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How to hire low experience, high potential people

404 points by chuckhend 3y ago

garciasn 3y ago
This is exactly what I do with my team. I staff the upper levels first with people I trust (people have worked with me for 15 years across 4 different companies now) and then start fleshing out the rest of the teams beneath them with high potential n00bs. Why? Because that’s what I was when I started and now I’m paying it forward. It’s been a very successful model and continues to be.
- dojorno 3y ago
  hiring?
jawns 3y ago
The list of indicators are great and spot-on. But in terms of how to assess them, a lot of the advice here boils down to "you'll know it when you see it." So I think this advice is best for seasoned hiring managers. If you're just starting out, it's going to be hard to accurately detect some of the nuance and subjective elements.
duxup 3y ago
I like that this isn't your typical skills demo. I changed careers at age 40+, learned to code, now years later enjoying it. It just took someone who thought I could grow. Interestingly I was hired along side some capable, albeit green, college grads. The difference in terms of understanding how a business works, speaking to customers, asking questions / follow through to get down to the problem we're solving was enormous. They could code circles around me, but they also just wanted to be told exactly what to code and had no interest beyond exactly that.
- spaniard89277 3y ago
  I'm 36 And also trying to get my foot in. It's very hard, wish I could find someone who gives me an opportunity. I've been interviewed but it's always about the skillset you bring to the table. Can I throw you against a codebase and be productive quickly? Do you already have experience with this obscure library? I want to build now a website using React + Function Calling + Puppeteer, IDK what else to do to impress people. Same happening with my gf, who is a graphic designer + UI/UX. She has some experience but only as freelancer, she's never been hired by anyone because it seems never enough. I teached her HTML + CSS and she's been able to do this by herself (https://sofialenti.com/ https://sofialenti.com/) so IDK what more a designer can learn. The only thing that's left IMO is to learn JS and be able to code some awesome stuff, but at that point she would be almost an unicorn. It seems the market is just too saturated, despite the frequent news about we need millions of people who can do X! It seems like a way to get cheap and disposable labor.
  - geraldhh 3y ago
    > It seems the market is just too saturated, despite the frequent news about we need millions of people who can do X! It seems like a way to get cheap and disposable labor. seems a good bet to stay clear of industrialized work environments if one doesn't want to be cheap and disposable labor.
    - CrimsonCape 3y ago
      Tech allows companies to solicit a planet-sized talent pool. Microsoft has an entire Indian branch of the company. While some individuals (i.e. the workers in India) are able to benefit, it comes with tradeoff: the local developer loses the job, and the guy or girl who would like to change careers to software development loses as well. Not to mention, the Microsoft coffers get larger since they can pay cheaper wages to the overseas dev. All you can do is lobby for tighter restrictions, however of course Microsoft is lobbying at the same time with a larger bankroll than you.
- chefandy 3y ago
  Ambiguity and uncertainty are anathema to approaching problems from the classic engineering mindset. That's not a bad thing when used properly, and it's great in school where people hand you a stream of problems designed to be interesting in that mentality, but it's not the general-purpose tool for interfacing with all problems, as some imagine. I've worked both as a developer and designer, and with design tasks, you've only got a fuzzy sense of the wrong answers before you manage to craft a right one. Many, if not most engineers find it much easier to assume designers sit around all day moving things about as they fancy rather than imagining what it would take to solve ambiguous problems with no way to determine if you've got a really good solution until many people start interacting with it.
poorman 3y ago
> Most smart people are actually terrible at having the drive/follow through to take things to completion. They’ll usually want to give up at the first sign of failure or slowness. You can also hire that really "smart" person from a large co to a startup and watch them be extremely successful in a low-friction environment for crossing the finish line.
- user_7832 3y ago
  > > Most smart people are actually terrible at having the drive/follow through to take things to completion. They’ll usually want to give up at the first sign of failure or slowness. Also, sometimes these people who don't follow through to take things to completion might "just" have something like ADHD. Struggling with finishing tasks is a very common ADHD symptom, and a good manager will help someone use the other "good" skills to compensate for such an issue. (Personally I believe the reason for this is perfectionism.)
- nradov 3y ago
  Startups have just as much friction. The only difference is that the friction is more external than internal.
- rabi_molar 3y ago
  What makes you think a startup is a low-friction environment rather than a different kind of high-friction environment where the corporate person could be absolutely miserable and unprepared for execution with resource constraints?
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    It's the difference between being blocked by a wall (with 'no trespassing' sign) and being blocked by a muddy field. Some people find the former more stressful; some the latter.
    - simonbw 3y ago
      Which one is which in this metaphor? Or is it just that they're different? My guess is that the wall is the startup, but I'm not quite sure.
noamchomsky1 3y ago
> “Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Utterly ridiculous.
- stefanos82 3y ago
  This reminds me of an interview I have had in the past that made me very uncomfortable. They asked me the same question and I paused for a moment and replied "excuse me, but this question makes me feel uncomfortable; I'm here for an interview not for a date!". They realized they overdid it and asked me actual questions. Eventually decided I was the right candidate for them, but until they decided to reply back, I already had found job elsewhere. Why do they ask such type of questions anyway?!
  - beretguy 3y ago
    > Why do they ask such type of questions anyway?! They are incompetent at doing their jobs.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  "Well, I like to call chapter 7 'The Fuck Pig'. It'll make sense in a minute."
  - kdazzle 3y ago
    Dat you, David Cameron?
- trgn 3y ago
  Really condescending way of talking to a person.
- Trasmatta 3y ago
  > Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! Oh God. A job interview isn't a therapy session. Why would people ever feel this type of questioning is appropriate for a job interview? How would someone who's dealt with intense trauma during some of those "chapters" respond? Especially given the power imbalance in a job interview, and the pressure you feel to give an answer. I'd like to believe that I would be willing to politely decline to answer questions like this, thank the interviewer and tell them there just seems to be a mismatch, and walk out of the door. But I don't know if I'd be able to, due to the stress of a job interview.
bheadmaster 3y ago
> “Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. I don't think I'd be comfortable sharing this much personal information with a stranger on a job interview. Additionally, it sounds more like a psychological evaluation, than evaluation of a person's potential at a job. I understand that maybe that's exactly the writer's intention, but I'd personally be wary of companies which ask questions like this.
- paulcole 3y ago
  > I don't think I'd be comfortable sharing this much personal information with a stranger on a job interview. Then lie and tell a good story.
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    Good point! Seems like the writer has accidentally optimized his interview for narcissists, psychopaths and pathological liers who excel at manipulation, instead of true high-potential young people :)
    - paulcole 3y ago
      Six of one, half dozen of the other.
      - p_j_w 3y ago
        Sure, if what you want is a toxic team.
        paulcole 3y ago
        It's a job interview not a deposition. Isn't everybody just telling a good story to get the job? I will say that my general opinion is that people being interviewed should be accurate with the truth but can be flexible on the facts.
flerchin 3y ago
Aka interviewing for culture fit.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Aka veiled/implicit discrimination. Edit: why disagree? If you're ensuring cultural fit, that is discrimination. There are arguments to that discrimination being beneficial to the organization. The individuals may not see it that way.
throwaway98797 3y ago
the common denominator is the author makes all else moot in hiring at best you can avoid the bad, but knowing good is always a toss up especially for high autonomy roles i’ve seen good process for cookie cutter roles, but thinkers are idiosyncratic outside of, “avoid dishonest people” there’s no general rule and the dishonest people can look very honest
glitchc 3y ago
So you're looking for a creative, self-starting, committed, open, persuasive team-player that can go their own way and work with the team to achieve big goals. Got it. /s P.S. The /s is sarcasm.
- _Nat_ 3y ago
  So you'd see applicants like those that the article describes as being very desirable?
  - glitchc 3y ago
    Sure, much like magic and unicorns are desirable. The kind of human they are looking for doesn't actually exist.
    - _Nat_ 3y ago
      It's funny because I was just starting my job-search today and, at the top of HackerNews, there was this article that seems to suggest that prospective employers look for applicants like me. I wonder what sort of prospective employers might be looking for the sorts of things that this article describes?
griffinkelly 3y ago
Having worked predominantly in startups, we've almost always been cash-constrained in hiring. Some of the best hires I've found are highly motivated fresh grads or recent grads. I always look for the desire to prove themselves and take charge and full responsibility of a project; a majority of the times, money is secondary to these folks to the ability to make a difference and prove you're capable of completing something difficult. And ultimately, that's always something a startup can offer a young employee. That said, I've often had to teach them foundational things, but the desire to learn and get moving quickly outweighs any cons. When I've been at big companies, it's all about experience and grey hair, and people become more motivated by money and low risk. I find many times, the quality of the average person at a big company is lower than the average startup fresh grad.
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  "I find many times, the quality of the average person at a big company is lower than the average startup fresh grad." I wouldn't blame it on the people but on the environment. I have worked at both big companies and startups. In a lot of big companies it's actually quite hard to make a difference. There are lots of people who can say "No", raise concerns, ask for plans, but not many people who say "Yes". So after a while people learn that it's not worth the effort.
  - faiD9Eet 3y ago
    I would like to second that. Big corp introduces a constant uphill battle and people get minted to avoid conflict (Why do you want to spend money on a subject that is not on your bosses boss roadmap? Does this new service obey our IT-compliance-rules? I know a virus scanner on Linux is a bad idea, but compliance demands it. I do not care about your threat model, have you installed one already? Can you spend 30,000 Currency Units, but have it billed in November, accepted in December, and paid out in January next year? Answer me until end-of-business!). People want to have an impact on their environment and conflict is the wrong way to start with.
apwell23 3y ago
Hiring low experience doesn't make any sense because most places the salary difference is not worth the risk. Its just not a good deal for an employer.
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  Sometimes you just don't have the cash to hire for experience. IMO: It's important to hire all levels of experience. If you hire too many noobs, you get too many mistakes of inexperience. If you only hire experienced employees, you get too many people who are stuck in their ways.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Low experience correlates with young people, who are more likely to be healthy and less likely to have a family. The benefits cost saving can be large.
thih9 3y ago
> I really like questions with maximalist qualifiers like "tell me about your best X.” If it's not good, you know that their best isn't good enough. Note that this approach, when not supplemented by other questions, favors outlier great results over consistent good results. E.g.: Distribution A: 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 1, 100, 2, 1, 3; MAX(A) = 100 Distribution B: 72, 73, 78, 79, 44, 75, 78, 79, 78, 79; MAX(B) = 79
- SilverBirch 3y ago
  To just chime in, it also massively incentivizes liars, bullshitters and people who are straight up delusional.
smeeth 3y ago
People's intuitions around hiring aren't Bayesian enough. I think a good process reduces down to something like: - Are they smart? (understands quickly + communicates effectively) - Are they cool? (won't put poison in the keurig + pleasant to be around) - Are they high energy? (initiative + action bias) - Do they have the experience needed to be successful in the role? Those are pretty strong priors for success. If you find someone with all the above, you've got an ~80% chance of a hit. No need to over-complicate. In my experience, adding more boxes tends to index towards box-checkers who grew up wealthy. That's how you miss the hyper-smart/diligent state school kids who happened to spend their summers working instead of doing model UN.
- CharlieDigital 3y ago
  I have a 4-quardrant way of thinking about this that's similar. - Y-axis is "drive" - X-axis is "aptitude" - low drive + low aptitude: never hire - low drive + high aptitude: hire for targeted use cases where you need expertise - high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster aptitude growth - high drive + high aptitude: hire on the spot There's an indirect way of testing for this which is to test for curiosity and lack of ego. My experience has been that candidates with high curiosity tend to have low ego (they know what they don't know and are curious to learn). These candidates make great hires because you can teach them anything. Wrote about this a little bit here (with a handy diagram): https://charliedigital.com/2020/01/15/effective-hiring-for-small-or-all-teams/ https://charliedigital.com/2020/01/15/effective-hiring-for-s...
  - powerset 3y ago
    How do you test for curiosity?
    - pvaldes 3y ago
      > How do you test for curiosity? uh? tell me more
    - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
      You take the person off the beaten path in the interview.
captainbland 3y ago
You wouldn't need to hunt so hard for someone who was "hungry" if what you were hiring for was meaningful work. As it goes this diseased process is the result of abstract BS profit hacking being a huge part of what people are hiring for.
verticalscaler 3y ago
> “Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. I actually have some great example recordings of just such interviews as described in the article if anybody wants some actionable pointers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwRg5PiovHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwRg5PiovHQ
mywittyname 3y ago
> Disagree and commit: I hate that this is such a common thought process. This is something that makes sense for soldiers in the military. But outside of this context (being a low-information cog in a gigantic machine), it's terrible. If you can't convince domain experts that the plan is sound, then maybe it's a bad plan. Honestly, disagree and commit goes against my... > Theory for excellence.
- trgn 3y ago
  lol Disagree and commit is like your mom saying she'll forgive but won't forget. sounds good on the surface, but really slightly manipulative and rancorous.
- beisner 3y ago
  > I hate that this is such a common thought process. In most teams, not everyone is on the same page: - There are people with varying levels of experience, some may not currently have enough background to fully understand all the aspects that a plan addresses. - Many/most people have the tendency to let their various biases creep into team-level decision-making. For instance, if someone had a bad experience on a previous team using technology X, they are less likely to support using X today independent of X's suitability for the current situation. And people tend to have a massive bias towards their own ideas rather than others' - so when two competing ideas are presented, one's own ideas are often preferred to others' ideas. - Especially in larger organizations, there may be political motivations for pursuing one plan over another plan - both for management and for workers. "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" and "resume-driven development" and "launches get promo more than landings" are a few examples that come to mind that I've seen. Unless you're on a golden A-team of contributors who are all incredible and on the same wavelength (this does happen sometimes! if so, cherish it!), you're going to have a mix of people with a mix of motivations+biases+experiences, incapable of reaching consensus around the "true" best plan in a reasonable amount of time. Making decisions in a reasonable amount of time is CRUCIAL to team performance. Obviously, sometimes you make a bad decision quickly when you might have arrived at a good decision with more deliberation+debate+waiting for consensus. But in my experience, the benefit of avoiding these "bad" decisions from time to time is dramatically outweighed by a team's ability to decide very on things very quickly and commit to a plan (and therefore execute). Famously, section 5.11 of the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual [1] describes some pretty timeless ways to ruin an organization's productivity - all kinds of behavior that are kind of indistinguishable from the behavior I've seen arise from "disagreeing and not committing" in organizations. [1] https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
anjc 3y ago
This reads to me like codified psychopathy. Maybe it's profitable to assess people's insecurities or "experience caring for a dying parent" when hiring, but I wouldn't be advertising it.
- grahamg 3y ago
  [dead]
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photochemsyn 3y ago
The succinct guidelines from "Mastering the Art of War" (Zhuge Liang, Liu Ju) for interviewing people are still among the best (c.200 / 1300 CE). This is also good practive for the interviewee, you want to assess whether or not accepting a job offer at Theranos is a good idea (#5 is perhaps questionable): Hard though it be to know people, there are ways. First is to question them concerning right and wrong, to observe their ideas. Second is to exhaust all their arguments, to see how they change. Third is to consult with them about strategy, to see how perceptive they are. Fourth is to announce that there is trouble, to see how brave they are. Fifth is to get them drunk, to observe their nature. Sixth is to present them with the prospect of gain, to see how modest they are. Seventh is to give them a task to do within a specific time, to see how trustworthy they are.
rho4 3y ago
"excellence does not mean having 100k followers on Twitter" - idk, seems like an arbitrary dismissal of what i perceive as quite an achievement
devwastaken 3y ago
With drive, anyone can do anything. Almost everyone has had drive at some point. Those that no longer do were punished by the gamed system for trying to leave the socioeconomic caste they were born into. This applies to the wealthy just as well as the poor. Corps with "sane people" running them and hiring is very rare. It's against the rules of the game. It assumes that the people being hired are honest and aren't gaming you. The reason corps have all these large walls and barb wire fencing is to prevent the 1/1000 people who may cause political turmoil, use Title IX to their advantage, steal business plans/tech, or otherwise act in ways harmful to the company. These cannot be predicted by "good behavior" because such people know the game and are acting that way. Large corps that have obfuscated hiring methods do it because the fed has set up the rules in this way. Larger scope of hiring = higher chance of a destructive hire. If we want hiring to be sane then the rules have to not be punitive.
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bdcravens 3y ago
Dig into their ability to learn. Not their education: there's many in our industry without college degrees who excel. Not just depth, but breadth: how quickly can they pivot? The key is finding those who succeed at not being confined to a given box.
m0d0nne11 3y ago
Great. As if age discrimination wasn't already blatant enough.
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  Agreed, it's important to combat age discrimination against the young.
karaterobot 3y ago
> “Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. God damn that sounds exhausting. How about let's skip to the current chapter, titled I'm Good At Computers And I Want A Job.
- varjag 3y ago
  She's clearly isn't hiring developers.
  - karaterobot 3y ago
    Replace the subject matter with that of your own job, or pretend you are living inside the article and respond directly to the author if that feels right to you. Whatever gets you to seeing my point.
    - varjag 3y ago
      I didn't say that in a contrarian way, merely observed that literally none of the advice in the article applies to hiring computer nerds. Honestly I don't even know why this is on HN.
BryantD 3y ago
The thing I really like about this piece is that it’s a recommendation to apply DEI to the hiring funnel, although I don’t know if the author realizes that.
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Linda231 3y ago
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Shrezzing 3y ago
>“Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. This paragraph starts bad and somehow gets worse until a spectacular crescendo of unapologetically shamefully exploitative nonsense. That it's posted in an article about techniques for interviewing 19-21 year olds makes it so much more insidious. The article in its entirity reads like a sociopath's guide to bullying teenagers.
freeopinion 3y ago
Tip #1: You're never even going to get an application from these people if your job posting requires 7+ years with AI+Erlang+Azure. If your codebase is C#, would you hire somebody with some Java and Swift, but no C#? If the answer is no, then feel free to scare people away who are not C# experts. But if the answer is yes, reword your job posting. Sure, be clear that you have a C# codebase, but be welcoming to other skill sets. Just because you host your stuff on GCP doesn't mean that all applicants have to have experience on GCP. Unless it does. If you are trying to hire somebody who can jump in and solve a specific problem on day 1, then ok. But if you are hiring for potential, your new hire will be an expert in GCP two months after you hire them. You have a four month hiring process anyway. What's two more months?
purpleblue 3y ago
Another garbage "how to hire!" article with no data to back it up, just a bunch of opinions. There's nothing to indicate whether what this person suggests has any success whatsoever and no data to back it up. How many times did she use this methodology and it didn't work out?
dartharva 3y ago
Every time I read articles like these I cringe hard and feel sad about how far the youngsters of today have to struggle and bear bullshit just to get a good job and be financially independent. People just starting out with their careers do not deserve to be subjected to such horribly intrusive and manipulative approaches from recruiters. They are freshers goddammit, you are not supposed to hire them for leadership positions from the get-go. Treat them accordingly and give them space to learn on the job; and if your firm is not capable of doing that yet, go back to hiring based on experience. I have seen way too many large companies of today try to save labor costs by hiring fresh grads and then offloading the responsibilities of C-level leadership onto them so that they don't have to pay large salaries to the experienced candidates instead. I myself have been a victim of this pathetic practice - a large startup picked me right out of college and then made me lead the ENTIRE sales and customer experience wing of one of their divisions. With zero prior experience, zero training, just handed the reins from the get-go. This role involved hiring, training, deploying and managing literally a hundred sales executives (all of which had more ground experience than I ever did), chasing insane sales and customer acquisition targets, handling customer analytics for thousands of customers across diverse categories and segments _and_ planning and implementing outreach campaigns while desperately trying to learn the ropes at the same time. The job that I was handling was meant not just for someone more experienced, but for an _entire team_ of analysts, domain experts and mid-level managers. After a year of pushing myself and working literally 90 hours a week I gave up. This startup closed down that division the moment I left and lost ~60% of its overall valuation. From what I hear they have now fired everyone and are just looking for an exit chance. The whole thing was a F-ing nightmare that has scarred me from ever attempting to engage with startups in the future. I have joined a conventional consulting firm as an Associate currently and it's unbelievable how rudimentary things like employee training and mature, robust organization is making me feel. To any recruiters reading this, please stop going after low-experience candidates if your organization is not specifically mature and equipped enough to holistically train them.
AlwaysRock 3y ago
This is a pretty okay list of things to look for. It's hard to actually identify people who have these traits and people who are acting like they do during interview. The much more difficult issue is retaining people after you've trained them. I worked at a company early in my career that hired a LOT of young people. Most of them failed. A handful every year had rapid growth and would quickly be promoted. But it was really common for folks to leave once they had acquired more skills. Basically they had become mid/high experience, high potential people in 2 years and someone else would almost always pay them more to go work for them.
jpm_sd 3y ago
I've interviewed hundreds of people and participated in hiring decisions on 50 or more in various roles. The conclusion I've reached is that it's almost impossible to predict how someone will perform in a new role. You're always rolling the dice. You need to be willing to hire with an open mind, and fire quickly if it's not working out.
dkasper 3y ago
Some of these questions may be borderline illegal. In my experience interviewing folks for Meta we are taught not to ask such questions because of the obvious bias. Even probing into what neighborhood someone lives in is dubious (oh you grew up on the wrong side of the tracks?). I don’t even look at résumés anymore, although recruiters have to screen them. Focus on the job, if you are conducting a coding interview asking coding questions, maybe ask about something they built in the past for fun/work/learning . If you’re doing system design ask them to architect something. If you’re doing behavioral interviews this is trickiest but focus on the on the job behaviors, even if their previous job was not tech or they only have educational experience you can see how someone works with others on a project. Personal questions like this are a really bad idea.
tiktaktow 3y ago
I tick a lot of boxes and I've always excelled beyond expectations when hired for positions that I did not have good match on experience. Hire me! My guarantee, I'll surprise you.
lysecret 3y ago
Hiring for potential means to me, they didn't have the time to learn something yet. So, the most important thing is: How quickly do they learn new stuff? Are they excited about learning new stuff? You can figure this out by letting them talk about previous situations where they had to learn something new quickly.
nickdothutton 3y ago
FWIW my advice on the same: Hire for intellect, doesn’t have to be in the precise area you are working in. Some of the best people I’ve hired did not come from a CompSci or Informatics background. They were mostly STEM though. Hire for enthusiasm and energy. There are people who are radiators, and there are people who are drains. Don’t hire drains. Hire for the soft skills. People who can communicate. People who you _want_ to help (because they will need help at least at the start). People who are easy to work with (because little is achieved in most endeavours by a loner these days).
sevagh 3y ago
I think getting a no-hire signal after spilling your guts about your childhood, birth, and real stories would feel like shit. Same reason as not wanting to write cover letters anymore. If it's going into the shredder, who cares? Keep it light and airy.
elevatedastalt 3y ago
I never thought I'd say this, but... I'd rather grind Leetcode instead of being psychoanalyzed by a "Hip hop enthusiast masquerading as a San Francisco technologist".
- tinycombinator 3y ago
  The comparison may be superficial, but this article really reminds me of the times when I wrote essays for college admissions (not in a good way).
34679 3y ago
If anyone is actually interested in hiring a "low experience, high potential" person, I'm available.
neilv 3y ago
With AR or HUD eyeglasses, there could be a stealthy app for interviewees, which does facerec of the interviewer across from you, quickly scours the Web for things they've written or been indoctrinated in during formative early career, for whatever pop psych, management fad, or astrological litmus tests they'll likely believe in for hiring, and then discreetly directs what notes to hit, outlines example 'life' stories, prompts when to make a particular facial expression, etc.
txutxu 3y ago
This reminds me of "how to find future gems" between cryptocurrency small projects, or "how to analyze a good stock" in the stock market of smallcap companies. You can have your run book. Your check points. Your procedure and tools. Still, you're going to hit, surprise, a 1000/1 loss rate in the long run. At least from my point of view and past experience with hiring, young, inexperienced, but looking like a good fit. It's ok to hire people with low experience, and use them like such a resource while they acquire hands-on experience (and that is not 2 months). The real issue with this, is companies trying to cover experienced roles, with low experience people, from day one. People without experience, won't be able to do some things, in the same way than experienced people. And those more motivated, will make serious harm to projects. And those non-technical roles with decision power, listening to them (low experience) like if they were experienced, and pretending that they know the future problems of what they are doing/talking, will increase the effect. If you don't have money to invest in the strongest, or to hire experienced people... could you then put your money on an asset with dubious results and with a high probability of causing serious issues? It's ok, then play with your few money, the careers of the rest of the team, and your startup future, in the casino. You're of course free of doing it. IMHO The same way that you don't execute a random binary coming from a hacking forum, or a suspicious email, in the laptop of your bank accounts... you don't try to cover roles requiring experience and results, with low experience people. You do not deploy a random app, with random unsupervised code, into production, right? You hire low experience people, if: 1) You are willing to waste time of other (more expensive) persons into teach them a lot of important things 2) You have experienced people willing to do that 3) You have procedures and projects, to isolate their harm and what they do 4) You have procedures, to evaluate the evolution of those persons, during the months/years that you will be wasting the time of experienced people into teaching them those caveats that they don't know, or that will appear by first time in their face 11 months/years latter 5) You're not going to promote them before they are ready, for example if one experienced person from the same team, leaves the company. See point 4. You promote them when they are ready. Not by other reasons. Signed: a past victim of companies trying to lowcost the teams with low experience people
freetanga 3y ago
Wow, the fun I would have in such a process. I would retell Oliver Twist meets Annie. Maybe with a musical number to jazz things up. More like /r/LinkedinLunatics than HackerNews material.
tptacek 3y ago
We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring people at every level of experience without having to make decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their first job in our field. I'm a little grumpy about this "diamonds in the rough" shit. I'm more concerned about what's lurking in the diamond mines. If people can demonstrate that they can do the work, I don't much need to know if "they have a chip on their shoulders". More generally: I have zero faith in anyone's ability to learn much from psychological interviews.
- strich 3y ago
  In a world where chat gpt exists I think even work samples are untrustworthy sources of excellence unfortunately. It would seem one has to either watch the process or devise unique and difficult to game tests.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Work samples aren't all straight coding; in fact, only a small subset of ours are. Later I want to add: I fully believe LLMs can reliably knock out the code for most programming challenges, but a good coding work sample is as much about what you choose to code as it is about the code itself. If you're asking people to invert binaries trees or whatever, that's not a work-sample test, it's a coding quiz. Work-sample tests mirror the actual work you're doing; that's what makes them predictive. Writing a function to do X, Y, or Z is usually the easy part about building software; the hard part is deciding which X, which Y, and which Z, and how they fit together. We didn't deliberately set out to design work samples where the decisions we're grading are things LLMs don't just do for you; we do a lot of systems programming work and those kinds of decisions just dominate systems programming.
  - xena 3y ago
    As a fly.io employee, I can tell. I can tell fairly quickly.
- 3y ago
humbleferret 3y ago
> "And of course, once you get one of these diamonds in the rough within your company, get ready to provide them with lots of mentorship – they’re truly a lot of work to polish, but the best of them make it all worth it." This is true, they are a lot of work to polish. Overall, this hiring advice seems to apply to larger companies, where people have the time to polish these 'diamonds'. I would not follow it if working in a startup. I've naively hired 'diamonds in the rough' at smaller companies and startups before. While they were 'diamonds' and were very creative, often offering unique solutions to problems, they ultimately took so much effort and time to mentor that they were never able to reach their full potential. The lack of experience also meant things took longer than needed. In hindsight, my lack of time to mentor effectively was probably the issue. At a smaller team, say sub 10 people, I'd be reluctant to hire a 'diamond in the rough' again for that stage.
swayvil 3y ago
Speaking as an AS slacker with more gaps than not. Ho ho ho. Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife...
MichaelRo 3y ago
>> How to hire low experience, high potential people In other words interns. Wouldn't have guessed.
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  Hiring for entry-level engineers is so broken that "hey engineers fresh out of college are frequently good people to hire" is now novel and contrarian advice. Even before the pandemic, fresh graduates from non-target schools were sending out hundreds of applications to get their first job.
very_good_man 3y ago
Oh I shouldn’t cargo cult the biggest and most dysfunctional technology companies?
wseqyrku 3y ago
> How to hire low experience, high potential people So basically, how to hire best for cheap.
ZoomerCretin 3y ago
Meanwhile, on tech Twitter, you have people loudly saying the opposite: That there do not exist diamonds in the rough, that the job market is perfectly efficient, and any effort spent trying to find these diamonds is wasted: https://twitter.com/thdxr/status/1754614624446501347 https://twitter.com/thdxr/status/1754614624446501347
_Nat_ 3y ago
How could someone find a recruiter like the author? I mean, I'm just starting a job-search and the top HackerNews story's about how prospective employers ought to be looking for applications like mine! I'd love to talk to such prospective employers; I wonder how to make that connection?
danielmarkbruce 3y ago
Easiest way to hire a bunch of young, smart, ambitious people is to work at a place where young, smart ambitious people want to work. Anyone who's worked at such a place will tell you it's easy in that environment and difficult outside it. The deck is so stacked in your favor at the right place. It's much harder to keep the organization mildly functional so that such people want to stay. The number of highly capable, motivated people leaving orgs because "this place is a disaster" is astronomical.
cm2012 3y ago
Do an IQ test and a work sample test, everything else is cruft.
stevengraham 3y ago
The irony of midwits running "talent acquisition"
rednerrus 3y ago
"Tell me about/diagram a system you understand well." Ask follow up probing questions. How well people understand systems and how the pieces fit together is how you'll find untapped potential. It really doesn't matter what the system is.
stemlord 3y ago
Sidenote: how does substack get my email address? I don't have an account with this site but they autofilled the "subscribe" field with my email address.
neilv 3y ago
> It’s almost impossible to find the right inexperienced ones to do the former, who are inventive and original and yet also disciplined. They don’t have any obvious past experience that helps you figure out how special they are. We're still in the introduction, and already flirting with ageism. Much of HR is about actively avoiding lawsuits, not going out of your way to invite them. > I really like questions with maximalist qualifiers like "tell me about your best X.” If it's not good, you know that their best isn't good enough. I really like interviewers who have a nuanced and humble understanding of the world. > Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. Unless the candidate had a pretty enviable childhood, or they're already well-coached in milking a carefully-crafted origin story for college application and such... then I suspect it's very likely that this line of questioning is either going to get you a halfhearted "masking" response (which might not be gritty enough for a particular interviewer), or activate a lot of associations that have little to do with the job, and quite possibly could be traumatic. An interviewer shouldn't be a downer, nor be stumbling into psychological manipulation. > This is one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in the past – I found someone young, hungry, and wildly talented. However, they were also deeply insecure about their choices and prone to bouts of indecision and paralysis that crippled them. This can happen. But there's also an obligation to mentor, especially young people. Also, not all the rough spots are necessarily in an individual (it's not unusual for something in the org to be the cause of problems). > If you’re worried about negativity in the interview, know that it will only get worse over time. I'm wondering how accurate these confident universal assertions by the writer are. (For example, maybe they're coming out negative because an interviewer just dredged up some painful childhood experiences, see above. Or the cultist impression they're getting from their interviewer is souring them on a company that they were excited to join.) I have a few 'wise truths' of my own, so I shouldn't be too quick to judge. Reading this has reminded me that sometimes we need to explain when we say suspiciously tidy universals like that. > Point out things that could be better about your company that could be in scope for their role — great people are excited by the challenge, not by everything being perfect. This is related to something I like to do in interviews, which is to set a cultural tone of honesty, and to be honest about the situation and about helping find a mutual match. The writer seems to be using similar appearances tactically, to elicit more information about the interviewee, to evaluate them against interviewer's beliefs about right and wrong response. > High EQ + Persuasion. People who have a clear-headed view of a situation, and the soft skills/influence chops to bend the environment to their will, are especially valuable. It’s an underrated skill. What to look for: “Game recognize game” – it’s all intuition. It’s the feeling that you’re engaged and enjoying the conversation with the person, but you can see the gears moving in their heads as they read the room. Of course the writer can't be expected to read the room of the entire Web, to know what "game recognize game" isn't going to go over well as a workplace culture with everyone. As a person who scores high on "intuitive", people sometimes exercise what the writer is talking about in a way that I personally find to be a turn-off. I try to get them to meet me in a genuine and honest mode, and most do. Not for us to riff together on some corporate game mode, when we're both aware that we both know what we're doing (there are moments, but that's not the top mode to select for). Nor do I want them to try to manipulate/persuade me when they think that we both don't know what the other is doing (sigh, not a good sign). > What to ask: You know it when you see it. Out of context, this line at the end of the article isn't entirely bad advice for an experienced and thoughtful person.
dkarl 3y ago
For hiring software engineers, something I read decades ago that has been a consistent indicator for me is Bjarne Stroustrop's observation that good programmers are almost always good writers in their native language. In my experience, this includes high level writing skills all the way down to sentence structure, but not including the ability to write in a formal or "educated" register. Basically, it shouldn't take a lot of effort to read what they write, on a macro level (what is this about? what are the points being made, and how are they related?) and the micro level (what does this sentence say?) This doesn't correlate nearly as directly with formal education as you would think. Some people with a degree and an impressive vocabulary write text that looks like a courtroom transcript of their train of thought, and some people with very little formal education write nicely structured text that is easy to read, even if their dialect of English isn't what you'd find in the New Yorker. It's less about formal education than it is about their ability to organize your thoughts and their ability to see their work from another person's perspective, which are important skills for many aspects of programming, including writing the code itself. The downside of this criterion is that if you don't read someone's native language, you can't judge them by it, so if you're looking at multiple candidates for the same job, it's problematic to give one candidate credit if you can't judge all of the candidates. On the other hand, writing well in the language the company works in is almost always a valuable skill in its own right, so it's rare that you would want to completely disregard a weakness in this area. You just have to be aware that an excellent engineer might struggle a bit in a language that isn't native for them.
- rahimnathwani 3y ago
  > good programmers are almost always good writers in their native language This doesn't just apply to software engineers!
sokoloff 3y ago
I think there's a simple way: Hire a lot of low experience people (right out of college) and work to identify and retain the exceptional ones.
cjk 3y ago
I stopped reading when I saw the suggestion to avoid hiring people that are insecure. Some of the best software engineers I’ve ever hired lacked self-confidence and struggled with insecurity. In my experience, those folks tended to have extremely high standards for themselves, and did great work. Conversely, some of the worst software engineers I’ve ever hired were extraordinarily adept at projecting a high level of confidence without appearing to be overconfident.
whoswho 3y ago
Judging by the comments here the article in question was intended to elicit a strong emotional response out of readers. A reflex that predominantly swings towards controversial. It succeeded in its supposed mission.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Meanwhile all the grads are on teamblind and grinding out leetcode. They know Amazon is easier to get a job at but will work you hard. They already know the system and are playing it.
dc-programmer 3y ago
This is agitprop
ultrasaurus 3y ago
+1 to looking for "wins above replacement" -- there are great players on mediocre teams and weak players on strong teams. The resume tells you what teams they were on but in an interview you need to determine what they really contributed. (One followup question I find myself asking a lot is "you said 'we' did X, tell me more about who was part of that" -- great people sometimes give away too much of the credit)
l2silver 3y ago
It's easy enough to find high-potential people. The problem is how long they'll stay. If they stay for a couple of years, great, I'll take it. But anything less than that, and you're probably not recuperating the cost of hiring and training them. And the training cost can be extremely high if it involves the time of more experienced employees.
tristor 3y ago
If someone asked me some of these questions in an interview I would laugh it off to try to help them save face, if they persisted in seriousness I would walk out. My interviewer is neither my better nor my therapist and has no business asking about my personal life or non-work past. That’s bananas.
precompute 3y ago
Off the top of my head, non-exhaustive. When hiring effective management, you should go with the sociopath: - whose objectives align with your own - who can effectively mask discomfort - who can light up a room or light a fire under someone's ass - who doesn't try to one-up you (assuming you're hiring for a subordinate / equal position) When hiring technical talent, I think the following are important: - Zeal for whatever they're doing : This means you don't get to employ a cookie cutter employee. Look at the technical things they do that don't qualify for a resume. - Ability to ingest information : This person you're hiring should be comfortable with a broad intake of information from various sources. This means someone you're hiring for a technical role should be able to tell you about (for example) the last Sci-Fi series he read and how it made him apply a certain idea from it to another domain. Doesn't have to be too hardcore. This weeds out people that only picked a certain discipline for the money and have no real interest in it. - The things they've made : Don't constrain them to the exact thing you're hiring for. Allow the candidate to veer. - The things they decided to drop : This tells you what they thought wasn't worth the effort, or what they managed to sidestep, and how. This tells you how well-developed their discernment for choosing / dropping parts of a technical problem is. This also tells you how lazy the candidate is. Laziness is better than over-engineering something (unless, of course, you can explain why you over-engineered it (assuming the candidate ideally understands said thing is over-engineered)) - "If you were in management, what would you do differently?" - Vox Populi. Attitude towards those above him. You don't want a one-upper in a tight-knit, integral team. Likewise, you don't want an abrasive independent in a role that requires a lot of permission from management. Temperament must be matched to the existing team and sometimes this can be the deciding factor, an employee great at everything else but unable to work with the organization's modus operandi might require a different management style, or concessions that your organization might not be able to provide. Auxiliary characteristics for technical talent - Actual impostor syndrome : most people don't have impostor syndrome. They have the opposite, where they deep down know they're incompetent, but their ego can't take it, so they believe they need to calm down because they already know everything. When you find someone with actual impostor syndrome, you'll be surprised at the stark contrast between their accomplishments and what they claim to know. They'll be able to design complex systems but when scrutinized, will double-guess quite often. This can also be a great test for broad / "associative" thinking. Obviously, this is very different from someone that's lying on their resume and you'd need to weed out the liars in the interview. It's fairly easy once you've met someone that's the real deal. - Contrarianism/Skepticism : A healthy amount of skepticism is (IMO) necessary to keep the fires of technical work burning. Too much might mean your team would not be able to work well this candidate. More often than not, those with too much of this quality don't apply to jobs and prefer to do their own thing. - Work Experience : Not having any shouldn't be a deal breaker for junior positions. If they have worked in a technical position somewhere else, they should be able to explain what they did, what their contribution was and how this affected (if it did at all) the way they approach / engage in technical work. Obviously, giving these out before the interview would make detecting good hires much more difficult. It's also important to not linger on a question. Never making a question feel mandatory is also a great way to keep the interview honest. If you're hiring for management, make sure someone in a management position higher than the one the interview is for is alwyas present in the meeting. If you're hiring for a technical position, make sure a senior technical person is always present and has significant input, ideally the same person / group should invigilate through the (likely) multiple interviews. The interview should feel like a conversation and not an exam. Ten minutes of honest conversation that lays down the candidate's technical expectations is much more valuable than five rounds of leetcode. Nevertheless, it's important to save time and if someone doesn't have any real interest other than money, they should be dropped.
tacheiordache 3y ago
"How to hire low experience, high potential people" who would be also okay with low compensation and great promises for the future?
itsdrewmiller 3y ago
Usually the places that are trying to hire HiPos do IQ tests-once-removed like https://www.criteriacorp.com/candidates/ccat-prep https://www.criteriacorp.com/candidates/ccat-prep. There is plenty of evidence that general cognitive ability strongly correlates with job performance.
whatscooking 3y ago
Or the shortcut: hire based on nepotism
j7ake 3y ago
They’re usually first year graduate students. Or fresh out of undergrad.
febed 3y ago
Next article: How to fire high experienced, low potential people
fardinahsan 3y ago
Everytime I read one of these "how to hire" posts, it's always a opinionated clusterfuck of a process that is arbitrary/capricious, gameable and biased towards what OP thinks are good traits. This is a problem that is very easy to solve if you were allowed to use proxies for intelligence and grit. Just test for IQ and trait conscientiousness. [1] ---- [1] IQ is a stronger prediction of on the job performance than anything else. https://www.steveloh.org/news/2020/5/27/best-predictor-of-job-performance-especially-for-cognitively-complex-jobs https://www.steveloh.org/news/2020/5/27/best-predictor-of-jo...
SilverBirch 3y ago
It's always funny to see the embedded "unconventional" theme come up again and again. Hot take: You don't need someone unconventional. You need someone good. Unconventional people are just the people you notice because they're outliers, and now rather than looking for what you need - which is someone good, you're looking for this other thing. This is particularly funny of course because this person spent 6 years working at Stripe, a company founded by a genius techie who went to MIT, dropped out, joined YC sold a company for a few million. Started a new business - Stripe, and got a load of funding from Peter Thiel. His path through life could not have been a more conventional story for a tech CEO. So you tell me, should I be hiring you - the diamond in the rough unconventional middle manager at stripe. Or should I be hiring the absolutely conventional genius who built a billion dollar business. Please, explain to me, what is it about being conventional that disqualifies someone?
lifestyleguru 3y ago
The title is codeword for "it's impossible to find housing in the locations where are our offices, but we still want somewhat competent people and pay them below average".
grahamg 3y ago
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jaredliu233 3y ago
Thank you for sharing this insightful article, it was a pleasure to read. I learned a lot about hiring low experience, high potential individuals and I appreciate the effort put into crafting this informative piece. Looking forward to implementing these strategies in the future!
SteveHammans 3y ago
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wglb 3y ago
I used a very similar approach when building the security team while I was CSO at Relativity. I wrangled as much as I could with HR to do it this way. It boiled down to an initial phone call where I described the company, the job, and our process and asked if there were any questions. I did not ask the candidate any questions about their background. If they expressed an interest in going further, we would share with them a work product sample tailored to the position. This included hiring a manager of compliance and a project manager. The work sample test had a rigid metric and gave us a go/no-go answer. This approach was very successful.
michaelcampbell 3y ago
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Vinaas 3y ago
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404 points by chuckhend 3y ago

This is exactly what I do with my team. I staff the upper levels first with people I trust (people have worked with me for 15 years across 4 different companies now) and then start fleshing out the rest of the teams beneath them with high potential n00bs. Why? Because that’s what I was when I started and now I’m paying it forward. It’s been a very successful model and continues to be.

dojorno 3y ago
hiring?

jawns 3y ago

The list of indicators are great and spot-on. But in terms of how to assess them, a lot of the advice here boils down to "you'll know it when you see it." So I think this advice is best for seasoned hiring managers. If you're just starting out, it's going to be hard to accurately detect some of the nuance and subjective elements.

duxup 3y ago

I like that this isn't your typical skills demo. I changed careers at age 40+, learned to code, now years later enjoying it. It just took someone who thought I could grow. Interestingly I was hired along side some capable, albeit green, college grads. The difference in terms of understanding how a business works, speaking to customers, asking questions / follow through to get down to the problem we're solving was enormous. They could code circles around me, but they also just wanted to be told exactly what to code and had no interest beyond exactly that.

spaniard89277 3y ago
I'm 36 And also trying to get my foot in. It's very hard, wish I could find someone who gives me an opportunity. I've been interviewed but it's always about the skillset you bring to the table. Can I throw you against a codebase and be productive quickly? Do you already have experience with this obscure library? I want to build now a website using React + Function Calling + Puppeteer, IDK what else to do to impress people. Same happening with my gf, who is a graphic designer + UI/UX. She has some experience but only as freelancer, she's never been hired by anyone because it seems never enough. I teached her HTML + CSS and she's been able to do this by herself (https://sofialenti.com/ https://sofialenti.com/) so IDK what more a designer can learn. The only thing that's left IMO is to learn JS and be able to code some awesome stuff, but at that point she would be almost an unicorn. It seems the market is just too saturated, despite the frequent news about we need millions of people who can do X! It seems like a way to get cheap and disposable labor.
- geraldhh 3y ago
  > It seems the market is just too saturated, despite the frequent news about we need millions of people who can do X! It seems like a way to get cheap and disposable labor. seems a good bet to stay clear of industrialized work environments if one doesn't want to be cheap and disposable labor.
  - CrimsonCape 3y ago
    Tech allows companies to solicit a planet-sized talent pool. Microsoft has an entire Indian branch of the company. While some individuals (i.e. the workers in India) are able to benefit, it comes with tradeoff: the local developer loses the job, and the guy or girl who would like to change careers to software development loses as well. Not to mention, the Microsoft coffers get larger since they can pay cheaper wages to the overseas dev. All you can do is lobby for tighter restrictions, however of course Microsoft is lobbying at the same time with a larger bankroll than you.
chefandy 3y ago
Ambiguity and uncertainty are anathema to approaching problems from the classic engineering mindset. That's not a bad thing when used properly, and it's great in school where people hand you a stream of problems designed to be interesting in that mentality, but it's not the general-purpose tool for interfacing with all problems, as some imagine. I've worked both as a developer and designer, and with design tasks, you've only got a fuzzy sense of the wrong answers before you manage to craft a right one. Many, if not most engineers find it much easier to assume designers sit around all day moving things about as they fancy rather than imagining what it would take to solve ambiguous problems with no way to determine if you've got a really good solution until many people start interacting with it.

poorman 3y ago

> Most smart people are actually terrible at having the drive/follow through to take things to completion. They’ll usually want to give up at the first sign of failure or slowness. You can also hire that really "smart" person from a large co to a startup and watch them be extremely successful in a low-friction environment for crossing the finish line.

user_7832 3y ago
> > Most smart people are actually terrible at having the drive/follow through to take things to completion. They’ll usually want to give up at the first sign of failure or slowness. Also, sometimes these people who don't follow through to take things to completion might "just" have something like ADHD. Struggling with finishing tasks is a very common ADHD symptom, and a good manager will help someone use the other "good" skills to compensate for such an issue. (Personally I believe the reason for this is perfectionism.)
nradov 3y ago
Startups have just as much friction. The only difference is that the friction is more external than internal.
rabi_molar 3y ago
What makes you think a startup is a low-friction environment rather than a different kind of high-friction environment where the corporate person could be absolutely miserable and unprepared for execution with resource constraints?
- HPsquared 3y ago
  It's the difference between being blocked by a wall (with 'no trespassing' sign) and being blocked by a muddy field. Some people find the former more stressful; some the latter.
  - simonbw 3y ago
    Which one is which in this metaphor? Or is it just that they're different? My guess is that the wall is the startup, but I'm not quite sure.

noamchomsky1 3y ago

> “Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Utterly ridiculous.

stefanos82 3y ago
This reminds me of an interview I have had in the past that made me very uncomfortable. They asked me the same question and I paused for a moment and replied "excuse me, but this question makes me feel uncomfortable; I'm here for an interview not for a date!". They realized they overdid it and asked me actual questions. Eventually decided I was the right candidate for them, but until they decided to reply back, I already had found job elsewhere. Why do they ask such type of questions anyway?!
- beretguy 3y ago
  > Why do they ask such type of questions anyway?! They are incompetent at doing their jobs.
SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
"Well, I like to call chapter 7 'The Fuck Pig'. It'll make sense in a minute."
- kdazzle 3y ago
  Dat you, David Cameron?
trgn 3y ago
Really condescending way of talking to a person.
Trasmatta 3y ago
> Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! Oh God. A job interview isn't a therapy session. Why would people ever feel this type of questioning is appropriate for a job interview? How would someone who's dealt with intense trauma during some of those "chapters" respond? Especially given the power imbalance in a job interview, and the pressure you feel to give an answer. I'd like to believe that I would be willing to politely decline to answer questions like this, thank the interviewer and tell them there just seems to be a mismatch, and walk out of the door. But I don't know if I'd be able to, due to the stress of a job interview.

bheadmaster 3y ago

> “Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. I don't think I'd be comfortable sharing this much personal information with a stranger on a job interview. Additionally, it sounds more like a psychological evaluation, than evaluation of a person's potential at a job. I understand that maybe that's exactly the writer's intention, but I'd personally be wary of companies which ask questions like this.

paulcole 3y ago
> I don't think I'd be comfortable sharing this much personal information with a stranger on a job interview. Then lie and tell a good story.
- bheadmaster 3y ago
  Good point! Seems like the writer has accidentally optimized his interview for narcissists, psychopaths and pathological liers who excel at manipulation, instead of true high-potential young people :)
  - paulcole 3y ago
    Six of one, half dozen of the other.
    - p_j_w 3y ago
      Sure, if what you want is a toxic team.
      - paulcole 3y ago
        It's a job interview not a deposition. Isn't everybody just telling a good story to get the job? I will say that my general opinion is that people being interviewed should be accurate with the truth but can be flexible on the facts.

flerchin 3y ago

Aka interviewing for culture fit.

giantg2 3y ago
Aka veiled/implicit discrimination. Edit: why disagree? If you're ensuring cultural fit, that is discrimination. There are arguments to that discrimination being beneficial to the organization. The individuals may not see it that way.

throwaway98797 3y ago

the common denominator is the author makes all else moot in hiring at best you can avoid the bad, but knowing good is always a toss up especially for high autonomy roles i’ve seen good process for cookie cutter roles, but thinkers are idiosyncratic outside of, “avoid dishonest people” there’s no general rule and the dishonest people can look very honest

glitchc 3y ago

So you're looking for a creative, self-starting, committed, open, persuasive team-player that can go their own way and work with the team to achieve big goals. Got it. /s P.S. The /s is sarcasm.

_Nat_ 3y ago
So you'd see applicants like those that the article describes as being very desirable?
- glitchc 3y ago
  Sure, much like magic and unicorns are desirable. The kind of human they are looking for doesn't actually exist.
  - _Nat_ 3y ago
    It's funny because I was just starting my job-search today and, at the top of HackerNews, there was this article that seems to suggest that prospective employers look for applicants like me. I wonder what sort of prospective employers might be looking for the sorts of things that this article describes?

griffinkelly 3y ago

Having worked predominantly in startups, we've almost always been cash-constrained in hiring. Some of the best hires I've found are highly motivated fresh grads or recent grads. I always look for the desire to prove themselves and take charge and full responsibility of a project; a majority of the times, money is secondary to these folks to the ability to make a difference and prove you're capable of completing something difficult. And ultimately, that's always something a startup can offer a young employee. That said, I've often had to teach them foundational things, but the desire to learn and get moving quickly outweighs any cons. When I've been at big companies, it's all about experience and grey hair, and people become more motivated by money and low risk. I find many times, the quality of the average person at a big company is lower than the average startup fresh grad.

rqtwteye 3y ago
"I find many times, the quality of the average person at a big company is lower than the average startup fresh grad." I wouldn't blame it on the people but on the environment. I have worked at both big companies and startups. In a lot of big companies it's actually quite hard to make a difference. There are lots of people who can say "No", raise concerns, ask for plans, but not many people who say "Yes". So after a while people learn that it's not worth the effort.
- faiD9Eet 3y ago
  I would like to second that. Big corp introduces a constant uphill battle and people get minted to avoid conflict (Why do you want to spend money on a subject that is not on your bosses boss roadmap? Does this new service obey our IT-compliance-rules? I know a virus scanner on Linux is a bad idea, but compliance demands it. I do not care about your threat model, have you installed one already? Can you spend 30,000 Currency Units, but have it billed in November, accepted in December, and paid out in January next year? Answer me until end-of-business!). People want to have an impact on their environment and conflict is the wrong way to start with.

apwell23 3y ago

Hiring low experience doesn't make any sense because most places the salary difference is not worth the risk. Its just not a good deal for an employer.

gwbas1c 3y ago
Sometimes you just don't have the cash to hire for experience. IMO: It's important to hire all levels of experience. If you hire too many noobs, you get too many mistakes of inexperience. If you only hire experienced employees, you get too many people who are stuck in their ways.
giantg2 3y ago
Low experience correlates with young people, who are more likely to be healthy and less likely to have a family. The benefits cost saving can be large.

thih9 3y ago

> I really like questions with maximalist qualifiers like "tell me about your best X.” If it's not good, you know that their best isn't good enough. Note that this approach, when not supplemented by other questions, favors outlier great results over consistent good results. E.g.: Distribution A: 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 1, 100, 2, 1, 3; MAX(A) = 100 Distribution B: 72, 73, 78, 79, 44, 75, 78, 79, 78, 79; MAX(B) = 79

SilverBirch 3y ago
To just chime in, it also massively incentivizes liars, bullshitters and people who are straight up delusional.

smeeth 3y ago

People's intuitions around hiring aren't Bayesian enough. I think a good process reduces down to something like: - Are they smart? (understands quickly + communicates effectively) - Are they cool? (won't put poison in the keurig + pleasant to be around) - Are they high energy? (initiative + action bias) - Do they have the experience needed to be successful in the role? Those are pretty strong priors for success. If you find someone with all the above, you've got an ~80% chance of a hit. No need to over-complicate. In my experience, adding more boxes tends to index towards box-checkers who grew up wealthy. That's how you miss the hyper-smart/diligent state school kids who happened to spend their summers working instead of doing model UN.

CharlieDigital 3y ago
I have a 4-quardrant way of thinking about this that's similar. - Y-axis is "drive" - X-axis is "aptitude" - low drive + low aptitude: never hire - low drive + high aptitude: hire for targeted use cases where you need expertise - high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster aptitude growth - high drive + high aptitude: hire on the spot There's an indirect way of testing for this which is to test for curiosity and lack of ego. My experience has been that candidates with high curiosity tend to have low ego (they know what they don't know and are curious to learn). These candidates make great hires because you can teach them anything. Wrote about this a little bit here (with a handy diagram): https://charliedigital.com/2020/01/15/effective-hiring-for-small-or-all-teams/ https://charliedigital.com/2020/01/15/effective-hiring-for-s...
- powerset 3y ago
  How do you test for curiosity?
  - pvaldes 3y ago
    > How do you test for curiosity? uh? tell me more
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    You take the person off the beaten path in the interview.

captainbland 3y ago

You wouldn't need to hunt so hard for someone who was "hungry" if what you were hiring for was meaningful work. As it goes this diseased process is the result of abstract BS profit hacking being a huge part of what people are hiring for.

verticalscaler 3y ago

> “Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. I actually have some great example recordings of just such interviews as described in the article if anybody wants some actionable pointers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwRg5PiovHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwRg5PiovHQ

mywittyname 3y ago

> Disagree and commit: I hate that this is such a common thought process. This is something that makes sense for soldiers in the military. But outside of this context (being a low-information cog in a gigantic machine), it's terrible. If you can't convince domain experts that the plan is sound, then maybe it's a bad plan. Honestly, disagree and commit goes against my... > Theory for excellence.

trgn 3y ago
lol Disagree and commit is like your mom saying she'll forgive but won't forget. sounds good on the surface, but really slightly manipulative and rancorous.
beisner 3y ago
> I hate that this is such a common thought process. In most teams, not everyone is on the same page: - There are people with varying levels of experience, some may not currently have enough background to fully understand all the aspects that a plan addresses. - Many/most people have the tendency to let their various biases creep into team-level decision-making. For instance, if someone had a bad experience on a previous team using technology X, they are less likely to support using X today independent of X's suitability for the current situation. And people tend to have a massive bias towards their own ideas rather than others' - so when two competing ideas are presented, one's own ideas are often preferred to others' ideas. - Especially in larger organizations, there may be political motivations for pursuing one plan over another plan - both for management and for workers. "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" and "resume-driven development" and "launches get promo more than landings" are a few examples that come to mind that I've seen. Unless you're on a golden A-team of contributors who are all incredible and on the same wavelength (this does happen sometimes! if so, cherish it!), you're going to have a mix of people with a mix of motivations+biases+experiences, incapable of reaching consensus around the "true" best plan in a reasonable amount of time. Making decisions in a reasonable amount of time is CRUCIAL to team performance. Obviously, sometimes you make a bad decision quickly when you might have arrived at a good decision with more deliberation+debate+waiting for consensus. But in my experience, the benefit of avoiding these "bad" decisions from time to time is dramatically outweighed by a team's ability to decide very on things very quickly and commit to a plan (and therefore execute). Famously, section 5.11 of the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual [1] describes some pretty timeless ways to ruin an organization's productivity - all kinds of behavior that are kind of indistinguishable from the behavior I've seen arise from "disagreeing and not committing" in organizations. [1] https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...

anjc 3y ago

This reads to me like codified psychopathy. Maybe it's profitable to assess people's insecurities or "experience caring for a dying parent" when hiring, but I wouldn't be advertising it.

grahamg 3y ago
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photochemsyn 3y ago

The succinct guidelines from "Mastering the Art of War" (Zhuge Liang, Liu Ju) for interviewing people are still among the best (c.200 / 1300 CE). This is also good practive for the interviewee, you want to assess whether or not accepting a job offer at Theranos is a good idea (#5 is perhaps questionable): Hard though it be to know people, there are ways. First is to question them concerning right and wrong, to observe their ideas. Second is to exhaust all their arguments, to see how they change. Third is to consult with them about strategy, to see how perceptive they are. Fourth is to announce that there is trouble, to see how brave they are. Fifth is to get them drunk, to observe their nature. Sixth is to present them with the prospect of gain, to see how modest they are. Seventh is to give them a task to do within a specific time, to see how trustworthy they are.

rho4 3y ago

"excellence does not mean having 100k followers on Twitter" - idk, seems like an arbitrary dismissal of what i perceive as quite an achievement

devwastaken 3y ago

With drive, anyone can do anything. Almost everyone has had drive at some point. Those that no longer do were punished by the gamed system for trying to leave the socioeconomic caste they were born into. This applies to the wealthy just as well as the poor. Corps with "sane people" running them and hiring is very rare. It's against the rules of the game. It assumes that the people being hired are honest and aren't gaming you. The reason corps have all these large walls and barb wire fencing is to prevent the 1/1000 people who may cause political turmoil, use Title IX to their advantage, steal business plans/tech, or otherwise act in ways harmful to the company. These cannot be predicted by "good behavior" because such people know the game and are acting that way. Large corps that have obfuscated hiring methods do it because the fed has set up the rules in this way. Larger scope of hiring = higher chance of a destructive hire. If we want hiring to be sane then the rules have to not be punitive.

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bdcravens 3y ago

Dig into their ability to learn. Not their education: there's many in our industry without college degrees who excel. Not just depth, but breadth: how quickly can they pivot? The key is finding those who succeed at not being confined to a given box.

m0d0nne11 3y ago

Great. As if age discrimination wasn't already blatant enough.

ZoomerCretin 3y ago
Agreed, it's important to combat age discrimination against the young.

karaterobot 3y ago

varjag 3y ago
She's clearly isn't hiring developers.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  Replace the subject matter with that of your own job, or pretend you are living inside the article and respond directly to the author if that feels right to you. Whatever gets you to seeing my point.
  - varjag 3y ago
    I didn't say that in a contrarian way, merely observed that literally none of the advice in the article applies to hiring computer nerds. Honestly I don't even know why this is on HN.

BryantD 3y ago

The thing I really like about this piece is that it’s a recommendation to apply DEI to the hiring funnel, although I don’t know if the author realizes that.

deleted 3y ago

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Linda231 3y ago

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Shrezzing 3y ago

>“Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. This paragraph starts bad and somehow gets worse until a spectacular crescendo of unapologetically shamefully exploitative nonsense. That it's posted in an article about techniques for interviewing 19-21 year olds makes it so much more insidious. The article in its entirity reads like a sociopath's guide to bullying teenagers.

freeopinion 3y ago

Tip #1: You're never even going to get an application from these people if your job posting requires 7+ years with AI+Erlang+Azure. If your codebase is C#, would you hire somebody with some Java and Swift, but no C#? If the answer is no, then feel free to scare people away who are not C# experts. But if the answer is yes, reword your job posting. Sure, be clear that you have a C# codebase, but be welcoming to other skill sets. Just because you host your stuff on GCP doesn't mean that all applicants have to have experience on GCP. Unless it does. If you are trying to hire somebody who can jump in and solve a specific problem on day 1, then ok. But if you are hiring for potential, your new hire will be an expert in GCP two months after you hire them. You have a four month hiring process anyway. What's two more months?

purpleblue 3y ago

Another garbage "how to hire!" article with no data to back it up, just a bunch of opinions. There's nothing to indicate whether what this person suggests has any success whatsoever and no data to back it up. How many times did she use this methodology and it didn't work out?

dartharva 3y ago

Every time I read articles like these I cringe hard and feel sad about how far the youngsters of today have to struggle and bear bullshit just to get a good job and be financially independent. People just starting out with their careers do not deserve to be subjected to such horribly intrusive and manipulative approaches from recruiters. They are freshers goddammit, you are not supposed to hire them for leadership positions from the get-go. Treat them accordingly and give them space to learn on the job; and if your firm is not capable of doing that yet, go back to hiring based on experience. I have seen way too many large companies of today try to save labor costs by hiring fresh grads and then offloading the responsibilities of C-level leadership onto them so that they don't have to pay large salaries to the experienced candidates instead. I myself have been a victim of this pathetic practice - a large startup picked me right out of college and then made me lead the ENTIRE sales and customer experience wing of one of their divisions. With zero prior experience, zero training, just handed the reins from the get-go. This role involved hiring, training, deploying and managing literally a hundred sales executives (all of which had more ground experience than I ever did), chasing insane sales and customer acquisition targets, handling customer analytics for thousands of customers across diverse categories and segments _and_ planning and implementing outreach campaigns while desperately trying to learn the ropes at the same time. The job that I was handling was meant not just for someone more experienced, but for an _entire team_ of analysts, domain experts and mid-level managers. After a year of pushing myself and working literally 90 hours a week I gave up. This startup closed down that division the moment I left and lost ~60% of its overall valuation. From what I hear they have now fired everyone and are just looking for an exit chance. The whole thing was a F-ing nightmare that has scarred me from ever attempting to engage with startups in the future. I have joined a conventional consulting firm as an Associate currently and it's unbelievable how rudimentary things like employee training and mature, robust organization is making me feel. To any recruiters reading this, please stop going after low-experience candidates if your organization is not specifically mature and equipped enough to holistically train them.

AlwaysRock 3y ago

This is a pretty okay list of things to look for. It's hard to actually identify people who have these traits and people who are acting like they do during interview. The much more difficult issue is retaining people after you've trained them. I worked at a company early in my career that hired a LOT of young people. Most of them failed. A handful every year had rapid growth and would quickly be promoted. But it was really common for folks to leave once they had acquired more skills. Basically they had become mid/high experience, high potential people in 2 years and someone else would almost always pay them more to go work for them.

jpm_sd 3y ago

I've interviewed hundreds of people and participated in hiring decisions on 50 or more in various roles. The conclusion I've reached is that it's almost impossible to predict how someone will perform in a new role. You're always rolling the dice. You need to be willing to hire with an open mind, and fire quickly if it's not working out.

dkasper 3y ago

Some of these questions may be borderline illegal. In my experience interviewing folks for Meta we are taught not to ask such questions because of the obvious bias. Even probing into what neighborhood someone lives in is dubious (oh you grew up on the wrong side of the tracks?). I don’t even look at résumés anymore, although recruiters have to screen them. Focus on the job, if you are conducting a coding interview asking coding questions, maybe ask about something they built in the past for fun/work/learning . If you’re doing system design ask them to architect something. If you’re doing behavioral interviews this is trickiest but focus on the on the job behaviors, even if their previous job was not tech or they only have educational experience you can see how someone works with others on a project. Personal questions like this are a really bad idea.

tiktaktow 3y ago

I tick a lot of boxes and I've always excelled beyond expectations when hired for positions that I did not have good match on experience. Hire me! My guarantee, I'll surprise you.

lysecret 3y ago

Hiring for potential means to me, they didn't have the time to learn something yet. So, the most important thing is: How quickly do they learn new stuff? Are they excited about learning new stuff? You can figure this out by letting them talk about previous situations where they had to learn something new quickly.

nickdothutton 3y ago

FWIW my advice on the same: Hire for intellect, doesn’t have to be in the precise area you are working in. Some of the best people I’ve hired did not come from a CompSci or Informatics background. They were mostly STEM though. Hire for enthusiasm and energy. There are people who are radiators, and there are people who are drains. Don’t hire drains. Hire for the soft skills. People who can communicate. People who you _want_ to help (because they will need help at least at the start). People who are easy to work with (because little is achieved in most endeavours by a loner these days).

sevagh 3y ago

I think getting a no-hire signal after spilling your guts about your childhood, birth, and real stories would feel like shit. Same reason as not wanting to write cover letters anymore. If it's going into the shredder, who cares? Keep it light and airy.

elevatedastalt 3y ago

I never thought I'd say this, but... I'd rather grind Leetcode instead of being psychoanalyzed by a "Hip hop enthusiast masquerading as a San Francisco technologist".

tinycombinator 3y ago
The comparison may be superficial, but this article really reminds me of the times when I wrote essays for college admissions (not in a good way).

34679 3y ago

If anyone is actually interested in hiring a "low experience, high potential" person, I'm available.

neilv 3y ago

With AR or HUD eyeglasses, there could be a stealthy app for interviewees, which does facerec of the interviewer across from you, quickly scours the Web for things they've written or been indoctrinated in during formative early career, for whatever pop psych, management fad, or astrological litmus tests they'll likely believe in for hiring, and then discreetly directs what notes to hit, outlines example 'life' stories, prompts when to make a particular facial expression, etc.

txutxu 3y ago

This reminds me of "how to find future gems" between cryptocurrency small projects, or "how to analyze a good stock" in the stock market of smallcap companies. You can have your run book. Your check points. Your procedure and tools. Still, you're going to hit, surprise, a 1000/1 loss rate in the long run. At least from my point of view and past experience with hiring, young, inexperienced, but looking like a good fit. It's ok to hire people with low experience, and use them like such a resource while they acquire hands-on experience (and that is not 2 months). The real issue with this, is companies trying to cover experienced roles, with low experience people, from day one. People without experience, won't be able to do some things, in the same way than experienced people. And those more motivated, will make serious harm to projects. And those non-technical roles with decision power, listening to them (low experience) like if they were experienced, and pretending that they know the future problems of what they are doing/talking, will increase the effect. If you don't have money to invest in the strongest, or to hire experienced people... could you then put your money on an asset with dubious results and with a high probability of causing serious issues? It's ok, then play with your few money, the careers of the rest of the team, and your startup future, in the casino. You're of course free of doing it. IMHO The same way that you don't execute a random binary coming from a hacking forum, or a suspicious email, in the laptop of your bank accounts... you don't try to cover roles requiring experience and results, with low experience people. You do not deploy a random app, with random unsupervised code, into production, right? You hire low experience people, if: 1) You are willing to waste time of other (more expensive) persons into teach them a lot of important things 2) You have experienced people willing to do that 3) You have procedures and projects, to isolate their harm and what they do 4) You have procedures, to evaluate the evolution of those persons, during the months/years that you will be wasting the time of experienced people into teaching them those caveats that they don't know, or that will appear by first time in their face 11 months/years latter 5) You're not going to promote them before they are ready, for example if one experienced person from the same team, leaves the company. See point 4. You promote them when they are ready. Not by other reasons. Signed: a past victim of companies trying to lowcost the teams with low experience people

freetanga 3y ago

Wow, the fun I would have in such a process. I would retell Oliver Twist meets Annie. Maybe with a musical number to jazz things up. More like /r/LinkedinLunatics than HackerNews material.

tptacek 3y ago

We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring people at every level of experience without having to make decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their first job in our field. I'm a little grumpy about this "diamonds in the rough" shit. I'm more concerned about what's lurking in the diamond mines. If people can demonstrate that they can do the work, I don't much need to know if "they have a chip on their shoulders". More generally: I have zero faith in anyone's ability to learn much from psychological interviews.

strich 3y ago
In a world where chat gpt exists I think even work samples are untrustworthy sources of excellence unfortunately. It would seem one has to either watch the process or devise unique and difficult to game tests.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Work samples aren't all straight coding; in fact, only a small subset of ours are. Later I want to add: I fully believe LLMs can reliably knock out the code for most programming challenges, but a good coding work sample is as much about what you choose to code as it is about the code itself. If you're asking people to invert binaries trees or whatever, that's not a work-sample test, it's a coding quiz. Work-sample tests mirror the actual work you're doing; that's what makes them predictive. Writing a function to do X, Y, or Z is usually the easy part about building software; the hard part is deciding which X, which Y, and which Z, and how they fit together. We didn't deliberately set out to design work samples where the decisions we're grading are things LLMs don't just do for you; we do a lot of systems programming work and those kinds of decisions just dominate systems programming.
- xena 3y ago
  As a fly.io employee, I can tell. I can tell fairly quickly.
3y ago

humbleferret 3y ago

> "And of course, once you get one of these diamonds in the rough within your company, get ready to provide them with lots of mentorship – they’re truly a lot of work to polish, but the best of them make it all worth it." This is true, they are a lot of work to polish. Overall, this hiring advice seems to apply to larger companies, where people have the time to polish these 'diamonds'. I would not follow it if working in a startup. I've naively hired 'diamonds in the rough' at smaller companies and startups before. While they were 'diamonds' and were very creative, often offering unique solutions to problems, they ultimately took so much effort and time to mentor that they were never able to reach their full potential. The lack of experience also meant things took longer than needed. In hindsight, my lack of time to mentor effectively was probably the issue. At a smaller team, say sub 10 people, I'd be reluctant to hire a 'diamond in the rough' again for that stage.

swayvil 3y ago

Speaking as an AS slacker with more gaps than not. Ho ho ho. Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife...

MichaelRo 3y ago

>> How to hire low experience, high potential people In other words interns. Wouldn't have guessed.

ZoomerCretin 3y ago
Hiring for entry-level engineers is so broken that "hey engineers fresh out of college are frequently good people to hire" is now novel and contrarian advice. Even before the pandemic, fresh graduates from non-target schools were sending out hundreds of applications to get their first job.

very_good_man 3y ago

Oh I shouldn’t cargo cult the biggest and most dysfunctional technology companies?

wseqyrku 3y ago

> How to hire low experience, high potential people So basically, how to hire best for cheap.

ZoomerCretin 3y ago

Meanwhile, on tech Twitter, you have people loudly saying the opposite: That there do not exist diamonds in the rough, that the job market is perfectly efficient, and any effort spent trying to find these diamonds is wasted: https://twitter.com/thdxr/status/1754614624446501347 https://twitter.com/thdxr/status/1754614624446501347

_Nat_ 3y ago

How could someone find a recruiter like the author? I mean, I'm just starting a job-search and the top HackerNews story's about how prospective employers ought to be looking for applications like mine! I'd love to talk to such prospective employers; I wonder how to make that connection?

danielmarkbruce 3y ago

Easiest way to hire a bunch of young, smart, ambitious people is to work at a place where young, smart ambitious people want to work. Anyone who's worked at such a place will tell you it's easy in that environment and difficult outside it. The deck is so stacked in your favor at the right place. It's much harder to keep the organization mildly functional so that such people want to stay. The number of highly capable, motivated people leaving orgs because "this place is a disaster" is astronomical.

cm2012 3y ago

Do an IQ test and a work sample test, everything else is cruft.

stevengraham 3y ago

The irony of midwits running "talent acquisition"

rednerrus 3y ago

"Tell me about/diagram a system you understand well." Ask follow up probing questions. How well people understand systems and how the pieces fit together is how you'll find untapped potential. It really doesn't matter what the system is.

stemlord 3y ago

Sidenote: how does substack get my email address? I don't have an account with this site but they autofilled the "subscribe" field with my email address.

neilv 3y ago

> It’s almost impossible to find the right inexperienced ones to do the former, who are inventive and original and yet also disciplined. They don’t have any obvious past experience that helps you figure out how special they are. We're still in the introduction, and already flirting with ageism. Much of HR is about actively avoiding lawsuits, not going out of your way to invite them. > I really like questions with maximalist qualifiers like "tell me about your best X.” If it's not good, you know that their best isn't good enough. I really like interviewers who have a nuanced and humble understanding of the world. > Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. Unless the candidate had a pretty enviable childhood, or they're already well-coached in milking a carefully-crafted origin story for college application and such... then I suspect it's very likely that this line of questioning is either going to get you a halfhearted "masking" response (which might not be gritty enough for a particular interviewer), or activate a lot of associations that have little to do with the job, and quite possibly could be traumatic. An interviewer shouldn't be a downer, nor be stumbling into psychological manipulation. > This is one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in the past – I found someone young, hungry, and wildly talented. However, they were also deeply insecure about their choices and prone to bouts of indecision and paralysis that crippled them. This can happen. But there's also an obligation to mentor, especially young people. Also, not all the rough spots are necessarily in an individual (it's not unusual for something in the org to be the cause of problems). > If you’re worried about negativity in the interview, know that it will only get worse over time. I'm wondering how accurate these confident universal assertions by the writer are. (For example, maybe they're coming out negative because an interviewer just dredged up some painful childhood experiences, see above. Or the cultist impression they're getting from their interviewer is souring them on a company that they were excited to join.) I have a few 'wise truths' of my own, so I shouldn't be too quick to judge. Reading this has reminded me that sometimes we need to explain when we say suspiciously tidy universals like that. > Point out things that could be better about your company that could be in scope for their role — great people are excited by the challenge, not by everything being perfect. This is related to something I like to do in interviews, which is to set a cultural tone of honesty, and to be honest about the situation and about helping find a mutual match. The writer seems to be using similar appearances tactically, to elicit more information about the interviewee, to evaluate them against interviewer's beliefs about right and wrong response. > High EQ + Persuasion. People who have a clear-headed view of a situation, and the soft skills/influence chops to bend the environment to their will, are especially valuable. It’s an underrated skill. What to look for: “Game recognize game” – it’s all intuition. It’s the feeling that you’re engaged and enjoying the conversation with the person, but you can see the gears moving in their heads as they read the room. Of course the writer can't be expected to read the room of the entire Web, to know what "game recognize game" isn't going to go over well as a workplace culture with everyone. As a person who scores high on "intuitive", people sometimes exercise what the writer is talking about in a way that I personally find to be a turn-off. I try to get them to meet me in a genuine and honest mode, and most do. Not for us to riff together on some corporate game mode, when we're both aware that we both know what we're doing (there are moments, but that's not the top mode to select for). Nor do I want them to try to manipulate/persuade me when they think that we both don't know what the other is doing (sigh, not a good sign). > What to ask: You know it when you see it. Out of context, this line at the end of the article isn't entirely bad advice for an experienced and thoughtful person.

dkarl 3y ago

For hiring software engineers, something I read decades ago that has been a consistent indicator for me is Bjarne Stroustrop's observation that good programmers are almost always good writers in their native language. In my experience, this includes high level writing skills all the way down to sentence structure, but not including the ability to write in a formal or "educated" register. Basically, it shouldn't take a lot of effort to read what they write, on a macro level (what is this about? what are the points being made, and how are they related?) and the micro level (what does this sentence say?) This doesn't correlate nearly as directly with formal education as you would think. Some people with a degree and an impressive vocabulary write text that looks like a courtroom transcript of their train of thought, and some people with very little formal education write nicely structured text that is easy to read, even if their dialect of English isn't what you'd find in the New Yorker. It's less about formal education than it is about their ability to organize your thoughts and their ability to see their work from another person's perspective, which are important skills for many aspects of programming, including writing the code itself. The downside of this criterion is that if you don't read someone's native language, you can't judge them by it, so if you're looking at multiple candidates for the same job, it's problematic to give one candidate credit if you can't judge all of the candidates. On the other hand, writing well in the language the company works in is almost always a valuable skill in its own right, so it's rare that you would want to completely disregard a weakness in this area. You just have to be aware that an excellent engineer might struggle a bit in a language that isn't native for them.

rahimnathwani 3y ago
> good programmers are almost always good writers in their native language This doesn't just apply to software engineers!

sokoloff 3y ago

I think there's a simple way: Hire a lot of low experience people (right out of college) and work to identify and retain the exceptional ones.

cjk 3y ago

I stopped reading when I saw the suggestion to avoid hiring people that are insecure. Some of the best software engineers I’ve ever hired lacked self-confidence and struggled with insecurity. In my experience, those folks tended to have extremely high standards for themselves, and did great work. Conversely, some of the worst software engineers I’ve ever hired were extraordinarily adept at projecting a high level of confidence without appearing to be overconfident.

whoswho 3y ago

Judging by the comments here the article in question was intended to elicit a strong emotional response out of readers. A reflex that predominantly swings towards controversial. It succeeded in its supposed mission.

quickthrower2 3y ago

Meanwhile all the grads are on teamblind and grinding out leetcode. They know Amazon is easier to get a job at but will work you hard. They already know the system and are playing it.

dc-programmer 3y ago

This is agitprop

ultrasaurus 3y ago

+1 to looking for "wins above replacement" -- there are great players on mediocre teams and weak players on strong teams. The resume tells you what teams they were on but in an interview you need to determine what they really contributed. (One followup question I find myself asking a lot is "you said 'we' did X, tell me more about who was part of that" -- great people sometimes give away too much of the credit)

l2silver 3y ago

It's easy enough to find high-potential people. The problem is how long they'll stay. If they stay for a couple of years, great, I'll take it. But anything less than that, and you're probably not recuperating the cost of hiring and training them. And the training cost can be extremely high if it involves the time of more experienced employees.

tristor 3y ago

If someone asked me some of these questions in an interview I would laugh it off to try to help them save face, if they persisted in seriousness I would walk out. My interviewer is neither my better nor my therapist and has no business asking about my personal life or non-work past. That’s bananas.

precompute 3y ago

Off the top of my head, non-exhaustive. When hiring effective management, you should go with the sociopath: - whose objectives align with your own - who can effectively mask discomfort - who can light up a room or light a fire under someone's ass - who doesn't try to one-up you (assuming you're hiring for a subordinate / equal position) When hiring technical talent, I think the following are important: - Zeal for whatever they're doing : This means you don't get to employ a cookie cutter employee. Look at the technical things they do that don't qualify for a resume. - Ability to ingest information : This person you're hiring should be comfortable with a broad intake of information from various sources. This means someone you're hiring for a technical role should be able to tell you about (for example) the last Sci-Fi series he read and how it made him apply a certain idea from it to another domain. Doesn't have to be too hardcore. This weeds out people that only picked a certain discipline for the money and have no real interest in it. - The things they've made : Don't constrain them to the exact thing you're hiring for. Allow the candidate to veer. - The things they decided to drop : This tells you what they thought wasn't worth the effort, or what they managed to sidestep, and how. This tells you how well-developed their discernment for choosing / dropping parts of a technical problem is. This also tells you how lazy the candidate is. Laziness is better than over-engineering something (unless, of course, you can explain why you over-engineered it (assuming the candidate ideally understands said thing is over-engineered)) - "If you were in management, what would you do differently?" - Vox Populi. Attitude towards those above him. You don't want a one-upper in a tight-knit, integral team. Likewise, you don't want an abrasive independent in a role that requires a lot of permission from management. Temperament must be matched to the existing team and sometimes this can be the deciding factor, an employee great at everything else but unable to work with the organization's modus operandi might require a different management style, or concessions that your organization might not be able to provide. Auxiliary characteristics for technical talent - Actual impostor syndrome : most people don't have impostor syndrome. They have the opposite, where they deep down know they're incompetent, but their ego can't take it, so they believe they need to calm down because they already know everything. When you find someone with actual impostor syndrome, you'll be surprised at the stark contrast between their accomplishments and what they claim to know. They'll be able to design complex systems but when scrutinized, will double-guess quite often. This can also be a great test for broad / "associative" thinking. Obviously, this is very different from someone that's lying on their resume and you'd need to weed out the liars in the interview. It's fairly easy once you've met someone that's the real deal. - Contrarianism/Skepticism : A healthy amount of skepticism is (IMO) necessary to keep the fires of technical work burning. Too much might mean your team would not be able to work well this candidate. More often than not, those with too much of this quality don't apply to jobs and prefer to do their own thing. - Work Experience : Not having any shouldn't be a deal breaker for junior positions. If they have worked in a technical position somewhere else, they should be able to explain what they did, what their contribution was and how this affected (if it did at all) the way they approach / engage in technical work. Obviously, giving these out before the interview would make detecting good hires much more difficult. It's also important to not linger on a question. Never making a question feel mandatory is also a great way to keep the interview honest. If you're hiring for management, make sure someone in a management position higher than the one the interview is for is alwyas present in the meeting. If you're hiring for a technical position, make sure a senior technical person is always present and has significant input, ideally the same person / group should invigilate through the (likely) multiple interviews. The interview should feel like a conversation and not an exam. Ten minutes of honest conversation that lays down the candidate's technical expectations is much more valuable than five rounds of leetcode. Nevertheless, it's important to save time and if someone doesn't have any real interest other than money, they should be dropped.

tacheiordache 3y ago

"How to hire low experience, high potential people" who would be also okay with low compensation and great promises for the future?

itsdrewmiller 3y ago

Usually the places that are trying to hire HiPos do IQ tests-once-removed like https://www.criteriacorp.com/candidates/ccat-prep https://www.criteriacorp.com/candidates/ccat-prep. There is plenty of evidence that general cognitive ability strongly correlates with job performance.

whatscooking 3y ago

Or the shortcut: hire based on nepotism

j7ake 3y ago

They’re usually first year graduate students. Or fresh out of undergrad.

febed 3y ago

Next article: How to fire high experienced, low potential people

fardinahsan 3y ago

Everytime I read one of these "how to hire" posts, it's always a opinionated clusterfuck of a process that is arbitrary/capricious, gameable and biased towards what OP thinks are good traits. This is a problem that is very easy to solve if you were allowed to use proxies for intelligence and grit. Just test for IQ and trait conscientiousness. [1] ---- [1] IQ is a stronger prediction of on the job performance than anything else. https://www.steveloh.org/news/2020/5/27/best-predictor-of-job-performance-especially-for-cognitively-complex-jobs https://www.steveloh.org/news/2020/5/27/best-predictor-of-jo...

SilverBirch 3y ago

It's always funny to see the embedded "unconventional" theme come up again and again. Hot take: You don't need someone unconventional. You need someone good. Unconventional people are just the people you notice because they're outliers, and now rather than looking for what you need - which is someone good, you're looking for this other thing. This is particularly funny of course because this person spent 6 years working at Stripe, a company founded by a genius techie who went to MIT, dropped out, joined YC sold a company for a few million. Started a new business - Stripe, and got a load of funding from Peter Thiel. His path through life could not have been a more conventional story for a tech CEO. So you tell me, should I be hiring you - the diamond in the rough unconventional middle manager at stripe. Or should I be hiring the absolutely conventional genius who built a billion dollar business. Please, explain to me, what is it about being conventional that disqualifies someone?

lifestyleguru 3y ago

The title is codeword for "it's impossible to find housing in the locations where are our offices, but we still want somewhat competent people and pay them below average".

grahamg 3y ago

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jaredliu233 3y ago

Thank you for sharing this insightful article, it was a pleasure to read. I learned a lot about hiring low experience, high potential individuals and I appreciate the effort put into crafting this informative piece. Looking forward to implementing these strategies in the future!

SteveHammans 3y ago

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wglb 3y ago

I used a very similar approach when building the security team while I was CSO at Relativity. I wrangled as much as I could with HR to do it this way. It boiled down to an initial phone call where I described the company, the job, and our process and asked if there were any questions. I did not ask the candidate any questions about their background. If they expressed an interest in going further, we would share with them a work product sample tailored to the position. This included hiring a manager of compliance and a project manager. The work sample test had a rigid metric and gave us a go/no-go answer. This approach was very successful.

michaelcampbell 3y ago

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Vinaas 3y ago

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