Hacker News Reader

Comment by masto | Hacker News Reader

So much effort is put in to coming up with these systems and convincing ourselves that we've got the perfect hiring process, when in the end it's very likely that it doesn't work and is just a kind of ritual that has to exist so that you can defend your decisions by pointing to all the hoops you made people jump through.

View on HN

No hiring practices work. Which means that you might as well go with the one you like most.

There are some hiring practices that really suck, of course. So probably don't do those, like choosing people randomly or based on illegal discrimination. But beyond that, just do whatever and iterate.

The best hiring I've done, and been a part of, has had 2 very clear features:

1. The expectations and details in the job were specific to the actual exact role I would be filling and were clearly laid out in the job posting.

2. The "interview" was really just a single long conversation on those specific details and a discussion over whether I fit them and can show/discuss examples of how I fit them.

A lot of hiring nonsense is because the actual job requirements and posting is so generic as to be practically meaningless, so you create these pointless hoops to jump through in order weed out an individual from a pool of other generic individuals. The actual employee you pick ends up simply being really good at jumping through hoops rather than a good hire for the specific role. Crazy multi-step hiring processes just seem like selecting for endurance over any ability as a future employee.

This sounds like somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about and is proud of it

This has been studied in the past [1] and the results aren't good

[1] One example: https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/session%204/Schmidt%20&%20...

I mean, Hunter & Schmidt says three really key things:

1. IQ tests work real good.

2. Structured interviews -- which are not IQ tests -- work about as well and strongly correlated.

3. Work sample tests -- which are _definitely not_ IQ tests -- work as well and in ways NOT correlated.

Meaning you can combine these two and get a reasonably effective hiring screen.

Yes, and even when applying those criteria the results still were far from great. They were at least better than random chance though.

How good can the results possibly be when you have ~1 day with someone to assess how they'll be over the next year or 2?

I agree. The person to whom I was replying seemed to be implying that interviews can provide good signal.

I mean, 70 percent is pretty good for a selection strategy. I wasn't aware H&S had published a followup and now I'm curious if it ever got a peer review, because their table contradicts some earlier work suggesting that structured works better than unstructured.

It's also pretty keen to recommend Integrity tests which I think the authors play a role in studying.

edit: I guess it's "operational validity" which maybe isn't "percent that did well later"?

Nobody at Oxide believes that the hiring process is perfect.

No hiring process is perfect, but when your company’s hiring process is more complicated than my college admission process, it’s a bad sign.

If I wanted this I’d have stayed in academics, with its 20-page CVs and multiple statements of purpose.

At least there if you win the tenure-track position lottery, and then the grant lottery, you have a good shot at winning the tenure lottery and getting some job security doing something you (probably) love.

Oxide is a startup with a finite runway.

Hard pass.

Any application process is a two-way street. It is absolutely fine for you to decide to opt to not apply. Maybe someday we'll have a different process, or maybe it was just never meant to be :)

Seeing as AWS is probably the king of the BS leetcode interview track, your aping their behavior in this area as the ANTI-AWS does not bode well for you. I hope I'm wrong here as AWS needs serious competition.

What behavior are we aping? Your comment brings up leetcode, which we don't do, so it cannot be that. Sorry for misunderstanding.

Is it really a two way street when a candidate spends multiple hours only to get back a generic rejection email?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38134589

> is more complicated than my college admission process, it’s a bad sign.

Many people stay at a company for longer then they stay at college. So that doesn't seem that crazy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com