4 ms·

A lot of companies instruct their interviewers to "default to no" when making hiring recommendations. Effectively the opposite of what you're suggesting. I kne

A lot of companies instruct their interviewers to "default to no" when making hiring recommendations. Effectively the opposite of what you're suggesting. I knew a lot of interviewers at those types of companies who wouldn't bother to read resumes, either. They'd cite "bias" or something.

reallydontask 6y ago
I recently applied to the Civil Service in the UK and they asked me to produce an anonymised CV, namely remove my name and contact details In principle I like the idea but I think they should ask to also remove the company names and perhaps dates, as it could be straight forward to work out who you are based on companies and dates. As to how effective to remove bias, it's hard to say as I've not seen any A/B testing done with this, but give the massive push to get minorities on board, I'd hazard a guess that it's not as effective as they had hoped
mpweiher 6y ago
> "default to no" .. opposite of what you're suggesting. Not necessarily, just depends on how easy/hard you set the bar for disproving the hypothesis. It also is somewhat inherent in that you really are trying to disprove the hypothesis. On the other hand, if, after reading the résumé, I do not want to hire this person, why on earth should I go on to interview said person? The "default to no" part is, IMHO generally correct, because false positives are a lot more damaging/costly than false negatives. My perspective may be warped here, because I have worked for companies that get LOTS and LOTS of applicants. At some the team would screen hundreds of résumés a week, of which maybe 1-2 were somewhat interesting, and that was after the HR screen. Oh, and I also got to clean up after one of the candidates → colleagues I said no to and the rest of the team approved... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Nimitz14 6y ago
The issue with defaulting to yes is that then you're going to be a hiring a lot of mediocre people who say just enough to appear "okay".
- madmax108 6y ago
  I think the oft-repeated adage "A players hire A players, B players hire C players" kind of falls into this. "A" players want to hire people better then themselves who elevate both themselves and the team. Not getting into how most "B" players see themselves as "A" players (dunning-kruger?), unconscious biases, or people who are just bad at playing interviewer (esp. people who have done it a certain way for their entire careers and are unwilling to even think that a different process might yield betterresults).

reallydontask 6y ago

I recently applied to the Civil Service in the UK and they asked me to produce an anonymised CV, namely remove my name and contact details In principle I like the idea but I think they should ask to also remove the company names and perhaps dates, as it could be straight forward to work out who you are based on companies and dates. As to how effective to remove bias, it's hard to say as I've not seen any A/B testing done with this, but give the massive push to get minorities on board, I'd hazard a guess that it's not as effective as they had hoped

mpweiher 6y ago

> "default to no" .. opposite of what you're suggesting. Not necessarily, just depends on how easy/hard you set the bar for disproving the hypothesis. It also is somewhat inherent in that you really are trying to disprove the hypothesis. On the other hand, if, after reading the résumé, I do not want to hire this person, why on earth should I go on to interview said person? The "default to no" part is, IMHO generally correct, because false positives are a lot more damaging/costly than false negatives. My perspective may be warped here, because I have worked for companies that get LOTS and LOTS of applicants. At some the team would screen hundreds of résumés a week, of which maybe 1-2 were somewhat interesting, and that was after the HR screen. Oh, and I also got to clean up after one of the candidates → colleagues I said no to and the rest of the team approved... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nimitz14 6y ago

The issue with defaulting to yes is that then you're going to be a hiring a lot of mediocre people who say just enough to appear "okay".

madmax108 6y ago
I think the oft-repeated adage "A players hire A players, B players hire C players" kind of falls into this. "A" players want to hire people better then themselves who elevate both themselves and the team. Not getting into how most "B" players see themselves as "A" players (dunning-kruger?), unconscious biases, or people who are just bad at playing interviewer (esp. people who have done it a certain way for their entire careers and are unwilling to even think that a different process might yield betterresults).