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Ask HN: Why are jobs gotten via referrals but online blind dating is now normal?
Seems like companies believe the best hire is connected to their existing workforce in some way e.g. well known that most jobs are sourced through some internal referral.
And yet as a society we've increasingly moved on to blind dating via dating apps like Tinder instead of meeting people via a mutual connection.
Logically you'd think the "optimal" strategy for hiring and dating would be similar. In this case, either via a mutual connection or not.
And yet we see this divergence in strategy. Why is that?
- Spooky23 7y agoPeople are more personally isolated and priorities for relationships have changed. You don’t necessarily want to hook up with a friend of a friend.
- tempsy 7y agoI think for me it's more the phenomenon that the "success rate" for online dating is so high. Clearly it's possible to meet people who you have no existing connection with and end up finding your most intimate lifelong relationship with that person. I guess if it's possible, and potentially even preferred, then it seems strange that most companies are so allergic to finding new hires "blind" in the same way.
- maximente 7y agoyou are conflating a lot of things here. 0. online dating isn't blind dating. physical attraction (important in most romantic relationships) is readily apparent generally. 1. AFAICT (non expert) blind date "success rate" varies immensely depending on whose PoV you assume. even those who get lots of matches may want long term, but only find short term options (or vice versa) 2. you probably don't want to start pulling people out of a hat to do dental procedures. credentialing is important to many people for certain professions. these things take years and years of training and skill building. most romantic things don't take the same sort of specialized training.
- omosubi 7y agoI think they're both for the reason that the less effort required the better. The faster you can hire someone that can do a job reasonably well the better off the company will be. Likewise in dating, you'll likely be much more successful if you don't have to put as much effort into finding dates/hookups.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- distantaidenn 7y agoThis is a biased assessment. In some cultures, mutual connection is still the goto for meeting and subsequently dating new people.
- formercoder 7y agoSupply and demand. Good jobs get thousands of applicants, attractive people get swamped with messages. The more balanced the two sides, the better an online marketplace will be.
- soheil 7y agoThis might cause flamewar, but I think job referrals work because there is clear monetary incentive, whereas, in the case of dating there is no such thing or its equivalent in terms of relationships for the referrer.
- munificent 7y agoCommitment in online dating is much more incremental than in job hiring. With a dating app (as I understand it, I haven't used them), the process is like: 1. Get matched. 2. Chat online back and forth. 3. Go on a date. 4. If that works well, maybe another, etc. At any point, either party can call it off or just ghost. There are many easy exit points, so it makes sense for the top of the funnel to be as wide as possible in the hopes that a candidate makes it all the way through. There is little harm in taking at least the first step or two with many participants. With hiring, interviewing uses valuable employee time. Once an offer is extended and someone is hired the company is effectively fully committed to them. The employee is even more committed since they likely quit their previous job.
- tempsy 7y agoI think the thing is people don’t necessary have infinite free time either. And if there’s an efficiency factor then wouldn’t more people think the quality of a potential match is higher with a friend of a friend rather than someone completely random?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Kinrany 7y agoI wonder if jobs will also move in this direction. Open source seems to be the closest thing. It's possible to shift one's time between projects gradually. I suspect the main obstacle is that it's hard for a salary to be gradual. We need a more sophisticated scheme. Something like automatic per-issue bounties.
- rubidium 7y ago“ Something like automatic per-issue bounties.” I physically shuttered at that thought. I get the intent, but having labored qualified and paid for in that way is sure to lead to a terrible issue system gamed by those “in the know” to exploit the rest.
- 7y ago
- mapmeld 7y agoCompanies are slow-moving. They legally can - but structurally cannot - decide one day that they're not that into you and move to a new state. If they bring in a bad employee, they have to first build up proof that they messed up, explain any mistakes to their customers, and ease other employees' concerns. If you've seen someone hired and fired from a white-collar job, the manager goes a lot of work trying to keep them on. You might be tempted to compare this to relationships and divorce, but now you're making a totally different comparison. Going on a blind date, introducing them to your family, and marrying someone without any third-party verification are totally different things!
- Thriptic 7y agoI don't think what you're saying is 100% true. When I was looking for a gf I asked my friends if they knew someone who I might like. I also tried online dating. Online dating ended up working eventually after a lot of trial and error but it would have but a lot easier if a friend could have given me an introduction to a validated person. Would a person a friend introduced be the optimal person for me? Maybe not, but it's someone I likely could have been with quickly who would probably have been at least pretty good. Online dating meanwhile is an awful slog even if it sometimes produces a better person at the end. The exact same thing applies with hiring, except the stakes are higher. I can date someone for a month or two, decide I don't like them, and move on. You can't do that with hiring.
- wiseleo 7y agoMy friends don’t know my dating criteria. Jobs can be well defined, but personal preferences are more difficult to express. Nuances matter. The real problem is not with online dating but with fake accounts. I used to write well crafted letters that resulted in interesting dates. Now, I have no easy way of verifying I am not writing to a bot.
- TamDenholm 7y agoBecause online dating is based on looks (initially at least) and jobs candidates are hired based on skill and personality. Looks are easy to judge in a few seconds, skills and personality are not.
- ken 7y agoDating is roughly symmetric, but employment is not. Jobs are not just an employer picking an employee, but also an employee picking an employer. The current process saves time for one side, but wastes it for the other. One of my dream side projects which never came to life is a job board where employers post (only) photos of what your workspace would look like. It's almost impossible to find out what I'm going to be looking at 8+ hours a day, even though that's one of the most important aspects of a job to me.
- 3minus1 7y agoAgree. It's really, really to hide the fact that you're an asshole/selfish bad actor in an interview. It's also surprisingly difficult to gauge someone's skill for a job; just look at any HN thread on how to do interviews. A personal reference from a known entity goes a long way.
- allo37 7y agoI'm not sure what your experience has been, but in my experience friends set each other up with dates all the time. Tinder even tells you if you have mutual friends with someone. Maybe because people are too busy with social media to have actual friends nowadays? :3
- ravenstine 7y agoWhow whoa, hold on. Since when is Tinder a "blind date"? If anything, it's the exact opposite of a blind date.
- m463 7y agoSo it's meeting someone via a mutual connection?
- wolco 7y agoIt is like meeting someone in a bar without the noise and through a hotornot interface.
- tempsy 7y agoI guess by blind I mean you did not know the person before and you have no known mutual connection to him or her.
- ravenstine 7y agoA blind date doesn't have anything to do with whether the connection is mutual. A blind date is where you go on a date with someone you've never met, let alone seen. In Tinder, you not only get to see what the person looks like but you chat with them before the in-person date. There's nothing "blind" about it. In fact, blind dates barely exist in the internet age. The closest thing to a blind date today actually would be through a mutual connection. (e.g. your friend Steve convinces Tyler's sister to go on a date with you because he thinks you'll both get along, even though neither of you have met or seen each other) Either I'm delusional or a relic of a different era.
- nwallin 7y agoIn this particular case, I'm pretty sure it's the children who are wrong.
- encoderer 7y agoFollow the money. The other way of finding candidates — paying professional sourcers who do it for a living — costs an enormous amount of money, often 25% of the first year salary. Paying your employees $5k or even $25k (in sfba) is a lot cheaper.
- not_a_moth 7y agoFor jobs there's a competitive selection process, so referrals from people who passed the competitive screening are likely to be in a top percentile. With friend networks, most people don't have a competitive selection process - you're friends because you went to school together, lived in same area, etc.. The referral for dating isn't as likely to be in a top percentile, so it makes sense to go and cast a wider net.
- wsetchell 7y agoI think it might actually be the opposite. Anecdata: - <50% of the people who joined my team recently were referrals. - >50% of my friends in "serious" relationships met offline.
- paul7986 7y agoIt's all about looks and even more so these days! Side rant...why on okcupid do I get 40 likes ..send messages to ten or 15 of them and no response. Online dating sucks! Many of those likes are probably fake created by OkCupid.
- non-entity 7y agoIdk about OkCupid, but I really beleive on Tinder that about 1/3 of the profiles I see are just people plugging their social media to go followers and / or seek instant attention validation. I doesnt personally bother me, but it might explain in part about the matches / messages rate
- andreilys 7y agoI think most people would prefer having a "referral" for dates (I know I would at least). The cost of bad behavior is much higher if there's a third party involved (i.e. you're not just burning with me but also the person who introduced us). Online dating on the other hand can be a cess pool of poor manners, since there's no social penalty for ghosting your date or misbehaving. The reason that online dating has been on the rise is because it's easy, convenient, and turns potential suitors into a commodity.
- wolco 7y agoI never wanted a referral dating. You are limited by your circle if you only go by friends of friends and usually missing out on some very interesting people / good looking people.
- andreilys 7y agoDepending on where you live and which circles you run in, your friends of friends can be a potentially huge dating pool
- blaser-waffle 7y agoSo you're saying your friends are ugly losers?
- m463 7y agoI believe dating via referral is possible, it is more expensive. It needs cultural support (parents) or more money to pay for a matchmaker.
- dragonwriter 7y agoDating via referral is common even without matchmakers, payments, or parental involvement. Dating-related peer introductions are a pretty common thing.
- dangerboysteve 7y agoThis is my take: -It would limit your possible mates based on your circle of friends. -Some people want to keep their dating life quiet as involving others can sometimes stress out the situation. -If things don't work out there is less risk of gossip within your group.
- werber 7y agoThis is messed up but I feel like I get jobs and dates based on being white and non threatening, I’m not particularly great professionally or personally in my opinion
- brailsafe 7y agolol you may be right. Most of the time people are looking for some modicum of inoffensiveness rather than some super high bar
- werber 7y agoYeah, I’ve seen people who are better developers than me up for the same jobs turned away, like I feel like I’m all I’m good for Is completely unrelated to my job and at this point I’m just like a friendly corporate ghost, or it’s all imposter syndrome on my part, it all seems pointless. I just want to watch the world not burn
- _JC_Denton 7y agoA few obvious differences 1. Companies don’t hire based on how hot you are 2. Companies can’t ghost you at a moments notice once they have committed
- dragonwriter 7y ago> Companies don’t hire based on how hot you are Well, not ideally, except for certain very specific jobs, but it absolutely does happen even outside of the cases where it ideally would. > Companies can’t ghost you at a moments notice once they have committed Established, reputable companies usually have trouble doing that; for others it's actually not unheard of, though it's hard to do it selectively to one employee and not others if you have on-premises staff.
- brailsafe 7y agoI really don't think either situation is as binary as you make it. My latest company hired me through a recruiter and my current long term gf I met in lerson first. Have also had a shorter term thing over Tinder, which also went well. Either way, success is an organic thing after the first steps.
- lobo_tuerto 7y agoMaybe they are not so different. Triplebyte is like Tinder, but for jobs/hiring no? You fill up a profile, you can browse companies and indicate when one is a potential match for you (It's the same for companies, I guess). If there is a match then you can contact each other. shrug
- blaser-waffle 7y agoIf I don't have a dating life, no SO, no BF/GF, my life still goes on. I can still eat a nice pizza, go to the movies, etc. I can do this for several weeks or months. If I don't have a job I don't get pizza, or movies, and could possibly get evicted. Sure, there are emergency funds to weather downturns, and FIRE is an option for some, but most people MUST have some sort of job in order to, like, eat.
- sriku 7y agoThe equivalent of online dating in hiring is contracting?
- masonic 7y agoblind dating via dating apps like Tinder Tinder is the opposite of blind dating. Blind dating means that you've never seen your date's image beforehand.
- jklein11 7y agoThe cost of a bad date is low. The cost of a bad hire is high.
- cameronfraser 7y agoonline blind dating is not normal, if you can see pictures of the person and interact with them before the date I don't really see what is blind about it
- probinso 7y agoPeople don't value emotional cost proportional to the damage it can cause; they usually do for money