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Hm, I don't dig this. I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate's interactions when they weren't informed they were being evaluated. People are stresse

by cmckn 4y ago

Hm, I don't dig this. I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate's interactions when they weren't informed they were being evaluated. People are stressed heading into an interview, and may be upset afterwards. Unless they're interviewing for a public-facing role, I don't see how this behavior is relevant to the job; and discussing it with a hiring committee invites all sorts of "cultural fit" biases that make the hiring process inconsistent and discriminatory. If a person's behavior would hinder their ability to do the job, then that's worth a rejection; but "rudeness" is a very subjective thing. edit: to clarify, I'm talking about behavior that could be interpreted in different ways by different people. If you tell a driver to fuck off, yeah; I don't want to hire you or work with you. The parent gave no example of the behavior they'd reject a candidate for, and I assume it'd be reasonable; my point is just that this kind of thing is hard to do right and I'd avoid it.

yodon 4y ago
Your character is defined by who you are and how you behave when you think no one is watching you.
- webmobdev 4y ago
  Worry not whether your kid are listening to what you say, worry that they are always watching you.
SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
I don't want to work with anyone who treats service workers like garbage, no matter what mood they are in. I have never in my life, no matter how bad or good of a day I am having, taken my frustrations out on a service worker for whatever internal/external stressors are happening to me.
- genewitch 4y ago
  I find this extremely hard to believe. I, too, try very hard to not get upset at "service workers", but at a certain point, if someone has a bad attitude with me i'll eventually give it right back. This has only happened a few times, off the top of my head: support at ISPs a couple of times, creditors who were harassing me without reason, and one time extremely rude and racist people at a California School transportation office. Sure, i probably could hang up, turn the other cheek, whatever. And i'm sure my responses/actions made them no nevermind. You might be as stoic and nonplussed as you claim, but we're all the heroes of our own stories, or something.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    This would make sense as an objection if the taxi driver had specifically been asked to be a dick, to test the candidates. I'd assume they have some idea that the taxi driver is a fairly reasonable person (and apparently they know him well enough to trust his judgement).
    - alanh 4y ago
      To be fair, the comment you were replying to was strictly a response to someone's personal claim, not about the taxi driver scenario in particular
    - genewitch 4y ago
      English is a tricky language, and in my reading of GP i was incredulous at the word "never", especially since service workers can be in bad moods or stressed and that becomes, to you (or me, or GP), external stressors. Maybe i'm a bad person?
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        Oh, I think you are right there. I can't think of any times I've been rude to a worker off the top of my head, but I'm sure if we went over my life with a thin tooth comb we could find some instances. So it should be unusual that for an otherwise friendly candidate, this just happens to be the day when they have an unfortunate interaction.
  - jjulius 4y ago
    >... if someone has a bad attitude with me... It seems pretty obvious to me that the premise is supposed to be that the driver is courteous and professional, and they just see if the person treats the driver decently, or like trash because they feel they're above them.
  - alanh 4y ago
    Quick comment to help explain why this is getting some downvotes (in my best guess): The part where you say you try to treat service workers with respect but have your limits is fine / personal experience / probably broadly relatable, but the parts that are basically calling BS on someone for claiming they never lose their cool in such situations is… presumptuous and personal. Some people really have the ability to keep their cool (for one reason or another, trained or personality-driven). Personally, I’m with you, but, I think, making progress on becoming more like the person you’ve replied to.
- skissane 4y ago
  I worry that this might unintentionally discriminate against culturally diverse candidates. Standards of politeness can vary between cultures (and even subcultures), and a person might behave in a way which is perceived as polite in their (sub)culture but as impolite in the culture of the service worker; an "asshole" could turn out to just be a cultural misunderstanding. Particularly if the candidate is from a minority or immigrant background (especially recent immigrant). Similarly, I'd worry that this might unintentionally discriminate against neurodiverse candidates, who sometimes might act in ways which are perceived as impolite by others without realising they are doing so. Often, if you simply analyse the interaction and give them a calm rational explanation of how it went wrong, many of them are happy to adjust their behaviour in response, and will improve over time. But, instead, some just want to label other people as "assholes" over misunderstandings. And a significant percentage of service workers may have weaker skills at "analyse the situation and try to infer the psychological processes involved" than others with greater education do, which may make them more likely to jump to the "just an asshole" explanation and less likely to perceive other possible explanations.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
    I think this is a fair and nuanced comment. However, you seem to be stating (correct me if I'm wrong) that there are really two categories of situations here - situation A, where someone is an Asshole with a capital A, and situation B where you have a neurodiverse or immigrant candidate that is misinterpreting the situation and should not be dismissed based on their behavior. I can easily agree that both situations are possible and probably happen in the real world enough to be worth talking about. However, based on my (admittedly anecdotal, but extensive) experience situation A is probably something like 95% of the time and situation B is probably something like 5% of the time. How do we tell when B is happening and can you really fault people for assuming A is happening when that is the vast, vast, majority of occurrences? Is there an easy and objective way to tell the difference? In a world where wrong hires are expensive, can you fault people for assuming A? Is there a better way to ensure that B candidates are adequately evaluated?
    - skissane 4y ago
- badkitty 4y ago
  That's the really nasty thing about retail: the angrier and more abusive you are, you'll likely get your way. And much of the time, "your way" is being made whole with the situation. Ive worked retail for quite some time but broke out into IT. But the abuse is expected in retail. Managers are paid minimally more to deal with it - and that's to prevent customer complaints to corporate. Pretty much everyone, at some time, has flailed out at restaurant or retail staff. It's terrible, but part of the expectations.
  - Taniwha 4y ago
    depends on where you live - growing up in New Zealand we don't have a tipping culture, servers will get to you, in your turn, try and demand service and you're cutting against a cultural grain, perceived to be trying to claim you're better, more important, than the other customers, or the server. I read somewhere that our "obnoxious American tourist" stereotype came from some time in the 60s when rich tourists started flying across the Pacific, showed up and and started demanding service like they did back at home
    - DFHippie 4y ago
      Some time ago I spent a lot of time in youth hostels. A pattern I noticed was that people from all different cultures were polite and considerate until the number of people in the immediate group whom they considered allies in some way crossed some threshold at which point they became jerks, disregarding rules and politeness and generally acting as though they were the only real people there. I was in Europe, so most of the large groups were also European, but I at least saw German, Spanish, and French groups behaving this way. I met many Australians, but they were always traveling singly or in pairs and always stayed polite as far as I could see. I also have a vivid memory of Americans on a train in southern Germany voicing their opinions loudly and rudely about homes they saw passing by outside the train windows. It was just three or four Americans, but the arrangement of people on the train gave them a local majority. I suspect it is this dynamic more than tipping culture that gave rise to the stereotype of the ugly American. In small numbers people in foreign lands try to stay quiet and unseen. In larger numbers they feel safe and, maybe because they feel free from consequence or maybe as a stress reaction, they become worse than their normal selves. It isn't just Americans. But for a period in the last century Americans were the folks with sufficient money to show up in other people's countries in tour groups. Also, the people who create the stereotype are the ones who are noticed. If there are lots of foreigners blending in and a group of them who don't, it's the ones who don't who create the reputation for the rest.
TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
It's understandable that people might be stressed or upset, but if they take it out on people they consider beneath them that's not a good sign.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cmckn 4y ago
  > they consider beneath them It's this kind of inference that doesn't belong on a hiring committee; you likely don't have enough data to support this kind of conclusion about a person. The parent comment made a similar assumption about racial animus. I just don't think spying or eavesdropping is an effective way to evaluate a candidate.
  - Disruptive_Dave 4y ago
    Had the same thought. Lots of really big assumptions here with zero fact or evidence to back them up. And poor lack of awareness. Be careful judging, my friends.
  - ekanes 4y ago
    Finding out that someone is toxic only after they've got the job is problematic. The idea here is to evaluate them when they aren't aware and on their best behavior.
  - brewdad 4y ago
    Let's remove some of the inflammatory language and look at more as this person doesn't "matter" to me. If I think the taxi driver is just a taxi driver, I am going to treat them as I would any person I'm not likely to meet again. Ideally, with respect but when one's guard is down an asshole is more likely to act like one. In the interview room, any candidate will be on their best behavior since impressing those people "matters" greatly. Same for the behavioral lunch sessions that many companies also use. If I have any sense, I'm going to recognize that this is still part of the "interview" even though we may be at a restaurant offsite discussing anything from the job to the Yankees pitchers. The argument, that I tend to agree with, is that gathering info from the taxi driver is a better indicator of true character. I don't expect the taxi driver to deliver a full psychological report but I would like to know if they felt mistreated in some way.
bobkazamakis 4y ago
> I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate on interactions that they weren't informed were being evaluated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect >I don't see how this behavior is relevant to the job; and evaluating it on a hiring committee invites all sorts of "cultural fit" biases that generally making the hiring process inconsistent and discriminatory. I don't see how not doing this, really changes anything. The process is already inconsistent and discriminatory. The only thing this really tests is integrity.
- johnnyanmac 4y ago
  I'm not sure if the Hawthorne effect applies that strongly here. It has to do with worker productivity, not behavior. In fact, this IBM test may weed out a few employees who are otherwise perfectly kind people in general public outings.
rrook 4y ago
Do you see this as being substantially different to evaluating a candidate's behavior while in a waiting room between interview sessions?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rmah 4y ago
I disagree, the best time to evaluate how a candidate behaves towards other people is when they don't know they are being evaluated. Were they stressed before/after the interview? Well, how one behaves when stressed matters too. Finally, yes, rudeness is subjective, but so are most things in life.
hnarn 4y ago
> I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate's interactions when they weren't informed they were being evaluated. That makes about as much sense as saying that you shouldn’t be held responsible for stealing office supplies because no one informed you that there were cameras installed. If you treat cab drivers and other service personnel badly, that’s because you’re a shit person. It’s really that simple. I’ve been in extremely stressful situations in my life involving lots of travel and I’ve yet to “take it out” on a third party.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  I generally apply a similar test when dating - if the person is a huge asshole to the service staff then it generally is not going anywhere
  - geocrasher 4y ago
    Giant red flag, indeed.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Sorry, unless you tell them you are testing their dateablilty you have to ignore any behavior on their part.
    - DFHippie 4y ago
      This needs a "/s".
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        Sarcasm is a rhetorical trust-fall, I refuse to cheapen it by adding the /s.
        SilasX 4y ago
        Then you refuse to be a helpful contributor to discussions. Life is littered with cases where people thought they understood each other but didn’t. If there’s a chance you’ll be misinterpreted, you’re not communicating well and need to take steps to correct it, just out of general empathy for those who don’t have the exact same knowledge as you.
wruza 4y ago
Ethics aside, in my experience this type of character tends to contaminate their surroundings with this undirected negativity. It’s like a black hole that has no sides, only the mass of their ego. I have a friend like this, and while we are still friends and can manage that, I would never work together with him. It’s okay to be sad, stressed, angry. Not okay to spill it all over the world. Otoh, not clear what gp means by “rude”. Someone could perceive sad/neutral silence and “thank you, goodbye” as rude-ish too.
jameshart 4y ago
Asking for character references from someone who has interacted with a candidate is perfectly fine. I think where this might get dodgy is with the possibility that some of the candidates might have tipped this driver, which puts us in the position of asking for an opinion about several candidates from someone who might have been compensated by some of them.
- genewitch 4y ago
  if i were to institute something like this, the driver would be fairly (and well) compensated to do this task. Any tips would be handed over at the end, so there's no consideration of compensation involved. Obviously tipping is a data point, but it wouldn't influence the drivers report beyond that checkbox.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jameshart 4y ago
    Now we're adding wage-theft on top of both assessing candidates on their disposable wealth, and accepting and keeping payment from them? The ethics get pretty muddy the further down this path we walk.
    - genewitch 4y ago
      i find most things murky if you really try to walk for a while. I always find it interesting how i'm perceived. I didn't intend wage-theft as part of the idea. Also it is possible that there's people who are qualified to do this work (passenger/commercial endorsements on their driver's license), good character actors, and generally ethical. I took it all as a thought exercise, anyhow. Having been on the hiring side of the table, i'm not the "team fit" or "social" interviewer. Technical and creative questions. I let people in their fields deal with how their interviews go. So all told i wouldn't be in the position to hire someone to filter potential hires.
sliken 4y ago
If you want a healthy organization you need to be able to trust people, even when you can't watch them. This requires things like lack of deception, treating people decently, not lying, not stealing (physical or credit for ideas/work accomplished), etc. If you end up with people who ass kiss those above them, abuse those below them, backstab and/or sabotage the competition, focus on empire building, and misrepresent things for their benefit then your best staff will find elsewhere to work. Those that stay will fight among themselves and will only help the company or it's customers when it happens to overlap with their other goals. Sounds kind of like the Dilbert comic now that I think about it.
cmckn 4y ago
Responses here are really surprising to me. Should a Google hiring committee consider your search history, too? What's lacking from this conversation is any definition of what behavior we're actually talking about, and the conclusions (understandably) vary wildly. This is a similar dilemma to what a hiring committee would face when reviewing a second-hand narrative from a contractor about a candidate. I don't think a company interested in having a healthy culture should spy or eavesdrop on people.
- johnnyanmac 4y ago
  >Should a Google hiring committee consider your search history, too? You may be conducting reducto ad absurdum here, but this is unironically one of the biggest shifts of the Overton window from millenial to Gen Z. It may not be your search history, but they sure can check your Twitter/Facebook/etc. going back years to weed you out. It was kind of awkward for my demographic of late millenials, but gen z candidates entering the workforce may very well have their entire life online to see. It's honestly a bit chilling, but I think the lines have been set in the sand here.
version_five 4y ago
I agree with you. I understand that how you behave as a member of society is useful information and it's valid to not hire a jerk. Having the taxi driver as a spy is a bit like bugging a confessional though. Like you say, if they really limit the taxi driver's input to "was he directly a jerk to me", that sounds ok, but like any surveillance, it's unlikely it really remains limited to such a fixed scope and other information doesn't come in and bias the answer. A taxi is where a lot of people feel safe from observation, and may say things not meant for anyone's ears. As an aside, I'm always shocked at what people will start saying in a taxi/uber, particularly I'm thinking of talking about confidential work stuff. My personal view is you never know who the driver is and loose lips sink ships, don't say anything in front of him that you wouldn't say in public. But I know many don't see it that way.
vlunkr 4y ago
I'm inclined to agree. When a company watches you without your knowledge it's a clever hack, but when the government does it it's a creepy social credit system? If the hiring company secretly owned the taxi company, wouldn't that be creepy too? Also, when you're making hiring decisions, why are you trusting the opinion of a taxi driver who isn't even on your payroll? They certainly have their own prejudice, and if they know they have weight in hiring decisions, they could very well just be feeding you lies.
- batch12 4y ago
  If companies shared this data or it followed you around then this would be akin to a creepy social credit system. If it's an observervation during a test then it is just a kobayashi maru and not the same thing.
miniwark 4y ago
Well, they know beforehand than they are evaluated for an interview... It's a bit like psychological or sociological studies. All the time, for ethics reasons, the researchers must tell the subjects than they are part of a psychological or sociological test. But, the test is generally not exactly what is said to the people. For example by testing something hidden or by using actors. See for example the Asch conformity experiments or the Cognitive Dissonance Experiment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://explorable.com/cognitive-dissonance-experiment https://explorable.com/cognitive-dissonance-experiment In this case the people where told than they where tested, no surprise here... That said, is it really ethic to trick people by telling them than they are tested on "something" but in reality testing them on something else ?
johnnyanmac 4y ago
>I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate's interactions when they weren't informed they were being evaluated I may have agrees 15 years ago. But in a day and age where one random tweet of personal opinion can cause a PR disaster to an entire company, it seems inevitable that they want to make sure a candidate isn't going to potentially go off the rails. For better or worse, many people are connected worldwide for a signifigant part of the day, and have accounts that are easy to cross reference. e.g. a twitter account has the same name and location as a linkedIn profile. ---- with all that said, I'd be surprise if it was anymore than what was described; an ability to interact without unneeded hostility in life. I don't think you're gonna be dinged for failing to count change correctly and have that impact your eligibility despite whiteboarding your practiced algorithms to perfection.

by cmckn 4y ago

yodon 4y ago

Your character is defined by who you are and how you behave when you think no one is watching you.

webmobdev 4y ago
Worry not whether your kid are listening to what you say, worry that they are always watching you.

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago

I don't want to work with anyone who treats service workers like garbage, no matter what mood they are in. I have never in my life, no matter how bad or good of a day I am having, taken my frustrations out on a service worker for whatever internal/external stressors are happening to me.

genewitch 4y ago
I find this extremely hard to believe. I, too, try very hard to not get upset at "service workers", but at a certain point, if someone has a bad attitude with me i'll eventually give it right back. This has only happened a few times, off the top of my head: support at ISPs a couple of times, creditors who were harassing me without reason, and one time extremely rude and racist people at a California School transportation office. Sure, i probably could hang up, turn the other cheek, whatever. And i'm sure my responses/actions made them no nevermind. You might be as stoic and nonplussed as you claim, but we're all the heroes of our own stories, or something.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  This would make sense as an objection if the taxi driver had specifically been asked to be a dick, to test the candidates. I'd assume they have some idea that the taxi driver is a fairly reasonable person (and apparently they know him well enough to trust his judgement).
  - alanh 4y ago
    To be fair, the comment you were replying to was strictly a response to someone's personal claim, not about the taxi driver scenario in particular
  - genewitch 4y ago
    English is a tricky language, and in my reading of GP i was incredulous at the word "never", especially since service workers can be in bad moods or stressed and that becomes, to you (or me, or GP), external stressors. Maybe i'm a bad person?
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      Oh, I think you are right there. I can't think of any times I've been rude to a worker off the top of my head, but I'm sure if we went over my life with a thin tooth comb we could find some instances. So it should be unusual that for an otherwise friendly candidate, this just happens to be the day when they have an unfortunate interaction.
- jjulius 4y ago
  >... if someone has a bad attitude with me... It seems pretty obvious to me that the premise is supposed to be that the driver is courteous and professional, and they just see if the person treats the driver decently, or like trash because they feel they're above them.
- alanh 4y ago
  Quick comment to help explain why this is getting some downvotes (in my best guess): The part where you say you try to treat service workers with respect but have your limits is fine / personal experience / probably broadly relatable, but the parts that are basically calling BS on someone for claiming they never lose their cool in such situations is… presumptuous and personal. Some people really have the ability to keep their cool (for one reason or another, trained or personality-driven). Personally, I’m with you, but, I think, making progress on becoming more like the person you’ve replied to.
skissane 4y ago
I worry that this might unintentionally discriminate against culturally diverse candidates. Standards of politeness can vary between cultures (and even subcultures), and a person might behave in a way which is perceived as polite in their (sub)culture but as impolite in the culture of the service worker; an "asshole" could turn out to just be a cultural misunderstanding. Particularly if the candidate is from a minority or immigrant background (especially recent immigrant). Similarly, I'd worry that this might unintentionally discriminate against neurodiverse candidates, who sometimes might act in ways which are perceived as impolite by others without realising they are doing so. Often, if you simply analyse the interaction and give them a calm rational explanation of how it went wrong, many of them are happy to adjust their behaviour in response, and will improve over time. But, instead, some just want to label other people as "assholes" over misunderstandings. And a significant percentage of service workers may have weaker skills at "analyse the situation and try to infer the psychological processes involved" than others with greater education do, which may make them more likely to jump to the "just an asshole" explanation and less likely to perceive other possible explanations.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  I think this is a fair and nuanced comment. However, you seem to be stating (correct me if I'm wrong) that there are really two categories of situations here - situation A, where someone is an Asshole with a capital A, and situation B where you have a neurodiverse or immigrant candidate that is misinterpreting the situation and should not be dismissed based on their behavior. I can easily agree that both situations are possible and probably happen in the real world enough to be worth talking about. However, based on my (admittedly anecdotal, but extensive) experience situation A is probably something like 95% of the time and situation B is probably something like 5% of the time. How do we tell when B is happening and can you really fault people for assuming A is happening when that is the vast, vast, majority of occurrences? Is there an easy and objective way to tell the difference? In a world where wrong hires are expensive, can you fault people for assuming A? Is there a better way to ensure that B candidates are adequately evaluated?
  - skissane 4y ago
badkitty 4y ago
That's the really nasty thing about retail: the angrier and more abusive you are, you'll likely get your way. And much of the time, "your way" is being made whole with the situation. Ive worked retail for quite some time but broke out into IT. But the abuse is expected in retail. Managers are paid minimally more to deal with it - and that's to prevent customer complaints to corporate. Pretty much everyone, at some time, has flailed out at restaurant or retail staff. It's terrible, but part of the expectations.
- Taniwha 4y ago
  depends on where you live - growing up in New Zealand we don't have a tipping culture, servers will get to you, in your turn, try and demand service and you're cutting against a cultural grain, perceived to be trying to claim you're better, more important, than the other customers, or the server. I read somewhere that our "obnoxious American tourist" stereotype came from some time in the 60s when rich tourists started flying across the Pacific, showed up and and started demanding service like they did back at home
  - DFHippie 4y ago
    Some time ago I spent a lot of time in youth hostels. A pattern I noticed was that people from all different cultures were polite and considerate until the number of people in the immediate group whom they considered allies in some way crossed some threshold at which point they became jerks, disregarding rules and politeness and generally acting as though they were the only real people there. I was in Europe, so most of the large groups were also European, but I at least saw German, Spanish, and French groups behaving this way. I met many Australians, but they were always traveling singly or in pairs and always stayed polite as far as I could see. I also have a vivid memory of Americans on a train in southern Germany voicing their opinions loudly and rudely about homes they saw passing by outside the train windows. It was just three or four Americans, but the arrangement of people on the train gave them a local majority. I suspect it is this dynamic more than tipping culture that gave rise to the stereotype of the ugly American. In small numbers people in foreign lands try to stay quiet and unseen. In larger numbers they feel safe and, maybe because they feel free from consequence or maybe as a stress reaction, they become worse than their normal selves. It isn't just Americans. But for a period in the last century Americans were the folks with sufficient money to show up in other people's countries in tour groups. Also, the people who create the stereotype are the ones who are noticed. If there are lots of foreigners blending in and a group of them who don't, it's the ones who don't who create the reputation for the rest.

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago

It's understandable that people might be stressed or upset, but if they take it out on people they consider beneath them that's not a good sign.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cmckn 4y ago
> they consider beneath them It's this kind of inference that doesn't belong on a hiring committee; you likely don't have enough data to support this kind of conclusion about a person. The parent comment made a similar assumption about racial animus. I just don't think spying or eavesdropping is an effective way to evaluate a candidate.
- Disruptive_Dave 4y ago
  Had the same thought. Lots of really big assumptions here with zero fact or evidence to back them up. And poor lack of awareness. Be careful judging, my friends.
- ekanes 4y ago
  Finding out that someone is toxic only after they've got the job is problematic. The idea here is to evaluate them when they aren't aware and on their best behavior.
- brewdad 4y ago
  Let's remove some of the inflammatory language and look at more as this person doesn't "matter" to me. If I think the taxi driver is just a taxi driver, I am going to treat them as I would any person I'm not likely to meet again. Ideally, with respect but when one's guard is down an asshole is more likely to act like one. In the interview room, any candidate will be on their best behavior since impressing those people "matters" greatly. Same for the behavioral lunch sessions that many companies also use. If I have any sense, I'm going to recognize that this is still part of the "interview" even though we may be at a restaurant offsite discussing anything from the job to the Yankees pitchers. The argument, that I tend to agree with, is that gathering info from the taxi driver is a better indicator of true character. I don't expect the taxi driver to deliver a full psychological report but I would like to know if they felt mistreated in some way.

bobkazamakis 4y ago

> I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate on interactions that they weren't informed were being evaluated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect >I don't see how this behavior is relevant to the job; and evaluating it on a hiring committee invites all sorts of "cultural fit" biases that generally making the hiring process inconsistent and discriminatory. I don't see how not doing this, really changes anything. The process is already inconsistent and discriminatory. The only thing this really tests is integrity.

johnnyanmac 4y ago
I'm not sure if the Hawthorne effect applies that strongly here. It has to do with worker productivity, not behavior. In fact, this IBM test may weed out a few employees who are otherwise perfectly kind people in general public outings.

rrook 4y ago

Do you see this as being substantially different to evaluating a candidate's behavior while in a waiting room between interview sessions?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

rmah 4y ago

I disagree, the best time to evaluate how a candidate behaves towards other people is when they don't know they are being evaluated. Were they stressed before/after the interview? Well, how one behaves when stressed matters too. Finally, yes, rudeness is subjective, but so are most things in life.

hnarn 4y ago

> I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate's interactions when they weren't informed they were being evaluated. That makes about as much sense as saying that you shouldn’t be held responsible for stealing office supplies because no one informed you that there were cameras installed. If you treat cab drivers and other service personnel badly, that’s because you’re a shit person. It’s really that simple. I’ve been in extremely stressful situations in my life involving lots of travel and I’ve yet to “take it out” on a third party.

Melatonic 4y ago
I generally apply a similar test when dating - if the person is a huge asshole to the service staff then it generally is not going anywhere
- geocrasher 4y ago
  Giant red flag, indeed.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Sorry, unless you tell them you are testing their dateablilty you have to ignore any behavior on their part.
  - DFHippie 4y ago
    This needs a "/s".
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      Sarcasm is a rhetorical trust-fall, I refuse to cheapen it by adding the /s.
      - SilasX 4y ago
        Then you refuse to be a helpful contributor to discussions. Life is littered with cases where people thought they understood each other but didn’t. If there’s a chance you’ll be misinterpreted, you’re not communicating well and need to take steps to correct it, just out of general empathy for those who don’t have the exact same knowledge as you.

wruza 4y ago

Ethics aside, in my experience this type of character tends to contaminate their surroundings with this undirected negativity. It’s like a black hole that has no sides, only the mass of their ego. I have a friend like this, and while we are still friends and can manage that, I would never work together with him. It’s okay to be sad, stressed, angry. Not okay to spill it all over the world. Otoh, not clear what gp means by “rude”. Someone could perceive sad/neutral silence and “thank you, goodbye” as rude-ish too.

jameshart 4y ago

Asking for character references from someone who has interacted with a candidate is perfectly fine. I think where this might get dodgy is with the possibility that some of the candidates might have tipped this driver, which puts us in the position of asking for an opinion about several candidates from someone who might have been compensated by some of them.

genewitch 4y ago
if i were to institute something like this, the driver would be fairly (and well) compensated to do this task. Any tips would be handed over at the end, so there's no consideration of compensation involved. Obviously tipping is a data point, but it wouldn't influence the drivers report beyond that checkbox.
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- jameshart 4y ago
  Now we're adding wage-theft on top of both assessing candidates on their disposable wealth, and accepting and keeping payment from them? The ethics get pretty muddy the further down this path we walk.
  - genewitch 4y ago
    i find most things murky if you really try to walk for a while. I always find it interesting how i'm perceived. I didn't intend wage-theft as part of the idea. Also it is possible that there's people who are qualified to do this work (passenger/commercial endorsements on their driver's license), good character actors, and generally ethical. I took it all as a thought exercise, anyhow. Having been on the hiring side of the table, i'm not the "team fit" or "social" interviewer. Technical and creative questions. I let people in their fields deal with how their interviews go. So all told i wouldn't be in the position to hire someone to filter potential hires.

sliken 4y ago

If you want a healthy organization you need to be able to trust people, even when you can't watch them. This requires things like lack of deception, treating people decently, not lying, not stealing (physical or credit for ideas/work accomplished), etc. If you end up with people who ass kiss those above them, abuse those below them, backstab and/or sabotage the competition, focus on empire building, and misrepresent things for their benefit then your best staff will find elsewhere to work. Those that stay will fight among themselves and will only help the company or it's customers when it happens to overlap with their other goals. Sounds kind of like the Dilbert comic now that I think about it.

cmckn 4y ago

Responses here are really surprising to me. Should a Google hiring committee consider your search history, too? What's lacking from this conversation is any definition of what behavior we're actually talking about, and the conclusions (understandably) vary wildly. This is a similar dilemma to what a hiring committee would face when reviewing a second-hand narrative from a contractor about a candidate. I don't think a company interested in having a healthy culture should spy or eavesdrop on people.

johnnyanmac 4y ago
>Should a Google hiring committee consider your search history, too? You may be conducting reducto ad absurdum here, but this is unironically one of the biggest shifts of the Overton window from millenial to Gen Z. It may not be your search history, but they sure can check your Twitter/Facebook/etc. going back years to weed you out. It was kind of awkward for my demographic of late millenials, but gen z candidates entering the workforce may very well have their entire life online to see. It's honestly a bit chilling, but I think the lines have been set in the sand here.

version_five 4y ago

I agree with you. I understand that how you behave as a member of society is useful information and it's valid to not hire a jerk. Having the taxi driver as a spy is a bit like bugging a confessional though. Like you say, if they really limit the taxi driver's input to "was he directly a jerk to me", that sounds ok, but like any surveillance, it's unlikely it really remains limited to such a fixed scope and other information doesn't come in and bias the answer. A taxi is where a lot of people feel safe from observation, and may say things not meant for anyone's ears. As an aside, I'm always shocked at what people will start saying in a taxi/uber, particularly I'm thinking of talking about confidential work stuff. My personal view is you never know who the driver is and loose lips sink ships, don't say anything in front of him that you wouldn't say in public. But I know many don't see it that way.

vlunkr 4y ago

I'm inclined to agree. When a company watches you without your knowledge it's a clever hack, but when the government does it it's a creepy social credit system? If the hiring company secretly owned the taxi company, wouldn't that be creepy too? Also, when you're making hiring decisions, why are you trusting the opinion of a taxi driver who isn't even on your payroll? They certainly have their own prejudice, and if they know they have weight in hiring decisions, they could very well just be feeding you lies.

batch12 4y ago
If companies shared this data or it followed you around then this would be akin to a creepy social credit system. If it's an observervation during a test then it is just a kobayashi maru and not the same thing.

miniwark 4y ago

Well, they know beforehand than they are evaluated for an interview... It's a bit like psychological or sociological studies. All the time, for ethics reasons, the researchers must tell the subjects than they are part of a psychological or sociological test. But, the test is generally not exactly what is said to the people. For example by testing something hidden or by using actors. See for example the Asch conformity experiments or the Cognitive Dissonance Experiment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://explorable.com/cognitive-dissonance-experiment https://explorable.com/cognitive-dissonance-experiment In this case the people where told than they where tested, no surprise here... That said, is it really ethic to trick people by telling them than they are tested on "something" but in reality testing them on something else ?

johnnyanmac 4y ago

>I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate's interactions when they weren't informed they were being evaluated I may have agrees 15 years ago. But in a day and age where one random tweet of personal opinion can cause a PR disaster to an entire company, it seems inevitable that they want to make sure a candidate isn't going to potentially go off the rails. For better or worse, many people are connected worldwide for a signifigant part of the day, and have accounts that are easy to cross reference. e.g. a twitter account has the same name and location as a linkedIn profile. ---- with all that said, I'd be surprise if it was anymore than what was described; an ability to interact without unneeded hostility in life. I don't think you're gonna be dinged for failing to count change correctly and have that impact your eligibility despite whiteboarding your practiced algorithms to perfection.