How We Recruit - On Formal Credentials vs Experience-based Education | Hacker News Reader

How We Recruit - On Formal Credentials vs Experience-based Education

blogs.zoho.com

47 pointsmarkbao26 comments

Thanks for all the feedback. As a regular Hacker News reader, I am thrilled to see my post here!

Hexstream made a great comment about the wasted potential of teen years. It echoes what PG has said - boredom being the biggest problem in high school (or even college for that matter). Kids are getting smarter every generation (really true - IQ is going up world-wide), yet they don't feel challenged. Tapping that wasted potential is a huge opportunity, leave aside the "doing good" aspect of it.

Agreed. Maybe it's teen angst (age on profile), but the reason I'm trying to do well in high school is to... get into a better college... and then what? shrug

Something to think about is what the role of high school is - is it to try to get a numerical GPA on how your work ethic is? (Absolutely not. If you love your job, you'll enjoy working at it. Likewise for school. I love hacking, not so much school.)

Or is it to let people find out what they're really interested in? (Only a few people that I know have gone through this by senior year, wanting to apply themselves to x career.)

College, at least after the first or second year, is definitely targeted to one's own career interest, and although it is much more in-depth than high school, for certain careers it can't replicate the amount of learning you have to actually do. In other words: take hacking or entrepreneurship. You'll need experience in the field, and you can't really be taught it like you can be taught biology or chemistry.

I'm trying to do well in high school is to... get into a better college... and then what? shrug

A "better" college will have more interesting people - ones that let you sleep on Friday and Saturday nights because they aren't drunk and throwing up outside of your window. It'll provide you with good professors, who aren't insecure about teaching, and are happy to engage you in their research.

Having gone to a big state school/research university (Rutgers), I had the experience of "both sides" of the coin - and there is an enormous difference between how different student's attitude affected their education - it's shocking that there is no "formal" difference between graduates, there certainly is a difference between the people who were engaged in their education, and those who were there to pass while trying their hardest to impress people.

I love hacking, not so much school.

I think it was Chomsky or RMS who said something interesting about their high school - that they did all the bullshit hoop jumping you have to go through to get to a good university, and it was worth it.

Yes, in high school, you're jumping through nearly-bullshit hoops in an imperfect system, but there is a practical argument to be made that it might be worth it.

I'm just seeing it like this:

  High school ==> College ==> Networking with interesting people

Thanks for the insightful opinion and sharing your personal experience.

As someone funnier than me once said: "High school is a geographic coincidence"

It surprises me that so many firms still resort to arbitrary credential-based requirements rather than looking at something such as, say, solutions to a series of problems.

I guess it just means that the most creative HR departments are going to net the most appropriate candidates.

we've been brainwashed to reject the obvious and simple solution. merit-based hiring. have them give examples of the kind of work you'd have them doing at your company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy

colleges are a form of prestige monopoly.

Not really. In most organizations the quality of the HR function is unrelated to the quality of the engineering.

I think people use degrees as a proxy for intelligence, because they aren't allowed to discriminate based on intelligence.

This is strikingly similar to what the military does with alot of jobs. (Or atleast used to do.) Instead of hiring certain people out of college (Medical Technologists, as an example) they would build an intense training program that would train them for job they needed to do in 16 months or so. Kind-of reminds of of the old ways of training electricians and various craftsman through specialized schools and mentoring.

I love what Zoho is doing with this -- challenging conventional thought and bringing great jobs to people who would ordinarily be over-looked or counted out.

There's an interesting point here - the distinction between vocational training on one hand and learning theoretical foundations + domain specialization on the other. At least where I grow up consensus is that the latter will make a person better suited for changing job requirements..but I have never heard a good line of reasoning backing up this claim.

Perhaps what is needed to succeed in either case is the ability to adapt to changing conditions, with people in the latter category by nature having an easier time doing this. If this is the case, a lot of people could save a lot of pain by simply jumping straight to the domain specialization.

The point of a college or university isn't to train you for a profession, that's what trade schools are for, and there's a reason most people don't go to them. You can get a degree from a major university without learning a thing - it's trivial to cram for tests, if not outright cheat (as many do), and pass with flying colors. The point of university is to give you free time to grow up however you want to.

For those genuinely interested in a subject the freedom of 4 years of doing whatever you want is something more valuable than any on-job training. You can read all day, go through GEB or SCIP in a week or two. Not cram it into nights after work, but genuinely indulge in learning the ins and outs of a subject - be it LISP/compilers or Edna Millay. Learning to edit Apache config files or web API's and frameworks takes neither time nor brains. Learning everything about the world around you uninhibited take both.

Ah, college, how I'll miss you...

I've thought that because of the iterative nature of learning/doing, school should alternate schedule weighting. For instance, once you've worked some, theories make more sense, and when you understand theories, work becomes easier.

I think school should alternate between 30 hours of practical work and 6 hours (2 classes) one semester to 10-15 hours of practical work and 15 hours (5 classes) the next. If you control the work so that it covers the previous, current, and next semesters, all the better.

Learning by doing is often the best way to learn and get up to speed.

I am very happy to hear the opportunities afforded to those of poorer backgrounds in India by this scheme too.

It is really bad to recruit teens into IT industry. Let them enjoy their life till 21 or 22.

I enjoy life much more now that I work in computing than I ever did playing video games... Which is probably what lots of teens would define as "enjoying life"... There's this popular misconception that work and play are opposites and I find that really sad. I don't see a problem recruiting teens for a job if that's where their interest lies. There's lots of wasted potential out there.

Hell, my idea of enjoying life is hacking around and coding products. Not many things are better than learning useful stuff. check profile for age

> Hell, my idea of enjoying life is hacking around and coding products. Not many things are better than learning useful stuff. check profile for age

At 16, I probably would have said the same thing, but only 5 years later, I'd advise you that there's no rush. There is really a lot of time in life to be great at useful stuff and learn a great many things on the side. My idea of enjoying life in college was falling in love, traveling, and taking poetry classes. If I could do it again, I'd replace my CS classes with drama and a foreign language (studying abroad), and spend free time learning CS on my own. (I'd keep the Math major for the mental rigor)

There is nothing in a CS class you can't get out of a book/working on OSS projects, but a lot more you can learn about life with a good acting, literature, or history class than you'll have time to for most of your life afterward.

That is a kick-ass recruitment method.

If I ever get a company I want to try that.

I'm sure (bright) highschool kids pick stuff up a lot faster/easier than beer-drinking, weed-smoking college kids.

Amen

most of the graduates from indian colleges and universities are not employable - they need extra training anyway - so why not pick them up from high-school and train them and give them employment so that they can come out of poverty ... also they will have experience by the time other peers come out of the university with no experience and employability what so ever ... this innovative model of recruitment should be replicated in all 3rd world countries ... it solves multiple problems at one stroke.

Graduate unemployability issues apply to 1st world countries too not just India and 3rd world.

I agree. Most universities are unable to hire top talent because they don't have the funds to compete against the industry. Companies should start understanding this dilemma.

Maybe develop a program that allows select employees to split their time between teaching and working?

Even in the UK many employers complain about lack of graduate quality.

In fact today Imperial College in London announced it will be doing 4-year degrees instead of 3-year ones to address issues in falling educational standards.

I also read that they were thinking about having entrance exams as well.

i would say make it 2yrs degree instead of 3yrs and in those 2 years you need to train them exactly what is required in the market place / industry (the same way as Zoho university) ... there is no need to waste one more year of a student, the precious time that he/she could devote in getting employment and experience

it would be best if you have 2 years of training followed by 2 years of employment and that makes 4 years of degree.

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