4 ms·

Very true - there are often unofficial qualifications that aren't listed in the job posting too - things that would be strange to put into the official posting.

Very true - there are often unofficial qualifications that aren't listed in the job posting too - things that would be strange to put into the official posting. We were hiring an analyst at my old company who needed to be tough. The job entailed performing statistical analysis, but also being the data liaison for some of our vendors. If the vendors were slow in responding or broke something, this analyst was the one responsible for getting them to behave. We passed up several people who would have been a _great_ analyst, but definitely couldn't have managed the vendors. It got me thinking into how much of the hiring process is based on luck or other external factors that the candidate has no control over.

blaser-waffle 7y ago
> It got me thinking into how much of the hiring process is based on luck or other external factors that the candidate has no control over. Cue the old saw about how a hiring manager takes a stack of resumes, divides it in half, and then tosses them into the garbage: "we don't hire unlucky people".
wool_gather 7y ago
Surely there's a way to wordsmith an expectation like that into the post. Off the top of my head, you could include a bullet along the lines of - Responsible for advocating for the team's needs in liaison with vendors Although doing so kind of points out the fundamental problem: that you probably shouldn't expect a data nerd to do this. Ideally you'd have an account manager of some kind with just enough technical understanding, but who's actually a negotiation/people person.
- CapmCrackaWaka 7y ago
  Yes the reason we decided not to include that in the post is that it wouldn't account for very much of the person's time, but it could absolutely produce a hang up if handled incorrectly. We could also have had an account manager to handle this but they would really just have been forwarding technical specifications from the analyst, and wouldn't have much work to do.
  - wool_gather 7y ago
    Tough position to be in, for sure.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Superstitious practices are the hallmark of highly luck-based tasks, and it would be difficult to describe most hiring practices at these kinds of companies as anything but superstitious.

blaser-waffle 7y ago

> It got me thinking into how much of the hiring process is based on luck or other external factors that the candidate has no control over. Cue the old saw about how a hiring manager takes a stack of resumes, divides it in half, and then tosses them into the garbage: "we don't hire unlucky people".

wool_gather 7y ago

Surely there's a way to wordsmith an expectation like that into the post. Off the top of my head, you could include a bullet along the lines of - Responsible for advocating for the team's needs in liaison with vendors Although doing so kind of points out the fundamental problem: that you probably shouldn't expect a data nerd to do this. Ideally you'd have an account manager of some kind with just enough technical understanding, but who's actually a negotiation/people person.

CapmCrackaWaka 7y ago
Yes the reason we decided not to include that in the post is that it wouldn't account for very much of the person's time, but it could absolutely produce a hang up if handled incorrectly. We could also have had an account manager to handle this but they would really just have been forwarding technical specifications from the analyst, and wouldn't have much work to do.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  Tough position to be in, for sure.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

Superstitious practices are the hallmark of highly luck-based tasks, and it would be difficult to describe most hiring practices at these kinds of companies as anything but superstitious.