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But those biased aspects are part of merit. I was once part of a team interviewing a manager. A person slated to be my boss. I was also up for the role, so I h

But those biased aspects are part of merit. I was once part of a team interviewing a manager. A person slated to be my boss. I was also up for the role, so I had an incentive to not "love" the people I was interviewing. When we met one candidate, I told the hiring manager to hire the candidate. I withdrew and he got hired. He and I were equally qualified on paper. But he had merit I didn't. I wanted to work with him. Compatibility is part of merit. It's a huge part.

austin-cheney 2y ago
You make some abstract conclusions about merit without defining what that word means to you or how it is applied. That makes your comment really half a comment that is just words void of a logical connection to anything. Whether compatibility is a part of merit depends upon your highly specific definition of that term. This context of compatibility is especially problematic. Merit typically refers to one or more accomplishments or experiences whose sum accounts for a qualifier, which refers to actions in the past. Perceived compatibility at interview time refers to assumed future social cohesion. 1. This is a demonstration of tense mismatch. It compares past known things to future desires. It is rational to hope for some unrealized conclusion in the future, but it is illogical to use that hope as a basis of comparison. 2. In most cases interviewers know they want compatibility, but they have not defined what specifically constitutes compatibility. So, even if the first point were logical it still doesn't matter because its unclear what comparison is being drawn. This is precisely why many hiring companies numerically ignore hiring for talent all together and instead focus only upon statistical mean segments above some stated minimum qualifiers. Everybody wants to pretend they hire for talent, because it sounds attractive, but the numbers and practices say the opposite. If you want, in reality, for social compatibility to actually matter that needs to be defined as specifically as possible. I promise you that whatever series of definitions you or anybody else comes up with will ultimately differ from concepts of merit significantly, because excellence, the goal of merit, and sameness, the goal of compatibility, are diametrically opposed.

austin-cheney 2y ago

You make some abstract conclusions about merit without defining what that word means to you or how it is applied. That makes your comment really half a comment that is just words void of a logical connection to anything. Whether compatibility is a part of merit depends upon your highly specific definition of that term. This context of compatibility is especially problematic. Merit typically refers to one or more accomplishments or experiences whose sum accounts for a qualifier, which refers to actions in the past. Perceived compatibility at interview time refers to assumed future social cohesion. 1. This is a demonstration of tense mismatch. It compares past known things to future desires. It is rational to hope for some unrealized conclusion in the future, but it is illogical to use that hope as a basis of comparison. 2. In most cases interviewers know they want compatibility, but they have not defined what specifically constitutes compatibility. So, even if the first point were logical it still doesn't matter because its unclear what comparison is being drawn. This is precisely why many hiring companies numerically ignore hiring for talent all together and instead focus only upon statistical mean segments above some stated minimum qualifiers. Everybody wants to pretend they hire for talent, because it sounds attractive, but the numbers and practices say the opposite. If you want, in reality, for social compatibility to actually matter that needs to be defined as specifically as possible. I promise you that whatever series of definitions you or anybody else comes up with will ultimately differ from concepts of merit significantly, because excellence, the goal of merit, and sameness, the goal of compatibility, are diametrically opposed.