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The most influential essay I've ever read on hiring was titled I Don't Hire Unlucky People[1]. At the time, I was struggling to build a mobile dev team, and I c

by madrox 5y ago

The most influential essay I've ever read on hiring was titled I Don't Hire Unlucky People[1]. At the time, I was struggling to build a mobile dev team, and I could always find reasons to not hire anyone in the pipeline. However, there came a point where I had to apply the secretary problem [2] to my situation and realize it was costing me more to not have these positions filled. To that end, my only hard requirement became whether I left the interview with them feeling like this was someone I could manage and grow. The irony is that once I embraced this, I ended up with a pretty diverse team almost as a side effect. It made me realize that most "unspoken disqualifications" are usually anti-diversity in practice, though I don't think that's done consciously. 1: http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-unlucky-people.html http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-unluc... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

wisty 5y ago
The alternative is that you nitpick, and toss out all the ones that don't tick the right boxes. This means you either get people who have good attention to detail, or people who have had plenty of failed iterations to polish their approach.
- madrox 5y ago
  That's essentially the point of that essay. That, and most of those boxes you want ticked are artificial means of whittling down candidates and not hard criteria for whether someone can do a job.