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So here’s a counter perspective: there is no good way to interview, there are just less bad ways, which depends on your company. The worst filter is choosing a

So here’s a counter perspective: there is no good way to interview, there are just less bad ways, which depends on your company. The worst filter is choosing at random. If I shuffle a stack of resumes and throw half in the trash, I have eliminated the unlucky candidates. I have certainly rejected a good number of skilled and highly qualified candidates. Regardless the filter did its job, I have fewer applications to review. If I give candidates whiteboard problems, I filtered out thoughtful people who don’t perform well under pressure. If I look at interviewees github submission and blog posts I have filtered out intelligent people with a dearth of free time. If I combine the two filters with an OR relationship, I now let more people through and have a filter that is less effective at narrowing down candidates. All filters filter out good candidates. Anyone who finds a way to find exactly the right candidates from a filter in a way that isn’t bespoke and is scalable is going to be very successful.

l0b0 6y ago
Sounds like you're making the point that no filter should be absolute - you need more than one way to evaluate candidates, and a bad result with one of them should simply be ignored if other results are great.
- Vinnl 6y ago
  The other interpretation is that you need just one good candidate, meaning you'll have to filter out many - some of whom would also have been good, perhaps even better.
  - l0b0 6y ago
    That sounds like you're most likely to end up with a mediocre candidate, one which passed all the filters. I'd rather take the hugely impressive whiteboarder (for example) than the mediocre everything.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
It's amazing to me that, in all the discussions and articles on HN that I've read about interviewing, no one ever mentions coupling their favorite filters with gut instinct. Not everything has to be measurable to make good decisions.
- toolz 6y ago
  but everything has to be measured to quantify if the decision was good or not. You trust your gut when you have no other option, not because you believe it to be better than a data driven approach
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    > but everything has to be measured to quantify if the decision was good or not. Do you measure your romantic relationships or marriage or family interactions? Do you measure any human relationship?Because hiring and working with someone with fundamentally a relationship, not a data science or math problem. I had a manager once who said, "if it can't be measured, it can't be managed." You sound like him. Good luck with that approach, and i hope we don't work together :)
    - toolz 6y ago
      You just measured our relationship based on a single comment. So yes, I along with everyone else measures relationships based on data.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  Gut instinct has the problem of doing an excellent job at rejecting candidates from underrepresented groups as well as people with backgrounds that are different from the hiring manager. It is a method and it may even lead to great hires but it also throws fairness out the door.
travisjungroth 6y ago
> The worst filter is choosing at random. That seems more like a baseline case than the worse one. I feel like I could definitely come up with one that’s worse than random. Negative points for indications of intelligence, knowledge, collaboration, and kindness.
ahel 6y ago
> Anyone who finds a way to find exactly the right candidates from a filter in a way that isn’t bespoke and is scalable is going to be very successful. I disagree with the filtering attitude. Everybody wants the best candidate but they are not offering the best job. If you can, hire the first person who convinced you that it's not going to be tough to work with and build an adult and professional relationship where each side is clear on expectations and demands. Of course if you need a specialist, then be clear (and feel free to check) that specific ability are required. But why don't you have the time to make somebody grow organically those ability/knowledge internally?
perl4ever 6y ago
It's not the worst filter. The worst filter is the one that's highly correlated with other popular bad filters. Because that way you miss out on the people that are generally discriminated against, whereas a random filter is more likely to pick them up by chance. Optimization can be counterproductive, and it's related to what other people are optimizing.

l0b0 6y ago

Sounds like you're making the point that no filter should be absolute - you need more than one way to evaluate candidates, and a bad result with one of them should simply be ignored if other results are great.

Vinnl 6y ago
The other interpretation is that you need just one good candidate, meaning you'll have to filter out many - some of whom would also have been good, perhaps even better.
- l0b0 6y ago
  That sounds like you're most likely to end up with a mediocre candidate, one which passed all the filters. I'd rather take the hugely impressive whiteboarder (for example) than the mediocre everything.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

It's amazing to me that, in all the discussions and articles on HN that I've read about interviewing, no one ever mentions coupling their favorite filters with gut instinct. Not everything has to be measurable to make good decisions.

toolz 6y ago
but everything has to be measured to quantify if the decision was good or not. You trust your gut when you have no other option, not because you believe it to be better than a data driven approach
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  > but everything has to be measured to quantify if the decision was good or not. Do you measure your romantic relationships or marriage or family interactions? Do you measure any human relationship?Because hiring and working with someone with fundamentally a relationship, not a data science or math problem. I had a manager once who said, "if it can't be measured, it can't be managed." You sound like him. Good luck with that approach, and i hope we don't work together :)
  - toolz 6y ago
    You just measured our relationship based on a single comment. So yes, I along with everyone else measures relationships based on data.
UncleMeat 6y ago
Gut instinct has the problem of doing an excellent job at rejecting candidates from underrepresented groups as well as people with backgrounds that are different from the hiring manager. It is a method and it may even lead to great hires but it also throws fairness out the door.

travisjungroth 6y ago

> The worst filter is choosing at random. That seems more like a baseline case than the worse one. I feel like I could definitely come up with one that’s worse than random. Negative points for indications of intelligence, knowledge, collaboration, and kindness.

ahel 6y ago

> Anyone who finds a way to find exactly the right candidates from a filter in a way that isn’t bespoke and is scalable is going to be very successful. I disagree with the filtering attitude. Everybody wants the best candidate but they are not offering the best job. If you can, hire the first person who convinced you that it's not going to be tough to work with and build an adult and professional relationship where each side is clear on expectations and demands. Of course if you need a specialist, then be clear (and feel free to check) that specific ability are required. But why don't you have the time to make somebody grow organically those ability/knowledge internally?

perl4ever 6y ago

It's not the worst filter. The worst filter is the one that's highly correlated with other popular bad filters. Because that way you miss out on the people that are generally discriminated against, whereas a random filter is more likely to pick them up by chance. Optimization can be counterproductive, and it's related to what other people are optimizing.