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Yes but that’s because the current education system is geared toward GPA. If all of the students you interview have years worth or projects, how would you diffe

Yes but that’s because the current education system is geared toward GPA. If all of the students you interview have years worth or projects, how would you differentiate? Better yet, if they go through a university or trade school and they all complete the same projects, how do you know who is actually good? I’ve run into this when interviewing or going through resumes of entry-level engineers. A lot of them will have a similar senior capstone project, so now I’m back to looking at GPA or some other signal. “Yes yes you worked on CMU’s autonomous vehicles program. So did the other 10 candidates, but tell me what makes you truly unique? “ etc.

echelon 7y ago
> Yes yes you worked on CMU’s autonomous vehicles program. So did the other 10 candidates, but tell me what makes you truly unique? We might be looking for different things. I'm just looking to hire self-driven folks that know how to program, problem solve, and communicate. I'm not looking for pedigree, elite status, or anything of that sort. In fact, I don't even care if candidates went to college. If they can demonstrate that they know what they're doing, then that's fine by me. I predict cookie cutter projects won't be an issue. If a candidate can talk in depth about their project, the choices they made, the things they learned - that's good signal. It doesn't matter if everyone performs the same exercise, because not everyone will come away with the same experience.
- chosenbreed37 7y ago
  That seems like a reasonable approach. Do you recruit directly or do candidates get vetted before they get to you? I get the sense that in many hiring flows, the candidate would have to go through some gatekeepers first. They may be the ones screening for pedigree, elite status, etc.
- ericmay 7y ago
  > I predict cookie cutter projects won't be an issue. If a candidate can talk in depth about their project, the choices they made, the things they learned - that's good signal. I'd argue most capable people will come away with largely the same experience. Like you, I have a bias toward projects and self-motivated individuals. What I'm saying here is that right now you filter toward that, because everybody has a good GPA, so it's not as strong of a signal. If you change the education system so that everybody has great project experience, you're going to swing back to some other metric to filter people out (like GPA/prestige of university/training program/etc.). I don't think you can ever really escape it. In my example, everybody has great project experience and a great GPA. So how do I decide? Well, I start looking at other things like maybe they're the captain of the volleyball team. (speaking for university hires here at least).
watwut 7y ago
Related question is, did you considered that most of them actually can be good for the job position in question? It is possible that majority of them would do reasonably well. In which case you are maybe wasting the time chasing for something special that you cant define. And if they are not good, what it is exactly that they are missing? Then it makes sense to look for the specific thing most are missing. But it makes less sense to look for some special person without being able to define what special you look for and chasing random signals instead.

echelon 7y ago

> Yes yes you worked on CMU’s autonomous vehicles program. So did the other 10 candidates, but tell me what makes you truly unique? We might be looking for different things. I'm just looking to hire self-driven folks that know how to program, problem solve, and communicate. I'm not looking for pedigree, elite status, or anything of that sort. In fact, I don't even care if candidates went to college. If they can demonstrate that they know what they're doing, then that's fine by me. I predict cookie cutter projects won't be an issue. If a candidate can talk in depth about their project, the choices they made, the things they learned - that's good signal. It doesn't matter if everyone performs the same exercise, because not everyone will come away with the same experience.

chosenbreed37 7y ago
That seems like a reasonable approach. Do you recruit directly or do candidates get vetted before they get to you? I get the sense that in many hiring flows, the candidate would have to go through some gatekeepers first. They may be the ones screening for pedigree, elite status, etc.
ericmay 7y ago
> I predict cookie cutter projects won't be an issue. If a candidate can talk in depth about their project, the choices they made, the things they learned - that's good signal. I'd argue most capable people will come away with largely the same experience. Like you, I have a bias toward projects and self-motivated individuals. What I'm saying here is that right now you filter toward that, because everybody has a good GPA, so it's not as strong of a signal. If you change the education system so that everybody has great project experience, you're going to swing back to some other metric to filter people out (like GPA/prestige of university/training program/etc.). I don't think you can ever really escape it. In my example, everybody has great project experience and a great GPA. So how do I decide? Well, I start looking at other things like maybe they're the captain of the volleyball team. (speaking for university hires here at least).

watwut 7y ago

Related question is, did you considered that most of them actually can be good for the job position in question? It is possible that majority of them would do reasonably well. In which case you are maybe wasting the time chasing for something special that you cant define. And if they are not good, what it is exactly that they are missing? Then it makes sense to look for the specific thing most are missing. But it makes less sense to look for some special person without being able to define what special you look for and chasing random signals instead.