4 ms·

> I hear you when you say,"the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions". It just sounds like an HR platitude. If

> I hear you when you say,"the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions". It just sounds like an HR platitude. If you know how to do that, I actually think you have a multi-$B idea! Unless you mean "cultural fit", or "went to the same school I did" as the best person, I'm doubtful you have one though. I've done enough interviewing and worked with enough people to know that even the best hiring managers turn away good candidates and get a few duds. Well, make me a multi-billionaire, I now present to you: BLIND SOURCING AND HIRING I should only share the details in private, you say it's a multi-billion dollar idea and I'd hate to tip off the competitors. In all seriousness, though, I know this is challenging. Especially at Google, there's still an opportunity for trouble after you've been hired but not yet assigned; though I doubt it would be enough of a problem to trash the whole system. The only reason not to do blind hiring is if it produces results which are indistinguishable from standard hiring.

humanrebar 9y ago
> The only reason not to do blind hiring is if it produces results which are indistinguishable from standard hiring. Or the fact that it's not really possible. Right now, most software engineering jobs are pretty communication heavy. Almost all company cultures contain a non-trivial amount of verbal communication, so with that premise, it's reasonable to have candidates verbally describe technical things or even make technical arguments. Once you're listening to real voices, it's difficult to pretend that the hiring is blind. The famous study involving auditions for positions in an orchestra worked really well because you could hide the person behind a screen and judge an entire work product without knowing anything about the instrumentalist. Now, if most software jobs include a heavy remote work component some day, it might be more reasonable to throw a somewhat detailed spec at a candidate, have them code up a solution, then show the code (and only the code) to people evaluating the work product. But most devs don't have a day-to-day that looks like implementing textual programming problems for strangers.
- Retric 9y ago
  You can setup interviews with text chat and screen shares at a large company without including someones voice or picture. Some places also remove names and other details from resumes. Most companies don't do this in part because text chat introduces other biases, but also because most people ignore their own bias.
  - sah2ed 9y ago
    > Companies don't do this in part because text chat introduces other biases, but also because most people ignore their own bias. Mostly likely it is because it doesn't mirror how they work. (Text chat is SoP for remote-first work, but remote-first is far from the norm.)
- rbanffy 9y ago
  > Once you're listening to real voices, Use a voice scrambler.
  - thecrazyone 9y ago
    thats what i was thinking. Everyone should be made to sound like darth vader and now we've an interview process to die for :P
    - rbanffy 9y ago
      Maybe Donald Duck
  - imron 9y ago
    People have tried that... specifically to show that women were being discriminated against, but guess what happened when it was implemented? They found that contrary to their initial hypothesis, women with voices modulated to sound like men were still not getting hired at the same rate as the men masked to sound like women. Not only that, but they found women modulated to sound like men did worse than unmodulated women, and men modulated to sound like women did better than unmodulated men: http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas...
    - HeavyStorm 9y ago
      One very interesting finding of the study is that woman and men are faring equally once the attrition is removed. It seemed to me that the natural conclusion was that woman have lower confidence and thus performed worse at interviews. And this is a deep realization for me, because it pushes me in the direction of current diversity policies. You see, if there is perceived bias against you, then you lose confidence. So we must, for a while, try our best to remove that perfection. That might mean hiring more woman even if they don't seem to perform as well as men, because, once we have done that for a while, woman will feel more confident and the good candidates will appear. In any case - whether my last paragraph makes sense or not - the conclusion of the experiment interviewing.io did is that only removing gender perception during the interview process isn't enough, for woman may already have been affected by the bias and thus will perform worse than men during the interview. So we come back to the conclusion that we must invest to bring woman to tech early - during college or even high school - and fight biases there. It's a long road anyway, isn't it?
- sitkack 9y ago
  Double blind. We do it in science, then do it hiring.
  - candiodari 9y ago
    Double blind hiring famously does not result in gender balance (and even less in ethnic balance). This is called the funnel problem. So that wouldn't solve matters.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  > The famous study involving auditions for positions in an orchestra And even there they had to put carpet down / remove shoes to hide the difference in shoe sounds when they walked to the performance area. https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/... "the telltale sounds of a woman's shoes allegedly influenced some jury members such that aspiring musicians were instructed to remove their footwear"
imron 9y ago
> The only reason not to do blind hiring is if it produces results which are indistinguishable from standard hiring. This will possibly result in less women being hired. See: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...
- microcolonel 9y ago
  Then there's either something wrong with how they introduced the trial, or there are just fewer qualified female candidates. Either way, I really didn't understand why they backed off on the trial. If you can reasonably assess that your process is fair, I don't think anyone should care how the numbers bear out.
  - lerpa 9y ago
    > If you can reasonably assess that your process is fair, I don't think anyone should care how the numbers bear out. Because it goes against the results they wanted to arrive at.
    - mistermann 9y ago
      Odd how that Idea never occurred to the person to whom you are replying. In comment after comment, the possibility that there is no bias is considered literally impossible. The blatant and unrecognized bias in this conversation is absolutely fascinating. (I also notice HN has introduced a throttle, presumably to reduce the volume of incorrect messages.)
      - imron 9y ago
        HN has always had a throttle for comment threads that go more than a few deep. The deeper the thread goes, the longer the delay gets.
        mistermann 9y ago

humanrebar 9y ago

> The only reason not to do blind hiring is if it produces results which are indistinguishable from standard hiring. Or the fact that it's not really possible. Right now, most software engineering jobs are pretty communication heavy. Almost all company cultures contain a non-trivial amount of verbal communication, so with that premise, it's reasonable to have candidates verbally describe technical things or even make technical arguments. Once you're listening to real voices, it's difficult to pretend that the hiring is blind. The famous study involving auditions for positions in an orchestra worked really well because you could hide the person behind a screen and judge an entire work product without knowing anything about the instrumentalist. Now, if most software jobs include a heavy remote work component some day, it might be more reasonable to throw a somewhat detailed spec at a candidate, have them code up a solution, then show the code (and only the code) to people evaluating the work product. But most devs don't have a day-to-day that looks like implementing textual programming problems for strangers.

Retric 9y ago
You can setup interviews with text chat and screen shares at a large company without including someones voice or picture. Some places also remove names and other details from resumes. Most companies don't do this in part because text chat introduces other biases, but also because most people ignore their own bias.
- sah2ed 9y ago
  > Companies don't do this in part because text chat introduces other biases, but also because most people ignore their own bias. Mostly likely it is because it doesn't mirror how they work. (Text chat is SoP for remote-first work, but remote-first is far from the norm.)
rbanffy 9y ago
> Once you're listening to real voices, Use a voice scrambler.
- thecrazyone 9y ago
  thats what i was thinking. Everyone should be made to sound like darth vader and now we've an interview process to die for :P
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    Maybe Donald Duck
- imron 9y ago
  People have tried that... specifically to show that women were being discriminated against, but guess what happened when it was implemented? They found that contrary to their initial hypothesis, women with voices modulated to sound like men were still not getting hired at the same rate as the men masked to sound like women. Not only that, but they found women modulated to sound like men did worse than unmodulated women, and men modulated to sound like women did better than unmodulated men: http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas...
  - HeavyStorm 9y ago
    One very interesting finding of the study is that woman and men are faring equally once the attrition is removed. It seemed to me that the natural conclusion was that woman have lower confidence and thus performed worse at interviews. And this is a deep realization for me, because it pushes me in the direction of current diversity policies. You see, if there is perceived bias against you, then you lose confidence. So we must, for a while, try our best to remove that perfection. That might mean hiring more woman even if they don't seem to perform as well as men, because, once we have done that for a while, woman will feel more confident and the good candidates will appear. In any case - whether my last paragraph makes sense or not - the conclusion of the experiment interviewing.io did is that only removing gender perception during the interview process isn't enough, for woman may already have been affected by the bias and thus will perform worse than men during the interview. So we come back to the conclusion that we must invest to bring woman to tech early - during college or even high school - and fight biases there. It's a long road anyway, isn't it?
sitkack 9y ago
Double blind. We do it in science, then do it hiring.
- candiodari 9y ago
  Double blind hiring famously does not result in gender balance (and even less in ethnic balance). This is called the funnel problem. So that wouldn't solve matters.
zimpenfish 9y ago
> The famous study involving auditions for positions in an orchestra And even there they had to put carpet down / remove shoes to hide the difference in shoe sounds when they walked to the performance area. https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/... "the telltale sounds of a woman's shoes allegedly influenced some jury members such that aspiring musicians were instructed to remove their footwear"

imron 9y ago

> The only reason not to do blind hiring is if it produces results which are indistinguishable from standard hiring. This will possibly result in less women being hired. See: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...

microcolonel 9y ago
Then there's either something wrong with how they introduced the trial, or there are just fewer qualified female candidates. Either way, I really didn't understand why they backed off on the trial. If you can reasonably assess that your process is fair, I don't think anyone should care how the numbers bear out.
- lerpa 9y ago
  > If you can reasonably assess that your process is fair, I don't think anyone should care how the numbers bear out. Because it goes against the results they wanted to arrive at.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Odd how that Idea never occurred to the person to whom you are replying. In comment after comment, the possibility that there is no bias is considered literally impossible. The blatant and unrecognized bias in this conversation is absolutely fascinating. (I also notice HN has introduced a throttle, presumably to reduce the volume of incorrect messages.)
    - imron 9y ago
      HN has always had a throttle for comment threads that go more than a few deep. The deeper the thread goes, the longer the delay gets.
      - mistermann 9y ago