiting in tech it’s crucial to test your candidates."
is the most important point, and it generalizes to all kinds of hiring. A well liked FAQ post I have posted to comment threads before here on HN notes (shortening here)
"The review article by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, 'The Validity and Utility of Selection Models in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings,'[1] Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 124, No. 2, 262-274 sums up, current to 1998, a meta-analysis of much of the huge peer-reviewed professional literature on the industrial and organizational psychology devoted to business hiring procedures. There are many kinds of hiring criteria, such as in-person interviews, telephone interviews, resume reviews for job experience, checks for academic credentials, personality tests, and so on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after they are hired in a wide variety of occupations.[2]
"EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, with its legal rules about hiring, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test.
"The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work reasonably well. One is a general mental ability (GMA) test (an IQ-like test, such as the Wonderlic personnel screening test). Another is a work-sample test, where the applicant does an actual task or group of tasks like what the applicant will do on the job if hired. (But the calculated validity of each of the two best kinds of procedures, standing alone, is only 0.54 for work sample tests and 0.51 for general mental ability tests.) Each of these kinds of tests has about the same validity in screening applicants for jobs, with the general mental ability test better predicting success for applicants who will be trained into a new job. Neither is perfect (both miss some good performers on the job, and select some bad performers on the job), but both are better than any other single-factor hiring procedure that has been tested in rigorous research, across a wide variety of occupations. So if you are hiring for your company, it's a good idea to think about how to build a work-sample test into all of your hiring processes."
Note that a work-sample test can be a lot less time-consuming, and lot more possible to standardize, than some of the procedures suggested in the blog post submitted today.
The author of the blog post writes, "Regular work: have your candidate work a couple of afternoons or days side-by-side with a team member. I’ve seen companies like Automattic asking for candidates to come work with them for several days (and paying them for their work of course)."
Previous comments from Hacker News participants suggest that that procedure takes too long for many competent job-seekers to be willing to do that. It probably also has the defect of not allowing objective comparisons between different job candidates.
"Live tech testing: having a series of live tech tests or a technical questionnaire with a couple of tech employees from your company."
Maybe "live" is not the key idea here so much as "genuine," and it may be better still to have the test be standardized to compare applicants well.
"Moonlighting: creating a mini-project within your company for the candidate to perform. Give him/her a deadline and analyse the results."
This has the same problem as the first suggestion: lots of time commitment required from the applicant, with little comparability among different applicants (depending on the nature of the task).
The list of common mistakes is suggestive of problems, but if you'd like a better list of answers about what to do about them, see another recent thread here on HN[1] and the various comments there.
AFTER EDIT: It looks like the main post here is receiving a penalty either from user flags (not from me) or from detection of a voting ring. Maybe I'll be the only person to discuss this post today.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8232746