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Absolutely No. Anyone who has done job interviews can testify that this is a terrible idea. In person verbal communication is much more prone to miscommunicatio

Absolutely No. Anyone who has done job interviews can testify that this is a terrible idea. In person verbal communication is much more prone to miscommunication than written word where you know exactly what was written. Plus oral exams leave out room for a lot of subjectivity and bias.

xdennis 4y ago
And yet I've never head of a hiring process that is only in writing. I agree that it's more subjective, but with verbal communication (where you can have back and forth), it's easier to AVOID miscommunication. Both oral and written have their pros/cons. Perhaps the best approach is to rely on written for scoring and oral for "sanity checks" (i.e. is the person just faking it).
GalenErso 4y ago
God forbid college educated professionals know a minimum about communication and speaking. Aren't you/we supposed to be society's elite? You're not supposed to "miscommunicate" by the time you graduate. College students in the 1910s could read Greek and Latin. Before beginning college. And there were no fancy apps to help them. Everything was by the book and hard memorization. But it would be asking too much of a graduate in 2023 to be fluent in English? A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >God forbid college educated professionals know a minimum about communication and speaking. You're not supposed to "miscommunicate" by the time you graduate. I think in the era of remote work one might assumes that all communication is done via slack/email and no real time verbal communication is needed.
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  And yet somehow the world’s richest man and a world renowned journalist, both arguably fluent in English, can’t communicate with each other. https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/10/23678105/elon-musk-substack-notes-battle-matt-taibbi https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/10/23678105/elon-musk-substa... The core of the problem lies with your expectation that just being fluent in English is sufficient to not have miscommunication. Communication is a lot more involved and something as trivial as not having a good night’s sleep can take your attention away from what others are saying. Written communication helps because you can read something back quickly if you skipped over something or were not paying attention.
- Night_Thastus 4y ago
  >Specialization is for insects. Specialization is the only way we can currently make progress as a species, and is the only way we will be able to for the foreseeable future. If everyone only had a passing or surface level knowledge of every field, they could not add to our collective understanding of any field. To actually advance human understanding in a field, an individual needs to catch up on everything that has been learned about it up to this point. For some fields, that is hundreds of years of research and knowledge gained. That's not practical to learn for more than one or two fields - we simply don't live long enough. If you want the person who makes the next alloy that makes planes another 20% lighter, you're going to need someone who has dedicated most of their life to just learning material sciences and is putting all their effort into that topic. It isn't going to be done by someone who had one quarter of a semester in college on it. (With rare exceptions)
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>In person verbal communication is much more prone to miscommunication than written word where you know exactly what was written. Me thinks you are mistaken. In case of verbal miscommunication, you can always give the other party a second chance and ask them to repeat or rephrase their statement or you can rephrase yourself if you felt your originals statement was confusing. In case of written communication there is no second chance to rephrase your statement. What's written is written, and that goes, regardless if it was well understood or not.
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  You speak faster than you write. Writing helps formulate your thoughts better and hence reduces the need for do overs.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Not if you're under time pressure, which many written exams are. If you have to write fast, you're maximizing the chance of mistakes and there's little opportunities to go back, correct and rewrite.

xdennis 4y ago

And yet I've never head of a hiring process that is only in writing. I agree that it's more subjective, but with verbal communication (where you can have back and forth), it's easier to AVOID miscommunication. Both oral and written have their pros/cons. Perhaps the best approach is to rely on written for scoring and oral for "sanity checks" (i.e. is the person just faking it).

GalenErso 4y ago

God forbid college educated professionals know a minimum about communication and speaking. Aren't you/we supposed to be society's elite? You're not supposed to "miscommunicate" by the time you graduate. College students in the 1910s could read Greek and Latin. Before beginning college. And there were no fancy apps to help them. Everything was by the book and hard memorization. But it would be asking too much of a graduate in 2023 to be fluent in English? A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>God forbid college educated professionals know a minimum about communication and speaking. You're not supposed to "miscommunicate" by the time you graduate. I think in the era of remote work one might assumes that all communication is done via slack/email and no real time verbal communication is needed.
darth_avocado 4y ago
And yet somehow the world’s richest man and a world renowned journalist, both arguably fluent in English, can’t communicate with each other. https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/10/23678105/elon-musk-substack-notes-battle-matt-taibbi https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/10/23678105/elon-musk-substa... The core of the problem lies with your expectation that just being fluent in English is sufficient to not have miscommunication. Communication is a lot more involved and something as trivial as not having a good night’s sleep can take your attention away from what others are saying. Written communication helps because you can read something back quickly if you skipped over something or were not paying attention.
Night_Thastus 4y ago
>Specialization is for insects. Specialization is the only way we can currently make progress as a species, and is the only way we will be able to for the foreseeable future. If everyone only had a passing or surface level knowledge of every field, they could not add to our collective understanding of any field. To actually advance human understanding in a field, an individual needs to catch up on everything that has been learned about it up to this point. For some fields, that is hundreds of years of research and knowledge gained. That's not practical to learn for more than one or two fields - we simply don't live long enough. If you want the person who makes the next alloy that makes planes another 20% lighter, you're going to need someone who has dedicated most of their life to just learning material sciences and is putting all their effort into that topic. It isn't going to be done by someone who had one quarter of a semester in college on it. (With rare exceptions)

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>In person verbal communication is much more prone to miscommunication than written word where you know exactly what was written. Me thinks you are mistaken. In case of verbal miscommunication, you can always give the other party a second chance and ask them to repeat or rephrase their statement or you can rephrase yourself if you felt your originals statement was confusing. In case of written communication there is no second chance to rephrase your statement. What's written is written, and that goes, regardless if it was well understood or not.

darth_avocado 4y ago
You speak faster than you write. Writing helps formulate your thoughts better and hence reduces the need for do overs.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Not if you're under time pressure, which many written exams are. If you have to write fast, you're maximizing the chance of mistakes and there's little opportunities to go back, correct and rewrite.