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Interestingly enough, 10 point "employees" can and do have trouble differentiating themselves. MIT Ph.D. admission, for instance, is rather selective. There i

Interestingly enough, 10 point "employees" can and do have trouble differentiating themselves. MIT Ph.D. admission, for instance, is rather selective. There is much research available demonstrating that there is a huge qualitative difference between consummate achievers and great minds. Unfortunately, most businesses and schools have far too many applications for employment and need some easy metric to reduce the set to something approachable. I'm not suggesting a blind hire of the top guy. I'm trying to provide a more relevant metric than current exists. Any other system I've seen in play is easy to game -- or hard to game, but in gaming it, you're becoming the opposite of what the company/school is seeking. Further, "what's in it for the employee" doesn't enter into it. I could easily say: famousactress is rated as 8.34 for her dramatic performances but only at 5.21 in comedic roles. That has nothing to do with your willing participation. I agree that it's depressing to be considered sub-par. But, there are so many people trying desperately to stand out that they're losing their way. Google can't hire the right sort of people because every metric they have attempted to date has resulted in honest, dependable, clean-cut, recently-shaven, knowledgeable CS graduates from top universities. Sadly, they're trying to expand a business built (like so many other startups) by the ideas of college drop-outs (or similar), who were too busy doing something interesting to go to class and get good grades. Those interesting things aren't bragging rights (level 80 character in each class and each faction on WoW appears on very few resumes). If I attach my HN information, you might disagree with my positions and opinions. I'd miss out on the job based upon personal bias -- maybe I should. But, you'll notice my karma here is _very_ low. I suppose that seems justified since you're not on board with this concept. But, is it? Reddit is commonly gamed. If I had an outrageous karma score, would you think highly of me or consider me a karma whore? Well, you might say, you'd simply read my posts. Great! Now, consider you have a highly coveted position and 10,000 applicants. You can only read the posts of about 20 applicants. Do you take the top 20 highest scores? What if the 21st highest was actually the best fit? Well, then you blame your metric. The reason you blame your metric is because people will game their karma scores to reduce their competition to only 20 other people who were busily whoring karma and not building necessary job skills. At the same time, you can't deal with 10,000 resumes. You need a metric that's not easily gamed and that's as representative as possible of an individual's skills. Just like I can tag you in a photo on Facebook without your consent, this site would allow me to rate your skills as an actress and as a programmer. My opinion of your acting skill is pretty much worthless (whether it's good or bad); my opinion of your programming skill is more significant -- but I'm not going to single-handedly make you or break you.

maxdemarzi 16y ago
What happens to the popularity of the software when the hiring managers or HR people are rated poorly or even "just average"? Think about the newest social games. They metric is progression. There are no downers. If you have a low score, it's because you're new to the game or haven't played enough. You always "gain" experience points, gold, whatever. In order to get past the chicken and egg problem in the social space you need to turn the scale from 1 to 10 into 1 to infinity and give the perception of not punishing low scores.
- jmcentire 16y ago
  I don't think so. Viewing one's site in terms of game mechanics is a fun idea and has some basis in game theory. However, all I really have to do is offer a winning value proposition. If you are a hiring manager and are rated fairly low on the managerial aspects, you might disagree with that evaluation of your skills. Any prudent person would not base their decision on one data point. Rather, the intelligent hiring manager would evaluate applicants based upon the site's relative ranking of that person compared to other members of his or her team. While the perception of a 1 to infinity scale reduces the immediate negativity of being obviously below average... that illusion only works for a short period of time. When you start playing WoW 10 gold coins is a lot of money, you can delude yourself and harbor odd ideas about your worth. However, once you compare yourself to _anyone_ else, it becomes immediately apparent that 10 gold coins is practically worthless. As far as the "misdirection" is concerned, perhaps I ought to note some aspects of the UI. Unlike LinkedIn or Facebook, the site doesn't revolve around the user. As such, when you visit the site or login, you are not presented with your profile. Rather, the site is devoted to finding and comparing applicants. As such, the main page is a search page and most users will likely spend much of their time sorting through candidates. In fact, the only way a user could see their own data is to search for themselves. My guess is that that'll be a fairly common practice. My hope is that people will identify their weaknesses and either improve them or re-evaluate their career goals. I know it seems harsh. But, the hiring practice is harsh. I sit people in a little, unfamiliar, echo chamber and send in a string of people to scrutinize and judge them. I'm not trying to get everyone hired on at obscene salaries and stroke everyone's ego. My goal is not to paint the world with a rainbow facade of unicorns and fairies. I want to enable Harvard, Yale, MIT, IBM, Microsoft, Google, et cetera to have a tool which quickly and accurately separates the wheat from the chaff. If an individual's skills are average or worse, they're not likely to be working at a company which receives so many applications that so sort of automated elimination is requisite. Rather, they're probably looking for average people for average work at an average company. And there's nothing wrong with that. Here on HN, there are a lot of startups with a different sort of problem. No applications, but strong desires/needs for well-qualified employees. In that case, this tool would also be useful. If a startup wants to rely on friends from college and guys met at HN meetups, that's fine. Again, I appreciate any and all feedback and am aware of the cold start and related problems. I have a few solutions that I'm not interested in discussing here and now; but, I understand that this is a major concern and certainly appreciate people pointing it out.

maxdemarzi 16y ago

What happens to the popularity of the software when the hiring managers or HR people are rated poorly or even "just average"? Think about the newest social games. They metric is progression. There are no downers. If you have a low score, it's because you're new to the game or haven't played enough. You always "gain" experience points, gold, whatever. In order to get past the chicken and egg problem in the social space you need to turn the scale from 1 to 10 into 1 to infinity and give the perception of not punishing low scores.

jmcentire 16y ago
I don't think so. Viewing one's site in terms of game mechanics is a fun idea and has some basis in game theory. However, all I really have to do is offer a winning value proposition. If you are a hiring manager and are rated fairly low on the managerial aspects, you might disagree with that evaluation of your skills. Any prudent person would not base their decision on one data point. Rather, the intelligent hiring manager would evaluate applicants based upon the site's relative ranking of that person compared to other members of his or her team. While the perception of a 1 to infinity scale reduces the immediate negativity of being obviously below average... that illusion only works for a short period of time. When you start playing WoW 10 gold coins is a lot of money, you can delude yourself and harbor odd ideas about your worth. However, once you compare yourself to _anyone_ else, it becomes immediately apparent that 10 gold coins is practically worthless. As far as the "misdirection" is concerned, perhaps I ought to note some aspects of the UI. Unlike LinkedIn or Facebook, the site doesn't revolve around the user. As such, when you visit the site or login, you are not presented with your profile. Rather, the site is devoted to finding and comparing applicants. As such, the main page is a search page and most users will likely spend much of their time sorting through candidates. In fact, the only way a user could see their own data is to search for themselves. My guess is that that'll be a fairly common practice. My hope is that people will identify their weaknesses and either improve them or re-evaluate their career goals. I know it seems harsh. But, the hiring practice is harsh. I sit people in a little, unfamiliar, echo chamber and send in a string of people to scrutinize and judge them. I'm not trying to get everyone hired on at obscene salaries and stroke everyone's ego. My goal is not to paint the world with a rainbow facade of unicorns and fairies. I want to enable Harvard, Yale, MIT, IBM, Microsoft, Google, et cetera to have a tool which quickly and accurately separates the wheat from the chaff. If an individual's skills are average or worse, they're not likely to be working at a company which receives so many applications that so sort of automated elimination is requisite. Rather, they're probably looking for average people for average work at an average company. And there's nothing wrong with that. Here on HN, there are a lot of startups with a different sort of problem. No applications, but strong desires/needs for well-qualified employees. In that case, this tool would also be useful. If a startup wants to rely on friends from college and guys met at HN meetups, that's fine. Again, I appreciate any and all feedback and am aware of the cold start and related problems. I have a few solutions that I'm not interested in discussing here and now; but, I understand that this is a major concern and certainly appreciate people pointing it out.