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If you just want to cut down the number of applicants, that's even easier - just pick a random sample to look at. It only makes sense to do it based on feature
by dllthomas 11y ago
If you just want to cut down the number of applicants, that's even easier - just pick a random sample to look at.
It only makes sense to do it based on features of the individual candidates if you believe the remaining pool is, on average, better. (... or maybe more precisely, "that you will be able to select better candidates from the remaining pool for a given amount of effort").
- pmiller2 11y agoNo, filtering in the presence of an excessive number of applicants makes sense if the resulting pool is not worse than the original pool. They're saying academic performance is not correlated with professional competence. That means precisely that filtering by degree results in a not worse applicant pool.
- dllthomas 11y agoWhy expend additional effort to filter along meaningless axes to wind up with some unknown lesser number of applicants (which you might then want to shrink further) when you can already filter meaninglessly to end up with precisely the number of applications you want (by simply grabbing randomly and dropping the others on the floor)?
- potatolicious 11y agoBecause it lets people feel better about themselves and is - superficially - justifiable. A lot of what we do in hiring, even in tech, is effectively just ways to whittle down numbers of applicants, but even here on HN there are people who will insist their way of whittling numbers down improves the applicant pool, because hand-waving and superficial logic.
- dllthomas 11y agoI buy that - I was probably reading the "just" too strongly in "just because it cuts down the number of applicants".