4 ms·

Hunter and Schmidt did a meta-study of 85 (now 100, with the follow up) years of research on hiring criteria. [1] There are three attributes you need to select

Hunter and Schmidt did a meta-study of 85 (now 100, with the follow up) years of research on hiring criteria. [1] There are three attributes you need to select for to identify performing employees in intellectual fields. - General mental ability (Are they generally smart) Use WAIS or if there are artifacts of GMA(Complex work they've done themselves) available use them as proxies. Using IQ is effectively illegal[2] in the US, so you'll have to find a test that acts as a good proxy. - Work sample test. NOT HAZING! As close as possible to the actual work they'd be doing. Try to make it apples-to-apples comparison across candidates. Also, try and make accomidations for candidates not knowing your company shibboleth/tools/infra. - Integrity. The first two won't matter if you hire dishonest people or politicians. There are existing tests available for this, you can purchase for < $50 per use. This alone will get you > 65% hit rate [1], and can be done inside of three hours. There's no need for day long (or multi-day) gladiator style gauntlets. Apply this process to EVERYONE, including that elite cool kid from the "right" school/company. You don't want to exclude part of your sample population! [1] http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%.. http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%.... [2] Technically IQ tests are not "illegal", but the bar courts have decided companies have to climb is so high it effectively means they are. There is existing case law directly covering IQ tests in hiring. You should speak with your lawyer before you decide to try IQ tests. [3] 2016 update of Hunter Schmidt: https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/articles/2016-100%20Yrs%20Working%20Paper%20for%20Research%20Gate%2010-17.pdf https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/articles/2016-100%20Yrs%20...

pmiller2 8y ago
What sort of meaningful work sample test can you do in 3 hours?
- RhodesianHunter 8y ago
  "Here is the almost complete skeleton of a project in your preferred language (presumably, the one you're applying to use full time), finish it by implementing this vital piece of business logic."
- Izkata 8y ago
  A year or so ago, one of our devs got some questions on our test replaced with things of the type the maintenance team occasionally gets asked, instead of making it solely about development and bugfixing, though twisted a bit to be feasible in an interview test (for example, the source data they'd work on was something like a 3 MB JSON file instead of a database). Questions involved figuring out how to manipulate that data, and since not a single one could be done solely with a library call it said a lot about their ability to think through a problem, as well as their knowledge of things like data structures and efficiency. The latter questions even built off of the earlier ones, as if the stakeholder came back with more questions. With a reasonable knowledge of the language you were using, those questions would only take around 15-30 minutes total, and each answer (as long as you did correctly build on the previous ones) was only ~5-10 lines of code.
Nimitz14 8y ago
65% seems quite bad.
groby_b 8y ago
Link [1] is borked. Presumably, this one works: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.172.1733&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.172... Also, you're missing the structured interview component.

pmiller2 8y ago

What sort of meaningful work sample test can you do in 3 hours?

RhodesianHunter 8y ago
"Here is the almost complete skeleton of a project in your preferred language (presumably, the one you're applying to use full time), finish it by implementing this vital piece of business logic."
Izkata 8y ago
A year or so ago, one of our devs got some questions on our test replaced with things of the type the maintenance team occasionally gets asked, instead of making it solely about development and bugfixing, though twisted a bit to be feasible in an interview test (for example, the source data they'd work on was something like a 3 MB JSON file instead of a database). Questions involved figuring out how to manipulate that data, and since not a single one could be done solely with a library call it said a lot about their ability to think through a problem, as well as their knowledge of things like data structures and efficiency. The latter questions even built off of the earlier ones, as if the stakeholder came back with more questions. With a reasonable knowledge of the language you were using, those questions would only take around 15-30 minutes total, and each answer (as long as you did correctly build on the previous ones) was only ~5-10 lines of code.

Nimitz14 8y ago

65% seems quite bad.

groby_b 8y ago

Link [1] is borked. Presumably, this one works: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.172.1733&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.172... Also, you're missing the structured interview component.