3 ms·

hiring is really simple: you can straightforwardly filter out the obvious no's, but beyond that, it's a crapshoot. basketball analogy time! (my favorite =) th

hiring is really simple: you can straightforwardly filter out the obvious no's, but beyond that, it's a crapshoot. basketball analogy time! (my favorite =) the NBA employs 450 of the best basketball players on the planet, and at any given time, the league is evaluating a few thousand more (out of hundreds of millions of basketball players, out of ~7.5 billion people worldwide). all the easy filtering is done. every year, the 60 most promising players are drafted. and because they're among the most promising, most of these 60 players should become regular NBA players. in practice, only 5-10 will do so in any given year, and you have no idea which ones it will be as they all look promising (e.g., laker kyle kuzma drafted 27th in 2017). in short, once you get down to the 10-20 candidates you think will fit a given job, you might as well just draw a name out of a hat, work with them for 3-6 months, and re-evaluate. there really is no shortcut to this (not even for google).

smsm42 7y ago
Fortunately, for smaller companies there's another option - use personal networks to find candidates, the chances would be much better. For googles, they can just afford some misses, it costs but not something they couldn't stomach.
- clairity 7y ago
  yes, that can improve the odds, but i've hired people through my network (as a founder and an employee), and good hires (those who add productivity & efficiency to the team) still often boils down to the idiosyncracies of the individual human relationships involved. going back to basketball, no team has yet to sign 10x nba all-star carmelo anthony this year, and 8x all-star dwight howard only just signed with the lakers (on an unguaranteed minimum contract) because of a season-ending injury to demarcus cousins. both players are individually very talented, but are reputed to be hard to play with (thus lowering team productivity & efficiency).
dredmorbius 7y ago
Pro sports is an interesting comparison, in that it has a very long-chain training and recruiting system, starting as young as age 5-10, and including sport leagues and/or school teams to refine talent. Though professional recruiters may not be looking at younger players, sports leagues and schools are quite conscious of talent. Professional lifetimes are also frequently quite short. For gymnasts, competing life is virtually over by age of majority, for Americna football, a few years in pros is typical, though some careers last longer. Baseball, cricket, tennis, and golf are longer-lived exceptions. I'm not saying this as a rabid sport ethusiast, and the transfers to technical recruiting may be limited, but it's at least an interesting system to consider. Other uneven talent/fame domains are theatrical performance (acting, music), and, possibly, writing.
- clairity 7y ago
  yes, mainly, i'm using the nba to show that even among folks who are constantly and publicly evaluated for ~10 years (the time from discovery to draft), you have ~10-20% chance of hiring the right player at the right time. so then, why would one expect to be able to evaluate a candidate for a few hours and do better than that? if anything, professional (office) skills are harder to evaluate than athletic ones. reasonable folks should expect only 10-20% of hires to be good fits, regardless of the skill or integrity of the hire.

smsm42 7y ago

Fortunately, for smaller companies there's another option - use personal networks to find candidates, the chances would be much better. For googles, they can just afford some misses, it costs but not something they couldn't stomach.

clairity 7y ago
yes, that can improve the odds, but i've hired people through my network (as a founder and an employee), and good hires (those who add productivity & efficiency to the team) still often boils down to the idiosyncracies of the individual human relationships involved. going back to basketball, no team has yet to sign 10x nba all-star carmelo anthony this year, and 8x all-star dwight howard only just signed with the lakers (on an unguaranteed minimum contract) because of a season-ending injury to demarcus cousins. both players are individually very talented, but are reputed to be hard to play with (thus lowering team productivity & efficiency).

dredmorbius 7y ago

Pro sports is an interesting comparison, in that it has a very long-chain training and recruiting system, starting as young as age 5-10, and including sport leagues and/or school teams to refine talent. Though professional recruiters may not be looking at younger players, sports leagues and schools are quite conscious of talent. Professional lifetimes are also frequently quite short. For gymnasts, competing life is virtually over by age of majority, for Americna football, a few years in pros is typical, though some careers last longer. Baseball, cricket, tennis, and golf are longer-lived exceptions. I'm not saying this as a rabid sport ethusiast, and the transfers to technical recruiting may be limited, but it's at least an interesting system to consider. Other uneven talent/fame domains are theatrical performance (acting, music), and, possibly, writing.

clairity 7y ago
yes, mainly, i'm using the nba to show that even among folks who are constantly and publicly evaluated for ~10 years (the time from discovery to draft), you have ~10-20% chance of hiring the right player at the right time. so then, why would one expect to be able to evaluate a candidate for a few hours and do better than that? if anything, professional (office) skills are harder to evaluate than athletic ones. reasonable folks should expect only 10-20% of hires to be good fits, regardless of the skill or integrity of the hire.