6 ms·

i overheard this in an elevator, "our HR department tosses the bottom half of resumes in the pile into the trash because we refuse to hire unlucky people"

volkk 9y ago
ha. except perhaps they're the unlucky ones because they chucked out a great engineers resume and the engineer is actually the lucky one ;)
- cwbrandsma 9y ago
  or, "the lucky engineers had their resumes tossed in the trash so they didn't have to waist their time at that company"
  - volkk 9y ago
    that's what i was implying
drzaiusapelord 9y ago
And recruiters and managers wonder why applicants spam hundreds of cookie cutter resumes and cover letters instead of painstakingly crafting each one. Or why they get annoyed at 'job portal' applications where we have to retype our resume into the various little text boxes the web application provides. Its just a numbers game if you don't have a relationship with someone who can get you a new job. > refuse to hire unlucky people Not getting hired there seems to be the 'lucky' move. Arbitrary hiring guarantees, over time, some pretty terrible characters that a proper hiring process would filter out. If you're pissing away 50% of your potential and, say, there's a 20% chance of getting a 'good' person, now there's a 10% chance of that. Over time, a place with such hiring standards would most likely build out a corporate culture that's subpar. The rare 'good' hires would probably take off much earlier than need be because there's so many more 'bad' hires. Eventually the 'bad' hires rule the roost and then people act surprised at gross incompetence as the norm in many companies, shameless dishonesty, and various forms of harassment being normalized. I worked at a place that didn't take hiring very seriously and this is exactly what ended up happening.
- spenczar5 9y ago
  It's a joke from the British version of the Office.
  - drzaiusapelord 9y ago
    Poe's Law I suppose.
- Majora320 9y ago
  Except that isn't how statistics work. If you have 100 applications, 20% of which are good, and drop 50% of them, you get 50 applications, but you still have the 20% good application/bad application rate. Of course, you still get 50% less total good applications, but ratios != total.
  - drzaiusapelord 9y ago
    If there are 10 'good' hires in the initial pile, then cutting out 5 arbitrarily lowers your chance of getting any one of those 10 by half instantly. This is what I was trying to express. At the end of the day there are only so many 'good' applicants.
    - Majora320 9y ago
      Sure, but usually you don't want to hire _all_ of the good applicants - the reason you get bad hires is the false positive rate, not because there aren't enough total good hires in the pile.
pascalxus 9y ago
Perhaps, don't take it too literally. I suspect that comment must have been out of desperation, a satirical comment meant to criticize their woefully inadequate hiring process.
- HarryHirsch 9y ago
  From what I've seen in academia, this is a surprisingly adequate process. I've seen them do phone interviews, Skype interviews, divinations, psychometrical testings, on-sites - and then none of their unicorns is right colour. The commitee declares a failed search and tries again the following semester. You'd think that many, if not most of the people in the applicant pile could do an adequate job, perhaps with some training, considering what the job market looks like in the life sciences. Instead they play precious and then they have to make do with some last-minute lecturer, and that at times plays out really bad.
gknoy 9y ago
You joke, but this is very similar to the Secretary Problem's optimal solution [0] [1]: > The optimal cutoff tends to n/e as n increases, and the best applicant is selected with probability 1/e. So, you deliberately reject a first cohort of applicants, and then pick the first person you encounter that's better than the best one you rejected. Obviously, in the joke that's not possible as they are neglecting to interview them, so I think the sibling comments are correct about it being a skewering of the hiring process, but it's neat that there's such a close parallel. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15567307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15567307
user5994461 9y ago
Have you ever seen a pile of one thousand resumes that you have to go through? I will give you a tip. You can't read them all. Don't even bother trying.
- pellucide 9y ago
  If you get a thousand resumes for a few jobs, then reading/analyzing/grading resumes are useless indicator of talent. You have to resort to some other process.
finiter 9y ago
Related: http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-unlucky-people.html http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-unluc... And HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804134

volkk 9y ago

ha. except perhaps they're the unlucky ones because they chucked out a great engineers resume and the engineer is actually the lucky one ;)

cwbrandsma 9y ago
or, "the lucky engineers had their resumes tossed in the trash so they didn't have to waist their time at that company"
- volkk 9y ago
  that's what i was implying

drzaiusapelord 9y ago

And recruiters and managers wonder why applicants spam hundreds of cookie cutter resumes and cover letters instead of painstakingly crafting each one. Or why they get annoyed at 'job portal' applications where we have to retype our resume into the various little text boxes the web application provides. Its just a numbers game if you don't have a relationship with someone who can get you a new job. > refuse to hire unlucky people Not getting hired there seems to be the 'lucky' move. Arbitrary hiring guarantees, over time, some pretty terrible characters that a proper hiring process would filter out. If you're pissing away 50% of your potential and, say, there's a 20% chance of getting a 'good' person, now there's a 10% chance of that. Over time, a place with such hiring standards would most likely build out a corporate culture that's subpar. The rare 'good' hires would probably take off much earlier than need be because there's so many more 'bad' hires. Eventually the 'bad' hires rule the roost and then people act surprised at gross incompetence as the norm in many companies, shameless dishonesty, and various forms of harassment being normalized. I worked at a place that didn't take hiring very seriously and this is exactly what ended up happening.

spenczar5 9y ago
It's a joke from the British version of the Office.
- drzaiusapelord 9y ago
  Poe's Law I suppose.
Majora320 9y ago
Except that isn't how statistics work. If you have 100 applications, 20% of which are good, and drop 50% of them, you get 50 applications, but you still have the 20% good application/bad application rate. Of course, you still get 50% less total good applications, but ratios != total.
- drzaiusapelord 9y ago
  If there are 10 'good' hires in the initial pile, then cutting out 5 arbitrarily lowers your chance of getting any one of those 10 by half instantly. This is what I was trying to express. At the end of the day there are only so many 'good' applicants.
  - Majora320 9y ago
    Sure, but usually you don't want to hire _all_ of the good applicants - the reason you get bad hires is the false positive rate, not because there aren't enough total good hires in the pile.

pascalxus 9y ago

Perhaps, don't take it too literally. I suspect that comment must have been out of desperation, a satirical comment meant to criticize their woefully inadequate hiring process.

HarryHirsch 9y ago
From what I've seen in academia, this is a surprisingly adequate process. I've seen them do phone interviews, Skype interviews, divinations, psychometrical testings, on-sites - and then none of their unicorns is right colour. The commitee declares a failed search and tries again the following semester. You'd think that many, if not most of the people in the applicant pile could do an adequate job, perhaps with some training, considering what the job market looks like in the life sciences. Instead they play precious and then they have to make do with some last-minute lecturer, and that at times plays out really bad.

gknoy 9y ago

You joke, but this is very similar to the Secretary Problem's optimal solution [0] [1]: > The optimal cutoff tends to n/e as n increases, and the best applicant is selected with probability 1/e. So, you deliberately reject a first cohort of applicants, and then pick the first person you encounter that's better than the best one you rejected. Obviously, in the joke that's not possible as they are neglecting to interview them, so I think the sibling comments are correct about it being a skewering of the hiring process, but it's neat that there's such a close parallel. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15567307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15567307

user5994461 9y ago

Have you ever seen a pile of one thousand resumes that you have to go through? I will give you a tip. You can't read them all. Don't even bother trying.

pellucide 9y ago
If you get a thousand resumes for a few jobs, then reading/analyzing/grading resumes are useless indicator of talent. You have to resort to some other process.

finiter 9y ago

Related: http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-unlucky-people.html http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-unluc... And HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804134