Comment by wgjordan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wgjordan | Hacker News Reader

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> How about trusting candidates' experience?

The reason this philosophy is misguided is not that candidates flat out lie all the time (though that happens too), but more that resumes are crafted to inflate, exaggerate and obfuscate to make the candidate seem more qualified than they might actually be for the position upon closer scrutiny. I say I have 20 years of experience in X, but 4 of those years were just hobby projects in high school, 4 studying in university, another 5 in entry-level positions in a semi-related industry, etc etc. It would be a huge waste of time in obviously unnecessary hirings+firings to blindly trust stated experience on a resume without verifying its accuracy first.

This is something that only makes sense after you've spent significant time on the hiring side of the table.

Engineers who are 100% honest, overly humble, and fortunate enough to have only worked at top-quality companies tend to not understand the need for verifying the skills that people put on their resume.

In the real world, some of the best candidates have the worst resumes. Some of the worst candidates have the best resumes. And perhaps most dangerously, some of the worst hires tend to be the best at lying and exaggerating because they've used their charisma to get them through life.

Making bad hires is a very costly mistake for the team. Not only do you lose out on months of team-building and project progress, but it's bad for morale to see people hired and fired quickly. In reality, bad hires are going to stick around for 6-12 months or more at any company of moderate size company.

Also, not all experience is created equal. It's shockingly common for applicants to claim 5+ years of experience in something, only to discover that they only touched that topic a couple times per year for 5 straight years, for example.

I agree, but I think that's partly a chicken & egg problem. People wouldn't inflate their resume if HR was a little more H and a little less R.

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