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This sounds good in theory, but in reality HR people are not especially skilled in picking up on the character issues that matter to teams; moreover, when you instruct the HR team that their role in the process is to screen for this kind of stuff, you end up with HR people creating sporadic roadblocks for hiring.

Rayiner is absolutely 100% right about this. The real role of HR people is tax forms and health insurance, and little else.

The real role of HR people is tax forms and health insurance, and little else.

Well said. And their role definitely should not include administering bullshit voodoo science "psychometric evaluations" and making any decisions based on them.

Psychometric evaluations are not voodoo science.

Honestly, as a PhD psychologist, they are the only useful (i.e. scientific) part of psychology.

For example, see Hunter and Schmidt (1998) http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%.... This (and if you've been around here a while, you've probably seen this) is a meta-analysis of the utility of particular selection procedures for jobs. That is psychometrics.

Unfortunately, much of the bullshit surrounding the particular psychometric tests used by HR departments has thoroughly debased a discipline that invented cross validation. Smith and Mosier, 1958 (Method 6, I believe).

Which is why we screen people for submission to authority? I don't doubt that they "work" for certain easily-measurable traits of personality. I'm also certain that (1) the tests will be abused and (2) HR people are screening for attributes that are probably more useful in a factory setting.

To varying extents, submission to authority is why you get a paycheck.

If an organization has a successful process of doing something and they bring somebody in who bucks their methods without regard for the establishment, that can be problematic. Sure folks can come in and disrupt organizations for the positive, but I'd say that's probably not the majority of organizational disruptions. Most of them are just obnoxious and unproductive.

People always doing whatever they think is right works until someone's sense of what is "right" is actually wrong, or harmful to their employer. For example, consider all the people who thought their particular brand of humor or affection was ok, but it triggered a harassment suit.

Loose cannons can destroy more value than they create, even if they are brilliant in certain skills.

I won't question that some psychometric evaluations may reveal something interesting about the person taking it. I have much less confidence in the ability of anybody (HR or otherwise) to accurately map those results to anything related to a hiring decision. I lack ALL confidence that the results of such a test should trump the determination of a group of co-workers who interact with the candidate face to face for a period of time and cover a broad ground of topics.

Unfortunately, much of the bullshit surrounding the particular psychometric tests used by HR departments has thoroughly debased a discipline that invented cross validation.

Yeah, that's the rub, innit? The times I've worked for companies that did this stuff, and when I've seen results from them, I've seen nothing that leads me to believe in the utility of the tests. Unfortunately I can't recall the specific name-brand of the ones I've been exposed to or I'd criticize them specifically.

Another boring comment shitting on psychology - and theoretically by someone who should know better. It's really tiresome.

cut/pasting from another comment of mine:

by saying that psychological research is itself useless, you're also throwing away things like A/B testing, UX testing (including Apple's much-vaunted usability stuff), research into grief management, team-building research, research into cognitive recovery therapy after acquired brain injury, work looking into ameliorating sexism and racism, perception research for HUDs in fighter aircraft (my honours research), some pain management research, research into dealing with PTSD, research into crowd control and management...

Someone with a PhD in the topic should be well aware of the breadth of the field that is 'psychology', and to say that the only useful thing in the field is psychometric testing just displays your myopia.

Half the stuff that HN talks about is psychology, from A/B testing to building staff relationships. It is far from 'useless', particularly given this audience.

It is ironic in the extreme that the people that shit on psychology do so because they see it as a 'pseudoscience' that 'doesn't observe things properly', yet so very few of them actually see psychology for what it is - instead just falling back on their own narrow stereotype of it.

Dude, from my perspective, its the only sub field that is even halfway right in statistics. I have read so very many psychology papers in top-ranked journals that commit basic, stupid statistical mistakes all the time. And no-one seems to learn.

If you use a linear regression rather than ANOVA, you will often be asked to change it to an ANOVA.

I am well aware of the breadth and depth that is psychology, and most of it is poorly conducted and irritatingly bad. I actually think it has a lot to do with applying a particular experimental model of science developed for non-reflexive systems to reflexive systems, with predictably hilarious results.

Please do not take out the rest of the commentators opinions on me, it upsets me also when people bash psychology from ignorance, but I come from a place of love when I bash it, as I do really adore the subject, but feel that much of it is so very, very awfully done.

A/B testing - psychology degrees teach pretty good experimental design, but you wouldn't know it to see a lot of published research. Additionally, rigorous experimental design owes a lot more to statistics than psychology.

UX Testing: This is definitely a good area, but again I think we don't control enough for the impact of the researcher(s) - see Rosenthal, 1969 for the problem, and note the complete lack of care regarding these effects in modern psychology.

Grief management? Seriously? I don't really think psychology has added much here, but would be delighted to read some good papers that prove me wrong.

Ameliorating sexism and racism? Good intentions, but given that I read a lot of this stuff I would have to say that they are perhaps the worst for statistical sins and errors (with the notable exception of Brian Nosek).

I know very little about perception research in HUD's, do you have some good papers?

I'm not entirely certain why you felt the need to correct me, when if you look at my comments in the overall thread it can be seen that I am pretty much on the same side as you.

It is possible that I am so sick of people who commit statistical sins for career advancement purposes (something I could never do) that I may be taking it out on the field.

Incidentally, what is psychology? I would be interested to hear your definition (as long as its not waffle like the scientific study of the human mind and behaviour, which merely begs far more questions).

Typical "those guys know nuthin and we got it all figured out" comment that seems all too common on Hacker News. Calling psychometric evaluations voodoo is akin to doubting climate change or casting a wary eye on vaccines. The evidence, methodological rigor, and results are there for all to see, but it just doesn't mesh with your gut feeling. Of all the things in the field of psychology to call voodoo, this is almost certainly the least deserving.

Like everything, competent implementation and use are key, so I'm sure you have had experiences that give you reasons to doubt their efficacy. But every field suffers from some form of that in some way or another, and the degree of transparency into the process varies greatly.

Fair enough. BTW, I'm not the one who downvoted you, FWIW.

I don't disagree with Rayiner here, I'm just sharing how I've seen this sort of stuff get put into place. When you ask "How the hell did HR get to have veto power over hires?", I have found more often than not there is a story of "that guy" or "that gal" who got through the "old process" which is now some legendary part of the company history.

One thing I try to determine about startups is their ability to fire people.

Lots of the problems you mentioned sound like they were in part due to the company finding that difficult, and of course it should be noted that any process like this, about humans and done by humans, is going to have errors on occasion. The real trick is realizing and correcting them.

Yes. I've been at start-ups unwilling to fire people and it sucks.

I've had people suggest that "willing to fire" is a bad sign, because we can be even better by just always hiring the right people! Which is a self-reinforcing style, because now you really can't admit you hired the wrong person.

100% agree, but I think the real trick is not taking it personally. Too many people think that having to fire someone reflects badly on them, it doesn't[]. It only means that it didn't work out for some reason. I try to explain to people "work" and "not work" are two different places, like killing you in World of Warcraft has nothing to do with killing you in "real life", and not being able to work with you doesn't mean I don't enjoy or want to hang out in non-work situations. But that is a hard thing to separate for many people, they are their work and that means work is them.

[] The exception is when it does, they clearly hired someone for some bogus reason, but there will always be exceptions.

Good post. These HR tests favor extroversion and obedience. In my experience, brilliant people are highly unlikely to exhibit these traits.

I work with a guy who pounds on his desk daily, curses at code, has OCD, walks about aimlessly, is anti-authority, depressed, and is a self-described autistic. In other words, he's the type to score 1%. However, if you have any advanced math problem he can solve it in minutes, whereas most people would either take days or never get the right answer. For me at least, I have no problem interacting with the guy and joke around with him often. But I do notice that with other people things will usually end up standoffish or awkward.

Perhaps, HR would be better served by using the personality profile to train the other workers in how to interact with a new hire and get the most out of them. The idea that a company should have a singular culture built of singular personality types, not only sounds like a flawed plan, but one that in the end is impossible to achieve.

I think that these HR tests basically ensure uniformity of candidates to a certain extent. But if all people in a workplace are of the same nature, if they wear the same clothes (some companies require that too), and if they think in the same manner, a lot of out-of-the-box thinkers would be left out. And it is a law of nature that the higher the variety, the better the yield. I believe that a lot of differently thinking people can generate great ideas by mutual interaction.

By the way, that's exactly why I left a corporate career at a bank: I was the only person in the entire floor to question the dress code, I was the only person in a 10.000 people center to commute by bike (among other things) and I got tired of being the ugly duck and having my ideas being completely rejected just because they were different.

it would be better, but that would require competence from HR. In other words impossible.

I've seen this happen myself as well, in 3 cases at 2 different companies we wound up firing a person due to those sorts of issues. But in my opinion it should not be (and it was not) a big hassle to fire someone. I've also hired some people I was on the fence about from a personality perspective and have been pleasantly surprised at working with some productive, albeit quirky people.

But, underpinning your story is the blame/cover angle which I completely understand, and would consider an antipattern itself. If a few people screen someone and decide to take a bit of a chance on them from a personality perspective and they don't work out, let them go, learn from it, and move on.

Technical people also look for "signals" or "red flags" during interview. They ask themselves questions like, if the candidate is a good fit for the team, if I want to work with him, etc.

HR people are not necessarily better in identifying these "signals". They might emphasize on "signals" that are not a big issue for technical people. Some technical people could be a little quirky. As long as it is not serious, it is not a big deal.

I have a solution: Give HR hires a psychometric test that weeds out ones who like psychometric tests

You basically shift responsibility to HR people (who don't know shit about candidates) and they only hire mediocre bets to avoid blame.

That's because they're not sharing wins from stellar candidates but they take blame for bad ones.

I wonder why blame shifting seems so central to american way of thinking. You'll give talent away to avoid it.

> I wonder why blame shifting seems so central to american way of thinking.

Because blame goes down, and reward goes up, so its a lot more important to make sure that the blame for wrong doesn't get to you than to make sure you get the credit for right, since the reward for right is an "attaboy" where those above you reap the substantive benefits, while the punishment for wrong remains substantive.

TL;DR Because capitalism, mostly.

TL;DR Because capitalism, mostly.

This isn't really unique to capitalism - it's just politics and interpersonal competition.

This kind of thing happened in the Soviet Union, it happened in monarchist France (court of Louis XIV), it happened throughout all of human history.

> they're not sharing wins from stellar candidates but they take blame for bad ones.

It often seems like hiring stellar candidates involves circumventing HR policy. HR responds, instead of asking how they can help be part of the solution in the future, by incorporating new policy. Hiring stellar candidates, therefore, creates a situation where it makes it harder to hire stellar candidates in the future. There is no "win" in that game.

> I wonder why blame shifting seems so central to american way of thinking.

FWIW, the story the OP told took place in the UK.

Where do you think those americans come from? ;)

But I expected it to be US, frankly. Didn't expect "personality tests" from UK.