4 ms·

>Talk to people, dig into their background and preferred working style a little. If they appear to be competent, then just hire them. If I am very good at this

by pdevr 11y ago

>Talk to people, dig into their background and preferred working style a little. If they appear to be competent, then just hire them. If I am very good at this assessment, then this may work. However, if I trust my skills to assess someone accurately, I am unlikely to have a complicated hiring process. If I am a company owner (or manager!) who is not good at assessing people this way, then wouldn't substituting my process with this proposal make me spend a lot of money twice? 1) Paying salary to more people than open positions (Because I don't spend money on a hiring process and rely on my assessment skills, I may end up with many not-so-best-fits) 2) Severance package to let them go

p4wnc6 11y ago
> I will end up with many not-so-best-fits I am not sure I believe this. First, if you are aware that you're not good at assessing it, then have someone else in your company do the assessment, or hire someone who can (possibly on the advice of your investors or something). If you can't do either of those, I am afraid your business just isn't going to work out. So, almost by definition, the person doing the assessment is reasonably good at it. For otherwise, you won't be around very long regardless. Also, if you find that you're hiring a lot of people who seem good, but ultimately are fired, maybe look in the mirror. Maybe it is that your expectations are unrealistic, or maybe you expect people to adhere to "culture" standards that do not support human flourishing. Unless the tech problem you need to solve involves lasering in on a fleetingly tiny population of candidates (most don't), then a sequence of looked-competent-but-needed-to-fire people is probably more a reflection on the company than the candidate stream. It's unlikely that all of them were elaborate fakers. The costs of (1) should be low unless there's a fundamental problem with the company (in which case the costs of (1) are way cheaper than hiring a management consultant to help you not fix it). (2) is a real cost, and yes, some companies can't afford it (so maybe they scale back to 3 months severance? Maybe they add continued health coverage. Maybe they let you pick a foosball table to keep) ... but it is just the cost of getting useful information about an employee, instead of the not-very-useful info that most hiring processes generate.
vonmoltke 11y ago
> If I am very good at this assessment, then this may work. However, if I trust my skills to assess someone accurately, I am unlikely to have a complicated hiring process. If you don't have the skills for that assessment, how do you know your complicated hiring process works?
marcosdumay 11y ago
You accept more risks on the hiring process, by hedging them with the firing process. If it'll be good or bad depends on the actual risk balance you create between those two processes. But if the idea that the hyper strict hiring process does not help selecting great candidates, a moderate increase on nominal risk on the hiring process will actually improve your odds there, and you'll gain both ways.

by pdevr 11y ago

p4wnc6 11y ago

> I will end up with many not-so-best-fits I am not sure I believe this. First, if you are aware that you're not good at assessing it, then have someone else in your company do the assessment, or hire someone who can (possibly on the advice of your investors or something). If you can't do either of those, I am afraid your business just isn't going to work out. So, almost by definition, the person doing the assessment is reasonably good at it. For otherwise, you won't be around very long regardless. Also, if you find that you're hiring a lot of people who seem good, but ultimately are fired, maybe look in the mirror. Maybe it is that your expectations are unrealistic, or maybe you expect people to adhere to "culture" standards that do not support human flourishing. Unless the tech problem you need to solve involves lasering in on a fleetingly tiny population of candidates (most don't), then a sequence of looked-competent-but-needed-to-fire people is probably more a reflection on the company than the candidate stream. It's unlikely that all of them were elaborate fakers. The costs of (1) should be low unless there's a fundamental problem with the company (in which case the costs of (1) are way cheaper than hiring a management consultant to help you not fix it). (2) is a real cost, and yes, some companies can't afford it (so maybe they scale back to 3 months severance? Maybe they add continued health coverage. Maybe they let you pick a foosball table to keep) ... but it is just the cost of getting useful information about an employee, instead of the not-very-useful info that most hiring processes generate.

vonmoltke 11y ago

> If I am very good at this assessment, then this may work. However, if I trust my skills to assess someone accurately, I am unlikely to have a complicated hiring process. If you don't have the skills for that assessment, how do you know your complicated hiring process works?

marcosdumay 11y ago

You accept more risks on the hiring process, by hedging them with the firing process. If it'll be good or bad depends on the actual risk balance you create between those two processes. But if the idea that the hyper strict hiring process does not help selecting great candidates, a moderate increase on nominal risk on the hiring process will actually improve your odds there, and you'll gain both ways.