Comment by michaelcampbell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelcampbell | Hacker News Reader

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michaelcampbell

This seems circuitous. You pre-suppose that the 50 ones you reject are "bad" because of this signal, then support the use of this signal because you rejected them. And then go further to assume the ratio of good:bad of people with this signal is 1-2:50.

I mean, you do you, but it seems that if you were actually interested in the truth you'd have a blind-interview strategy where you interview and judge based solely on the actual interview not knowing about their certificate status a priori.

Note: I don't have a lot of certs (I don't even know that the couple I do have are even up to date, nor on my resume), but this kind of response I see quite often and it feels quite smug.

I find the process of going through the effort to get a cert quite valuable, as it exposes me to aspects of <subject> that I probably would have not hit just "spending my free time on work-type projects", which is another red flag for me as an interviewee. I've been a dev my whole career spanning 30+ years, so I get the desire for "fire" and "passion" for the craft, but as soon as someone asks about what I do OUTSIDE of work that could be brought to bear for work stuff, I'm out. I can see what kind of company they are representing.

She wrote:

> My experience from dozens of interviews

That's not pre-supposing, instead, sounds to me like learning from one's job?

> blind-interview strategy

I liked that -- how does one make it scale though?

All overgeneralizations start out as conclusions based on observation. Having certificates could not possibly decrease someone’s ability to do a job. Assuming that everybody with certificates is a certain type of person and those types of people make bad workers is clearly not based on rational analysis. Might it generally indicate a some kinds of shortcomings? Maybe. If that merely leads one to investigate, that’s one thing. If that turns into a check in the con column for that candidate, that’s the very definition of bias.

Consider a certificate that, let's say, is pretty useless, just meant learning some software terms by heart for a short while and then forgetting.

If a candidate includes it on his/her CV, this can give the impression that s/he might not have realized that it's useless. Which can make a slightly bad impression

I suppose it depends a bit randomly on who happens to interpret the CV

You can't just bolt on other theoretical negative factors to change the usefulness of the analysis itself. This conversation is not about bad or irrelevant certificates— it's about certificates in general.

The candidate included them on their resume for you to evaluate, so evaluate them. Nobody's arguing that candidates with only free LinkedIn certs and nothing else should be given equal consideration to those with formal education.

The question is whether or not people with any certificates can ethically be dismissed out-of-hand because they list certificates on their resume. The answer is still no.

I wasn't writing about me -- I personally I wouldn't dismiss anyone because of certs, in fact I don't care that much about people's resumes at all.

However if I was looking for a job, I'd be a bit careful with including what to me seemed like "unimportant" certs, for the reason I mentioned

> The question is whether or not people with any certificates can ethically be dismissed

To me, the question was rather if there's in practice a risk that it happens, (un)ethical or not

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