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Comment by ianmcgowan | Hacker News Reader

Not to be argumentative, but how did someone get hired if 7 out of 8 interviewers said "pass"? What's the point of having 7 interviewers if only one of them gets to decide?

Definitely agree with your point that some people have a gift for this kind of thing, so just genuinely curious how the 7 of 8 thing worked.

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At a company I worked at in the past we had a "champions" rule:

1. First, only select few interviewers with a great track-record could be a "champion".

2. If this interviewer was going against the rest of the interview panel, they could choose to be that interviewee's "champion". This means they are essentially saying "I have such a strong conviction that this person will do well that I'll put my professional reputation on the line for them." E.g. this person agreed to be that person's mentor when they started, and if things went south they would carry the burden of additional mentorship or finding the least problematic way to fire that person.

I've read before -- though right now I can't think of the source -- that if a group of interviewers are weakly against a candidate but one is strongly for them, you should trust the instincts of the person who's "strongly for." When hiring, I'd probably have that than a room of people who are weakly for a candidate on the basis that you'd rather have a person who's great at one thing than someone who's okay at everything.

Are there any books on this topic that anyone would recommend? As a manager, this is where I struggled the most - naturally i am someone who strives to be a consensus builder, but it's hard to know when to put your thumb on the scale vs not.

Read this and you will understand why consensus often doesn't make sense in hiring: https://erikbern.com/2020/01/13/how-to-hire-smarter-than-the....

The point isn't that only one person is the decider. When someone trusted has a very strong conviction about a hire, it may be worth rolling the dice.

You might take lots of peoples opinions into account but that doesn’t mean you should do so by majority vote. Some of those people may have been more confident than others. And it could make sense to allow for more variance in hiring (eg for hiring interns, or at an investment bank or big law firm where many new hires are sent out after a year so the cost of a bad hire isn’t so high)

This happened after the manager already demonstrated a track record of 100% for picking candidates that turned out to be good. This happened in situations were the "hire" count was the majority.

I do also agree with you that "only one person gets to decide" is a bad idea in general (and is usually a red flag for someone trying to be a dictator).

Depends on why they "pass" - it might be "They're solid, but not a good fit for my specific team". Assuming each interviewer is focused on their specific group and the skills they actually use and need day-to-day.

Different groups requiring different skillsets certainly isn't unusual.

She’s probably the most senior one. So she can override anyone but doesn’t always do it.

Or, 7/8 people were "weak no", they heard her argument, then changed their minds to "weak yes."

The whole point of a committee is to reach consensus. I've flipped my beliefs on many candidates before after hearing what other interviewers think. I think most of us understand that interviews aren't exactly the best way to judge a candidate - at least I think that way. So I'm pretty open to forming consensus when I'm "weak" and they are "strong" in opinion (especially if I respect their judgement).

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