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As harsh as this sounds, it's perfectly rational behaviour on the part of companies. Job applications are a perfect example of an adverse selection problem. B
by hapless 16y ago
As harsh as this sounds, it's perfectly rational behaviour on the part of companies.
Job applications are a perfect example of an adverse selection
problem. Bad candidates are more likely to laid off, so they enter the job market more often. Bad candidates stay on the market longer than good ones, because they have trouble getting hired. Because they're on the market longer, bad candidates apply for more jobs than good ones.
These ugly truths guarantee that 99% of your applications are from bad candidates: people you would never, ever employ, under any circumstance. The sooner you can sort out the remaining 1%, the better. It's expensive to evaluate candidates, and each stage of evaluation is more expensive than the last. (keyword scan, human reading a resume, HR screen, phone screen, interview...)
If you use crude, ugly heuristics that flag false positives on half of your target population, but you save labor by not evaluating 85% or 90% of the applicants, you come out way ahead. Rational companies are bound to throw out a few babies with millions of gallons of bathwater. Cruel, but unavoidable.
- hughw 16y agoA goal of social policy is to modify the incentives that make "cruel" and "unavoidable" the logical choices. When child labor was legal, working them long hours was a cruel, unavoidable, and rational decision by employers too.
- hapless 16y agoChild labor was induced by very specific incentives, and it was easy to spot. After the ban on those labor practices, there was no competitive advantage in being the guy who openly hires children and gets slapped down. Adverse selection problems in the job market are not so tractable. When we ban discrimination against traits that are very valuable to discriminate against, the ban just isn't going to be very effective: employers will find new and more subtle ways to continue their discrimination. Bans against discrimination on race and religion were effective because employers were hurting themselves with their bad decisions, and it was hard to hide discriminatory practices. The incentives lined up to encourage a diverse workplace. As a counter-example, bans on age-based discrimination have been very ineffective. Age-based discrimination can be subtle, yet hugely profitable for employers.
- tomjen3 16y agoThat does indeed sound harsh - and unnecessary as what you really want is a better, simpler test. Add a fiss-buzz style requirement and be done with it.
- glenjamin 16y agoGiven a stack of CVs (resumes), split them into half and throw them away. You wouldn't want to hire anyone who's unlucky.....
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThat has no information content. Eliminating the unemployed does, assuming you believe that P(fired | low quality) > P(fired). P(low quality | fired) = P(fired | low quality) P(low quality) / P(fired) > P(low quality) (Since P(fired | low quality)/P(fired) > 1.)
- ori_b 16y agoIt does, however, have a moderate amount of humor content. This is not unexpected, given that it is a joke.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- georgieporgie 16y ago> Bad candidates are more likely to laid off, I've heard people say that, but they were all management and PMs who struck me as incompetent. Do you have any evidence to support your assertion?
- StuffMaster 16y agoI've heard it mentioned on HN that big companies use mass layoffs in bad times to cut a lot of people that the don't want but can't fire. Unless a whole department gets axed, the valuable employees are usually retained.
- georgieporgie 16y ago> > Bad candidates are more likely to laid off, > ... mass layoffs ... cut a lot of people that the don't want ... the valuable employees are usually retained. There's a huge difference between, "was not sufficiently valuable for prior company's developing needs," versus, "is a bad candidate." This reminds me of the superior/inferior bias that people try to put onto evolution. "Suboptimal for its niche," does not mean, "inferior."