Tech Hiring Lessons Learned
danielmiessler.com
danielmiessler.com
(You may get asked to authorize a credit check as part of a background check process; background checks can be reasonable, for instance if you're going to work for an exchange. But a background check happens after an offer is made; it's not part of the decision process.)
As always on threads like these, I like to plug our recruitment process, which we've been tuning for 4 years or so:
http://www.matasano.com/careers/
There's more to it than what's on the page, but, long story short, we do two interview phases separated by a battery of "challenges", calibrated to take about as much time as a serious on-site tech-out interview would take, but designed to be done in a candidate's spare time in bits and pieces if necessary.
They can just pull a credit report. Granted, they would need to know your SSN. It could be done as part of a background check and you wouldn't even know it happened unless you're tracking your credit events.
Incidentally, they have to ask to do real background checks too. Or at least, I've been asked every time my background checks have run, and they haven't been run until I faxed (ugh) a signed consent.
I think the notion that credit score is something invasive while work history, criminal record, GPA, determining how one got along with previous bosses, etc. is commonplace and goes unnoticed is somewhat odd. It should be obvious that employers have no interest in one's actual affairs, and instead are attempting to gauge dependability through proxies. GPA, how many times you've left jobs recently, insane rants on the internet -- these are all fair play and raise no eyebrows whatsoever, so why is a credit score any different?
This is a simple matter of being averse to things you're not used to and comfortable with those you are. Credit score bad! But pulling and evaluating your GPA, stalking your online footprint, looking into your criminal record, talking to your old bosses -- that's all fine. Sure, that will remain true until it becomes commonplace. At that point, just as with all these other things that most find completely unobjectionable, this won't bother anyone either. This is especially true when it's not even being considered as any sort of overriding decision point. Great candidates can have poor credit scores. Poor candidates can have high ones. Everyone knows this. But that can be said for all the other metrics gathered in an interview process as well.
And then there's the argument that credit score clearly can be asked for in certain jobs, e.g. financial services, but not others. This is highly curious. Why is it that one asks for credit scores when a position involves working with money? It's not a work competence question, to be sure -- it's a dependability metric: plain and simple. So I ask you: what is the difference between counting money somewhere and handling vulnerability data for the internal networks of Fortune 50 companies? Very little.
If the objection is that you don't like someone getting your credit score, then sure: I don't either. But I don't like the 10 other invasive activities that happen during any modern interview. It's all somewhat uncomfortable, which should be expected since the entire process reduces to evaluating your past and present to predict worthiness and fit for a given position. Complain about that if you wish, i.e. make the argument that interviews are too invasive to begin with, and perhaps I'll agree with you. That's a much better premise than taking one metric among others and claiming it alone is a problem.
My point is: only bad dev shops are going to pull credit reports.
Good dev shops realize that from 2007 through today, including every one of the "RIP Good Times" months, it has been a nonstop hot- lead- flying- through- the- air battle for the best talent, and no place that truly wants the best talent is going to single themselves out by asking to pull credit reports to help make a decision about a hire.
Therefore: if you are asked for authorization for a credit report, your prospective employer is tacitly telling you: "we are second rate, don't work here". If you're second rate too and not particularly ambitious, sure, forgive them for their need to pull a credit report ("it's just another invasive thing"), and go work for a second-rate firm.
Edit:
I asked Twitter, and someone said they believe Apple and Google both ask for credit reports --- which is sad, but hard for me to rebut.
To the point of the article, though, most probably don't eject someone from the process based on credit alone.
To the point of the article, though, most probably don't eject someone from the process based on credit alone.
I have only actually done one interview where they asked for a credit report (and consequently the hiring manager wasn't allowed to extend me an offer based on the result, even though they tried for several weeks to make an exception).
I don't believe you that this is standard practice (although I can buy that it is "becoming more and more standard").
Social network stalking is a bit of a red herring. If a person has bad enough judgement that they leave a public record of (crazy|nasty|racist|sexist|etc.) sentiments, that's one thing. But would you the employer ask me the job candidate to friend you on Facebook because I've restricted my posts and photos to being viewed by friends only, and you want to rifle thorough them to find evidence anything objectionable? I doubt it. To me this is the same thing as asking for my credit score: why should I reveal my personal life to you? [1] At the risk of drawing too broad a point, this kind of thing is part of a continuing and subtle erosion of employees' right to their own private lives. Companies that ask me to work indefinite 60 hour weeks as a salaried employee are of a piece with those who want to know my credit score: they are companies that are asking for more of my life than I feel they have a right to, and I will pass them by. You may be OK with losing candidates who don't want to provide you their personal data, but if a credit score really is only a secondary (at best) data point, why risk losing an otherwise-superb employee over it?
[1] To those who say "a credit score isn't all _that_ personal, I think of two examples right off the top of my head. I decline to hire applicant A because his credit score was low. As is his right by law under FCRA, he asks to know if that was why we declined to hire, at which point he may then say "My credit score is poor because my wife left last year and I'm putting 3 kids through school," or "I'm HIV+ and my last job had terrible health insurance." There are lots of very personal reasons a person my have a bad credit score, and by basing a hiring decision on that, I'm forcing them to revel them to me if they want the job; that personally makes me very queasy.
Anyway, I see your point, but this is where we part ways because I think that being asked to explain a 2.5 GPA or a horrible review from a former manager are materially different than being asked to explain a low credit score. Sometimes folks' personal and professional lives intersect in ways that require them to disclose more than they might want to to explain that bad GPA or bad review; that's unfortunate. But unlike GPA or a reference check, there is no "professional" component to your credit score that necessitates such disclosure, just as there is no professional component to one's religious affiliation or marital status. That the first of those things is sometimes legal to ask about (check your state's laws) and the rest are not doesn't make it OK. Anyway, I think we at least see where our disagreement lies; I take your point, but I just don't see a credit score in the same light.
Re credit score: In the US this appears to be legal in some states, illegal in others, so as an employer I'd investigate carefully before asking asking for a credit dscore. But outside of of a banking industry job or a situation where one is attempting to obtain security clearance, this is pretty egregious. Plenty of families have had their credit wrecked by the recession and there are lots of reasons (e.g. unforeseen medical problems) that could result in a lowered score that have no predictive value whatsoever. So, even if what you're doing is legal in your locality, it's morally dubious outside of a certain types of jobs. Finally, it looks like this can cut both ways: "If you do agree to let [a prospective employer] see the report, and they base their decision not to hire you on something in it, you have the right under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to see it, says EFL’s Meschke. This will give you an opportunity to try to explain or rectify any issues or errors that may be on there." (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31923358/ns/business-careers/t/c...)
As for IQ, there is literature out there on this subject (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/merrill-palmer_quarterly/v047/4...). It's not that it has _no_ predictive value, but that there are a lot of confounding factors (e.g. the country you were raised in). Furthermore results need to be interpreted very carefully and I don't necessarily trust an employer to do that. I think a lot of people would rightfully see this is intrusive.
Having interviewed a fair number of job candidates in my time, I agree it's hard and there is definitely an art to it. But if someone can't get a accurate assessment of a candidate through sample work and direct interaction, and have to resort to things like credit score and IQ to help them decide, then they have no business interviewing candidates.
The common case is: (a) a (very nice) recruiter who largely doesn't understand your background calls to ask about which part of the company you should work in, then (b) you have a few phone interviews where you are asked what might as well be trick coding questions ("with some fancy bit manipulation this could be O(n)!") that are mostly collected in a few books or online anyway, and then (c) you do an on-site where you get another three to six of these questions, with maybe a simple "system design" question thrown in.
My hypothesis has been that the hiring process is largely aimed at Computer Science undergraduates with no significant prior work experience, and that the best way to distinguish just graduated CS undergrads is by testing them on the hardest class they are likely to have all taken: Introduction to Algorithms. Or maybe interviewing is just rarely rewarded and thus the lowest priority for engineers? In any case, insight into the design and implementation of this process would be really interesting.
There are many many candidates who make it to the phone screen who can't Fizzbuzz. Also it can be difficult to separate out people who actually did significant work on a product on their resume from people who were just "on the team" and didn't contribute effectively.
Time is limited and resumes are full of lies and BS. But you can't BS your way through a program and make it run.
Edit: I started out as a BBS sysop. So you can see which side of the equation I'm on. The value of knowing how to admin door games is practically zero at this point.
There is a vast difference between having 10 years of experience, and having 1 year of experience repeated 10 times.
The reason there are often few differences between a 5-year career and a 10-year career is that most people find a niche after a few years, and comfortably sit there. But if you can find someone who spent 10 year actively learning and broadening their skills, never settling in... those extra 5 years are immensely valuable.
My now self, with nearer to 10 years experience would tear my 5 year experienced self to pieces on all things technical. I'm doing things now with great efficiency whereas 5 years ago I would probably have made a bit of a mess of them.
Though obviously at year 5, if asked, I would have happily told you I knew it all already :)
Seriously though, if you're interested in this, check out Applied Psychology in HR Management: http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Psychology-Human-Resource-Mana...
Sure, there are outliers in the form of pathological liars and psychopaths, but these tend to gravitate towards professions with a major ego-boost factor (and they're often actually good at those professions).
Most of these kind of tips and "lessons" come down to: how to desperately compensate for being the wrong person to do the hiring in the first place.
Here's another tip: any experience professional who's skill is in demand will recognize such a flawed hiring process, understand that this is probably pervasive in the rest of the company, and run like hell in the opposite direction.
Education is something that I always forget to look at while reading the resume.