7 ms·

Losers exist. Don’t hire them

50 points by nikunjk 14y ago

chill1 14y ago
The word "Loser" might be a bit off putting, but if you can get past that, the approach the author of the article describes is a good way of getting to the core of the person you're interviewing.
- TillE 14y ago
  Not really the core of the person, it's more like the FizzBuzz to verify that they have some kind of basic personality and the ability to talk about things. That's fine, but hardly groundbreaking. I haven't done many job interviews in my life, but the kind of questions he suggests seem common enough.
neumann_alfred 14y ago
"There’s a Beck song about people like that." (this is song two on the album / this is the album right here / burn the album) tonight the city is full of morgues / and all the toilets are overflowing / there's shopping malls coming out of the walls / as we walk out among the manure that's why / I pay no mind / I pay no mind / I pay no mind give the finger to the rock 'n' roll singer / as he's dancing upon your paycheck / the sales climb high through the garbage-pail sky / like a giant dildo crushing the sun that's why / I pay no mind / sleep in slime / I just got signed so get out your lead-pipe pipe dreams / get out your ten-foot flags / the insects are huge and the poison's all been used / and the drugs won't kill your day job...honey that's why / I pay no mind / I pay no mind / I pay no mind that's why / i pay no mind [x7]
diego 14y ago
The author of this article is a jerk. He calls someone a loser because he or she may not be a good fit for a job. This is not someone you'd want to have as a boss. A good manager would write a more compassionate and empathetic article with the same takeaways, and without the inflammatory tone.
- dlss 14y ago
  Exactly this. He's hiring someone to do account management. The candidate has experience in account management, the rest of the team thought he'd be able to do it. The autor vetoed hiring for a customer facing position because the candidate spent more time with people than books during college. With the information provided I'm pretty sure the hypothetical alternate hire, who does have a favorite century of literature and who does have favorite poems at the top of his mind turns out to be a worse hire. "Snobs exist. Don't let them make hiring decisions"
  - LaGrange 14y ago
    It's not even that the candidate obviously didn't read stuff. The guy was suddenly grilled about irrelevant crap by some jerk. Having a mind go blank in such a situation isn't exactly unheard of. And then consider, that such a situation already smells hostile, and you might decide to not share. Or, just essentially, not actually be happy about your previous life choice, and not really eager to discuss that with a person you've met for the first time in your life.
    - eropple 14y ago
      Figuring out if a candidate is a person, rather than a meat robot, isn't "irrelevant crap." I have noticed a strong correlation between people who don't get jazzed over something--hobbies, academics, whatever--are not people I want to work with. The author's method isn't the only one, but it seems like a reasonable one to me. It isn't "hire somebody who can talk about English." It's "don't hire someone who can't talk about something he (or she) cares about." If the guy's going to be in a sales role, he should at the least be able to pivot the conversation to something interesting that he can talk about.
      - dlss 14y ago
        > Figuring out if a candidate is a person, rather than a meat robot, isn't "irrelevant crap." I have noticed a strong correlation between people who don't get jazzed over something--hobbies, academics, whatever--are not people I want to work with. Do you actually know anyone who doesn't get excited by something? They don't exist. I think what you're perhaps saying is that you prefer working with people who share a passion with you. Makes sense, I also have this preference :) > If the guy's going to be in a sales role, he should at the least be able to pivot the conversation to something interesting that he can talk about. I agree... however if the sales guy really is the sort that couldn't smoothly change topics, why did the rest of the Author's team think he'd be a good fit for the job?
potatolicious 14y ago
Oh yay. Another "if you don't do things my way (which I never back up with anything more than hand-waving - I don't even have actual anecdotes), you're doing it wrong" blog post. Whew, what a mouthful. Seriously. Even if we don't play the "anecdotes != data" game, this guy makes a lot of large, sweeping claims without even using personal experience to back it up. There's no "this one time I ignored my own advice and ended up getting burned" - no, the entire post is a giant exercise in supposition. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the entire rest of his team loved the candidate, and all of their opinions were immediately forfeit because the boss didn't like him. What does this say about the level of confidence and trust that one has in his team when you're so willing to discount their judgment entirely? But by all means, keep these posts coming, they are forming a valuable mental list of people to not work for.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the entire rest of his team loved the candidate, and all of their opinions were immediately forfeit because the boss didn't like him. What does this say about the level of confidence and trust that one has in his team when you're so willing to discount their judgment entirely? I didn't pick this up on the first read, but, yep, there it is, plain as day. Hilarious. A whole team of people interviewed this guy for the role, votes to hire, and then he asks what century of English writing the guy likes best and woosh done. So at the very least you'd think, this guy should be the first interview anyone gets, because if you're not going to pass the "favorite era of English literature" or "favorite aspect of Sino-Indian relations" or "most preferred basket-weaving maneuver" question, you might as well not waste the time.
benguild 14y ago
I find this video quite relevant for this particular candidate, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L_cGjQSR80 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L_cGjQSR80
Pkeod 14y ago
Liking solitaire doesn't make someone a loser.
pan69 14y ago
It's quite true. Losers exist. Don't work for them.
freework 14y ago
I've always felt like the best way to hire is to think in terms of teams instead of in terms of people. If you team is lacking communication skills, hire someone who have good communication skills, ignoring most other traits such as intelligence. If your team has great communication but is lacking in problem solving ability, then you should focus on hiring a really smart person, ignoring their communication skills. For this reason, I by default disagree with any article that decrees a certain trait that is "un-hirable" The best team I was every on was a team that was basically hired randomly. The boss had tons of money (rich daddy was investor) and needed to hire 10+ devs pronto. Some people on the team were idiots, some were brilliant, some were communicative, some weren't, etc. No one was perfect individually, but we were all perfect as a whole.
tokenadult 14y ago
The author of this article is a loser. (But I give him props for acknowledging in his author profile, http://pandodaily.com/author/goldbergbryan/ http://pandodaily.com/author/goldbergbryan/ "Previously, he was a failed investment banker." AFTER EDIT: and remember, he introduced the word "loser" into the thread by how he chose the title for his blog post.) Maybe he'll be a winner in the future, and I wish him well, but I wouldn't advise following his hiring procedures. He has hiring authority at a business corporation, but he hasn't done even elementary research on company hiring procedures. He writes, "But then it was time for him to interview with me. I didn’t ask him very many questions about sales, advertising operations, invoicing, collections, or any of the handful of other tactical skills we wanted. I just grilled him on the bottom fourth of his resume — you know, the one about hobbies and college." And he thinks that by doing that he is identifying winners, even as he is proud of his ignorance of about a century of research on company hiring procedures. There are many discussions here on HN about company hiring procedures. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have gathered here in a FAQ file. The review article by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, "The Validity and Utility of Selection Models in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 124, No. 2, 262-274 http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%... sums up, current to 1998, a meta-analysis of much of the HUGE peer-reviewed professional literature on the industrial and organizational psychology devoted to business hiring procedures. There are many kinds of hiring criteria, such as in-person interviews, telephone interviews, resume reviews for job experience, checks for academic credentials, personality tests, and so on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after they are hired in a wide variety of occupations. http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes.aspx http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes... EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test. The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work reasonably well. One is a general mental ability (GMA) test (an IQ-like test, such as the Wonderlic personnel screening test). Another is a work-sample test, where the applicant does an actual task or group of tasks like what the applicant will do on the job if hired. (But the calculated validity of each of the two best kinds of procedures, standing alone, is only 0.54 for work sample tests and 0.51 for general mental ability tests.) Each of these kinds of tests has about the same validity in screening applicants for jobs, with the general mental ability test better predicting success for applicants who will be trained into a new job. Neither is perfect (both miss some good performers on the job, and select some bad performers on the job), but both are better than any other single-factor hiring procedure that has been tested in rigorous research, across a wide variety of occupations. So if you are hiring for your company, it's a good idea to think about how to build a work-sample test into all of your hiring processes. Because of a Supreme Court decision in the United States (the decision does not apply in other countries, which have different statutes about employment), it is legally risky to give job applicants general mental ability tests such as a straight-up IQ test (as was commonplace in my parents' generation) as a routine part of hiring procedures. The Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971) case http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&q=Griggs+Duke+Power&hl=en&as_sdt=2,24 http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196... interpreted a federal statute about employment discrimination and held that a general intelligence test used in hiring that could have a "disparate impact" on applicants of some protected classes must "bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used." In other words, a company that wants to use a test like the Wonderlic, or like the SAT, or like the current WAIS or Stanford-Binet IQ tests, in a hiring procedure had best conduct a specific validation study of the test related to performance on the job in question. Some companies do the validation study, and use IQ-like tests in hiring. Other companies use IQ-like tests in hiring and hope that no one sues (which is not what I would advise any company). Note that a brain-teaser-type test used in a hiring procedure could be challenged as illegal if it can be shown to have disparate impact on some job applicants. A company defending a brain-teaser test for hiring would have to defend it by showing it is supported by a validation study demonstrating that the test is related to successful performance on the job. Such validation studies can be quite expensive. (Companies outside the United States are regulated by different laws. One other big difference between the United States and other countries is the relative ease with which workers may be fired in the United States, allowing companies to correct hiring mistakes by terminating the employment of the workers they hired mistakenly. The more legal protections a worker has from being fired, the more reluctant companies will be about hiring in the first place.) The social background to the legal environment in the United States is explained in many books about hiring procedures http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA271&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrlOV&sig=ctblj9SW2Dth7TceaFSNIdVMoEw#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6... http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA95&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrnMW&sig=LKLi-deKtnP20VYZo9x0jfvqzLI#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6... Some of the social background appears to be changing in the most recent few decades, with the prospect for further changes. http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R... http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWlMYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology+%22predictive+validity%22+Duke+Power&ots=5O9Hx_E1vY&sig=g-zERWztBWq3h4guEuv9VVkTh8I#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology%20%22predictive%20validity%22%20Duke%20Power&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWl... Previous discussion on HN pointed out that the Schmidt & Hunter (1998) article showed that multi-factor procedures work better than single-factor procedures, a summary of that article we can find in the current professional literature, for example "Reasons for being selective when choosing personnel selection procedures" (2010) by Cornelius J. König, Ute-Christine Klehe, Matthias Berchtold, and Martin Kleinmann: "Choosing personnel selection procedures could be so simple: Grab your copy of Schmidt and Hunter (1998) and read their Table 1 (again). This should remind you to use a general mental ability (GMA) test in combination with an integrity test, a structured interview, a work sample test, and/or a conscientiousness measure." http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri... But the 2010 article notes, looking at actual practice of companies around the world, "However, this idea does not seem to capture what is actually happening in organizations, as practitioners worldwide often use procedures with low predictive validity and regularly ignore procedures that are more valid (e.g., Di Milia, 2004; Lievens & De Paepe, 2004; Ryan, McFarland, Baron, & Page, 1999; Scholarios & Lockyer, 1999; Schuler, Hell, Trapmann, Schaar, & Boramir, 2007; Taylor, Keelty, & McDonnell, 2002). For example, the highly valid work sample tests are hardly used in the US, and the potentially rather useless procedure of graphology (Dean, 1992; Neter & Ben-Shakhar, 1989) is applied somewhere between occasionally and often in France (Ryan et al., 1999). In Germany, the use of GMA tests is reported to be low and to be decreasing (i.e., only 30% of the companies surveyed by Schuler et al., 2007, now use them)." Integrity tests have limited validity standing alone, but appear to have significant incremental validity when added to a general mental ability test or work-sample test. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_integrity_testing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_integrity_testing http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1 http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1 http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-14602.html http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports... Winners exist. Learn from them.
brianchu 14y ago
I don't get this author's reasoning here. Maybe the candidate partied all through school but got his career together after graduating. Maybe the candidate went through school and never really figured out what he wanted to do in life until after he graduated. Maybe three years into college the candidate realized he actually hated English but got the degree because he wanted to graduate in four years. The list goes on... Just because someone didn't really do much with their life 5 years ago does not mean they're a useless loser today. I noticed that the author is a "failed investment banker." Maybe there wouldn't be much the author could say about that job either - filling out spreadsheets and formatting Powerpoints are totally fascinating activities.
jasonkostempski 14y ago
Idiot assholes hiring people based on 'clever' interview techniques exist. Don't work for them.
- sjtgraham 14y ago
  http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
  - jasonkostempski 14y ago
    u r a self-important dilettante!!!!!!!!!!
michaelochurch 14y ago
So who should hire the "losers", then? The creative, ambitious, energetic people have a lot of leadership potential and can do great work if motivated properly, but also fall down on the undignified grunt work that's at least half of what most companies need to have done (or think they need). If you're hiring for a company like Valve that expects people to work at a high creative level, then these interview questions are good, because you need to select the people who will do well in a high-autonomy environment. If you're just looking to get grunt work done without complaint, you're probably better off favoring a person with a bland personality who can get the job done. Much of the trouble that companies create for themselves is in hiring the most appealing people and then putting them on mediocre work.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
starpilot 14y ago
It sounds like he's trying to connect a candidate's well-roundedness and interpersonal fit with job ability. The last sentence says it all: > But if a candidate can’t even tell you why they liked their last job, or what they got out of their college experience, or any of the million other questions that speak to their basic humanness… Then no amount of experience will make them valuable. That's his thesis I think, but he defends it very poorly. > As it turned out, we eventually did find someone for that position, with a lot less relevant experience. But she learned the job in about six weeks, and her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around. How do you know this? The other guy couldn't name his favorite book therefore he couldn't do the job? What past experiences do you have to back this up? > A person who has no hobbies, and can’t even exaggerate one, almost certainly lacks the ambition to make your company valuable. They are probably a loser. Again, why? I don't consider no hobbies == no ambition to be self-evident. One common aspects of CEOs is that their ambition for running a company pushes out everything else from their life (for better or for worse). Having no life could speak of too much ambition. It just sounds like he's trying to justify cliquishness with vague correlations to being a good worker. "Loser" to him amounts to, "a person I do not like for my own personal reasons."
pooriaazimi 14y ago
Maybe he didn't like English Literature - his passion was film, or programming, or architecture and he discovered it later (and he couldn't change his major then). Or his college had lousy Film teachers or didn't offer any programming/architecture classes so he decided to go with English even though he didn't like it. Or maybe he partied all college, and then graduated and found more about the "real" world and got his act together. I agree (in general) with wanting employees that aren't single-minded and have no hobby/passion outside of their work, but in this particular case I absolutely disagree with author's decision (based on his article).
gavanwoolery 14y ago
Here is a sure-fire way to weed-out potential winners: base your judgement on some dumb interview questions or metrics. I have failed many interviews. But anyone who I have ever worked for has praised the hell out of my work. Interviews have never been a good way of finding ideal candidates. The best way, IMHO: Give the interviewee one week's worth of work as an "internship". If they care about working for you, they will do it. It gives them a chance to prove themselves, and you a chance to really evaluate how well they can do the job.
- kamaal 14y ago
  There is a reason why interviews don't work. Because what you know is never a true indicator of what you can do.
outworlder 14y ago
The author might have a point. The world is filled with automatons, without passion or even mensurable interests. He might be right in not hiring the candidate, but we cannot know if he was, in fact, a 'loser' (by some definition of 'loser'). It might be the case that the candidate actually didn't find academy very enjoyable and spent all day drinking instead. Which most do, at some point. In that case, he could've been too shy to admit it, or did admit it and the author was too obtuse to change the subject. See, we are dealing with his perception. If the candidate could write his angle, then we could try to infer something. It might even be the case that the candidate (with lots of experience) found the interview to be meaningless and boring and wanted to leave. And generic answers are a nice way to end a conversation.
datalus 14y ago
I thought this article was informative. It's good info for anyone not wanting to work for a tool.
pygorex 14y ago
Let me get this straight. The author asserts the following: Lesser managers will try to stump candidates with horrible brain teasers along the lines of “Describe a time you got into a bad situation and resolved it effectively?” — or crap like that. What hard-hitting, incisive questions does the author ask instead? Which of your previous jobs did you enjoy the most? What do you think of our web site? Tell me about your hobbies... You've got to be kidding me. These are all soft-ball questions. What amazes me is that the author's company already has a hiring process in place. But he feels justified in abandoning this process at the end when an interviewee doesn't provide correct responses to an arbitrary list of soft-ball questions.
joshmlewis 14y ago
What if this guy was shy or a bit of an introvert? I know if I were in that situation I may not have all the "correct" answers, especially if I were in a room with someone like the author. If you make me feel wanted or interesting I can talk about anything, if you make me uncomfortable and sound like a jerk? Especially in a job interview, you can believe I'd be nervous and may not have all the best answers. As far as hobbies go, I like auto racing, but other than that all my time is devoted to startuping and freelance work, which I love dearly. Books? Last one I read was How to Win Friends and Influence People and other than that, I can't remember the last one I've read. All that to say, maybe this guy didn't click with the author, but doesn't give you the right to call him a loser. That's just bullshit.
connor 14y ago
This article came across as offensive. Honestly if a company is actively classifying people as losers, it's not really the type of company I'd like to work at. A better hiring policy might be 'hire amazing people' and then look for the amazing in people. This approach is so negative and off-putting.
georgemcbay 14y ago
"As it turned out, we eventually did find someone for that position, with a lot less relevant experience. But she learned the job in about six weeks, and her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around." Could you tell me a bit about your hobby of predicting the future, Mr Goldberg? Who would you say are your top 5 clairvoyants?
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Ok, I read it, I knew it was link bait going in, and felt it tweak "Those Buttons" that such things do. I'd like that 5 minutes of my life back. TL;DR summary I got from it was "I use these questions to decide if I'll enjoy working with someone, and I don't hire them if I don't like their answers." and interspersed with a bit of aspersions on people who aren't good at "small talk." One of the interesting things that is oft overlooked in the angst of hiring is actually the angst of firing. Really. I mean the only reason you want to be super super careful about hiring someone is because if they don't work out then you've wasted that time. But if you can lower the cost of hiring enough, and make firing pretty straight forward, then the economics can change. One summer I worked for McDonalds (the fast food chain) for all of four weeks, two in a 'training store' and then two in my assigned store. I was fired pretty quickly. During my training (hamburger flipping) the store manager explained that (at the time) McDonalds would hire anyone with a pulse and no criminal record. They would then train them briefly, and watch them closely, and decide early on if they wanted to keep them around. My "problem" was that the store had an algorithm for queuing up burgers which, from my perspective at the grill, was broken. Our store had way more people who ordered Quarter Pounders (one 4 oz patty) than BigMacs (two 2 oz patties). The algorithm though said you had to 'start' twice as many 2 oz patties as 4 oz patties just before the lunch rush. We always were throwing out 2oz patties (you can't sell them after they've been on the warmer too long). So I started cutting back on the 2oz patties I started. Big mistake :-). Got "the talk" which was "We hire people to do things the way we want them done, you may not agree with how things are done but if you want to keep working here you have to do what we say." Silly me (it was only my second 'real' job) I kept trying to find ways to optimize the system and not get caught. At the two week point my manager recognized that I was a 'trouble maker' and couldn't follow instructions. End of my career right there. Now the moral of the story isn't to make fun of McDonalds but to point out that they made acquiring good "fits" for the company straight forward by building a lighter weight hire/fire process than most places have. Folks I know who have worked at Microsoft suggested they had systems which did something similar, hiring at temps, then converting to full time. This made it easier to fire people who were temps in the first place. Google kinda of did that with their 'slotting' process.
Steko 14y ago
There's some good and bad stuff in this post. The good part: "[these questions] can help identify winners even amongst the nervous, “I don’t interview well” types of people who may warm up and shine on the job. And I’ve hired a lot of great people who don’t interview especially well. But when I jump into the above questions, they are able to speak eloquently to how dynamic and thoughtful they are as people." So yeah this is a technique that's worked for him to help "find winners" that he otherwise wouldn't have. The bad part is, rather obviously, the assumption that anyone that doesn't pass his test is a loser: "her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around." This is a serious case of choice supportive bias and because it's the focus of the article people are justifiably piling on the author. No you don't know that person is a loser. If it was that easy to find losers the billions of dollars used in hiring would have found this out already.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
sidcool 14y ago
Not a very insightful read. Again, not sure why so many votes for this post. But differences exist.

50 points by nikunjk 14y ago

The word "Loser" might be a bit off putting, but if you can get past that, the approach the author of the article describes is a good way of getting to the core of the person you're interviewing.

TillE 14y ago
Not really the core of the person, it's more like the FizzBuzz to verify that they have some kind of basic personality and the ability to talk about things. That's fine, but hardly groundbreaking. I haven't done many job interviews in my life, but the kind of questions he suggests seem common enough.

neumann_alfred 14y ago

"There’s a Beck song about people like that." (this is song two on the album / this is the album right here / burn the album) tonight the city is full of morgues / and all the toilets are overflowing / there's shopping malls coming out of the walls / as we walk out among the manure that's why / I pay no mind / I pay no mind / I pay no mind give the finger to the rock 'n' roll singer / as he's dancing upon your paycheck / the sales climb high through the garbage-pail sky / like a giant dildo crushing the sun that's why / I pay no mind / sleep in slime / I just got signed so get out your lead-pipe pipe dreams / get out your ten-foot flags / the insects are huge and the poison's all been used / and the drugs won't kill your day job...honey that's why / I pay no mind / I pay no mind / I pay no mind that's why / i pay no mind [x7]

diego 14y ago

The author of this article is a jerk. He calls someone a loser because he or she may not be a good fit for a job. This is not someone you'd want to have as a boss. A good manager would write a more compassionate and empathetic article with the same takeaways, and without the inflammatory tone.

dlss 14y ago
Exactly this. He's hiring someone to do account management. The candidate has experience in account management, the rest of the team thought he'd be able to do it. The autor vetoed hiring for a customer facing position because the candidate spent more time with people than books during college. With the information provided I'm pretty sure the hypothetical alternate hire, who does have a favorite century of literature and who does have favorite poems at the top of his mind turns out to be a worse hire. "Snobs exist. Don't let them make hiring decisions"
- LaGrange 14y ago
  It's not even that the candidate obviously didn't read stuff. The guy was suddenly grilled about irrelevant crap by some jerk. Having a mind go blank in such a situation isn't exactly unheard of. And then consider, that such a situation already smells hostile, and you might decide to not share. Or, just essentially, not actually be happy about your previous life choice, and not really eager to discuss that with a person you've met for the first time in your life.
  - eropple 14y ago
    Figuring out if a candidate is a person, rather than a meat robot, isn't "irrelevant crap." I have noticed a strong correlation between people who don't get jazzed over something--hobbies, academics, whatever--are not people I want to work with. The author's method isn't the only one, but it seems like a reasonable one to me. It isn't "hire somebody who can talk about English." It's "don't hire someone who can't talk about something he (or she) cares about." If the guy's going to be in a sales role, he should at the least be able to pivot the conversation to something interesting that he can talk about.
    - dlss 14y ago
      > Figuring out if a candidate is a person, rather than a meat robot, isn't "irrelevant crap." I have noticed a strong correlation between people who don't get jazzed over something--hobbies, academics, whatever--are not people I want to work with. Do you actually know anyone who doesn't get excited by something? They don't exist. I think what you're perhaps saying is that you prefer working with people who share a passion with you. Makes sense, I also have this preference :) > If the guy's going to be in a sales role, he should at the least be able to pivot the conversation to something interesting that he can talk about. I agree... however if the sales guy really is the sort that couldn't smoothly change topics, why did the rest of the Author's team think he'd be a good fit for the job?

potatolicious 14y ago

Oh yay. Another "if you don't do things my way (which I never back up with anything more than hand-waving - I don't even have actual anecdotes), you're doing it wrong" blog post. Whew, what a mouthful. Seriously. Even if we don't play the "anecdotes != data" game, this guy makes a lot of large, sweeping claims without even using personal experience to back it up. There's no "this one time I ignored my own advice and ended up getting burned" - no, the entire post is a giant exercise in supposition. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the entire rest of his team loved the candidate, and all of their opinions were immediately forfeit because the boss didn't like him. What does this say about the level of confidence and trust that one has in his team when you're so willing to discount their judgment entirely? But by all means, keep these posts coming, they are forming a valuable mental list of people to not work for.

tptacek 14y ago
Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the entire rest of his team loved the candidate, and all of their opinions were immediately forfeit because the boss didn't like him. What does this say about the level of confidence and trust that one has in his team when you're so willing to discount their judgment entirely? I didn't pick this up on the first read, but, yep, there it is, plain as day. Hilarious. A whole team of people interviewed this guy for the role, votes to hire, and then he asks what century of English writing the guy likes best and woosh done. So at the very least you'd think, this guy should be the first interview anyone gets, because if you're not going to pass the "favorite era of English literature" or "favorite aspect of Sino-Indian relations" or "most preferred basket-weaving maneuver" question, you might as well not waste the time.

benguild 14y ago

I find this video quite relevant for this particular candidate, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L_cGjQSR80 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L_cGjQSR80

Pkeod 14y ago

Liking solitaire doesn't make someone a loser.

pan69 14y ago

It's quite true. Losers exist. Don't work for them.

freework 14y ago

I've always felt like the best way to hire is to think in terms of teams instead of in terms of people. If you team is lacking communication skills, hire someone who have good communication skills, ignoring most other traits such as intelligence. If your team has great communication but is lacking in problem solving ability, then you should focus on hiring a really smart person, ignoring their communication skills. For this reason, I by default disagree with any article that decrees a certain trait that is "un-hirable" The best team I was every on was a team that was basically hired randomly. The boss had tons of money (rich daddy was investor) and needed to hire 10+ devs pronto. Some people on the team were idiots, some were brilliant, some were communicative, some weren't, etc. No one was perfect individually, but we were all perfect as a whole.

tokenadult 14y ago

The author of this article is a loser. (But I give him props for acknowledging in his author profile, http://pandodaily.com/author/goldbergbryan/ http://pandodaily.com/author/goldbergbryan/ "Previously, he was a failed investment banker." AFTER EDIT: and remember, he introduced the word "loser" into the thread by how he chose the title for his blog post.) Maybe he'll be a winner in the future, and I wish him well, but I wouldn't advise following his hiring procedures. He has hiring authority at a business corporation, but he hasn't done even elementary research on company hiring procedures. He writes, "But then it was time for him to interview with me. I didn’t ask him very many questions about sales, advertising operations, invoicing, collections, or any of the handful of other tactical skills we wanted. I just grilled him on the bottom fourth of his resume — you know, the one about hobbies and college." And he thinks that by doing that he is identifying winners, even as he is proud of his ignorance of about a century of research on company hiring procedures. There are many discussions here on HN about company hiring procedures. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have gathered here in a FAQ file. The review article by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, "The Validity and Utility of Selection Models in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 124, No. 2, 262-274 http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%... sums up, current to 1998, a meta-analysis of much of the HUGE peer-reviewed professional literature on the industrial and organizational psychology devoted to business hiring procedures. There are many kinds of hiring criteria, such as in-person interviews, telephone interviews, resume reviews for job experience, checks for academic credentials, personality tests, and so on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after they are hired in a wide variety of occupations. http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes.aspx http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes... EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test. The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work reasonably well. One is a general mental ability (GMA) test (an IQ-like test, such as the Wonderlic personnel screening test). Another is a work-sample test, where the applicant does an actual task or group of tasks like what the applicant will do on the job if hired. (But the calculated validity of each of the two best kinds of procedures, standing alone, is only 0.54 for work sample tests and 0.51 for general mental ability tests.) Each of these kinds of tests has about the same validity in screening applicants for jobs, with the general mental ability test better predicting success for applicants who will be trained into a new job. Neither is perfect (both miss some good performers on the job, and select some bad performers on the job), but both are better than any other single-factor hiring procedure that has been tested in rigorous research, across a wide variety of occupations. So if you are hiring for your company, it's a good idea to think about how to build a work-sample test into all of your hiring processes. Because of a Supreme Court decision in the United States (the decision does not apply in other countries, which have different statutes about employment), it is legally risky to give job applicants general mental ability tests such as a straight-up IQ test (as was commonplace in my parents' generation) as a routine part of hiring procedures. The Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971) case http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&q=Griggs+Duke+Power&hl=en&as_sdt=2,24 http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196... interpreted a federal statute about employment discrimination and held that a general intelligence test used in hiring that could have a "disparate impact" on applicants of some protected classes must "bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used." In other words, a company that wants to use a test like the Wonderlic, or like the SAT, or like the current WAIS or Stanford-Binet IQ tests, in a hiring procedure had best conduct a specific validation study of the test related to performance on the job in question. Some companies do the validation study, and use IQ-like tests in hiring. Other companies use IQ-like tests in hiring and hope that no one sues (which is not what I would advise any company). Note that a brain-teaser-type test used in a hiring procedure could be challenged as illegal if it can be shown to have disparate impact on some job applicants. A company defending a brain-teaser test for hiring would have to defend it by showing it is supported by a validation study demonstrating that the test is related to successful performance on the job. Such validation studies can be quite expensive. (Companies outside the United States are regulated by different laws. One other big difference between the United States and other countries is the relative ease with which workers may be fired in the United States, allowing companies to correct hiring mistakes by terminating the employment of the workers they hired mistakenly. The more legal protections a worker has from being fired, the more reluctant companies will be about hiring in the first place.) The social background to the legal environment in the United States is explained in many books about hiring procedures http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA271&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrlOV&sig=ctblj9SW2Dth7TceaFSNIdVMoEw#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6... http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA95&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrnMW&sig=LKLi-deKtnP20VYZo9x0jfvqzLI#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6... Some of the social background appears to be changing in the most recent few decades, with the prospect for further changes. http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R... http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWlMYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology+%22predictive+validity%22+Duke+Power&ots=5O9Hx_E1vY&sig=g-zERWztBWq3h4guEuv9VVkTh8I#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology%20%22predictive%20validity%22%20Duke%20Power&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWl... Previous discussion on HN pointed out that the Schmidt & Hunter (1998) article showed that multi-factor procedures work better than single-factor procedures, a summary of that article we can find in the current professional literature, for example "Reasons for being selective when choosing personnel selection procedures" (2010) by Cornelius J. König, Ute-Christine Klehe, Matthias Berchtold, and Martin Kleinmann: "Choosing personnel selection procedures could be so simple: Grab your copy of Schmidt and Hunter (1998) and read their Table 1 (again). This should remind you to use a general mental ability (GMA) test in combination with an integrity test, a structured interview, a work sample test, and/or a conscientiousness measure." http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri... But the 2010 article notes, looking at actual practice of companies around the world, "However, this idea does not seem to capture what is actually happening in organizations, as practitioners worldwide often use procedures with low predictive validity and regularly ignore procedures that are more valid (e.g., Di Milia, 2004; Lievens & De Paepe, 2004; Ryan, McFarland, Baron, & Page, 1999; Scholarios & Lockyer, 1999; Schuler, Hell, Trapmann, Schaar, & Boramir, 2007; Taylor, Keelty, & McDonnell, 2002). For example, the highly valid work sample tests are hardly used in the US, and the potentially rather useless procedure of graphology (Dean, 1992; Neter & Ben-Shakhar, 1989) is applied somewhere between occasionally and often in France (Ryan et al., 1999). In Germany, the use of GMA tests is reported to be low and to be decreasing (i.e., only 30% of the companies surveyed by Schuler et al., 2007, now use them)." Integrity tests have limited validity standing alone, but appear to have significant incremental validity when added to a general mental ability test or work-sample test. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_integrity_testing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_integrity_testing http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1 http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1 http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-14602.html http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports... Winners exist. Learn from them.

brianchu 14y ago

I don't get this author's reasoning here. Maybe the candidate partied all through school but got his career together after graduating. Maybe the candidate went through school and never really figured out what he wanted to do in life until after he graduated. Maybe three years into college the candidate realized he actually hated English but got the degree because he wanted to graduate in four years. The list goes on... Just because someone didn't really do much with their life 5 years ago does not mean they're a useless loser today. I noticed that the author is a "failed investment banker." Maybe there wouldn't be much the author could say about that job either - filling out spreadsheets and formatting Powerpoints are totally fascinating activities.

jasonkostempski 14y ago

Idiot assholes hiring people based on 'clever' interview techniques exist. Don't work for them.

sjtgraham 14y ago
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
- jasonkostempski 14y ago
  u r a self-important dilettante!!!!!!!!!!

michaelochurch 14y ago

So who should hire the "losers", then? The creative, ambitious, energetic people have a lot of leadership potential and can do great work if motivated properly, but also fall down on the undignified grunt work that's at least half of what most companies need to have done (or think they need). If you're hiring for a company like Valve that expects people to work at a high creative level, then these interview questions are good, because you need to select the people who will do well in a high-autonomy environment. If you're just looking to get grunt work done without complaint, you're probably better off favoring a person with a bland personality who can get the job done. Much of the trouble that companies create for themselves is in hiring the most appealing people and then putting them on mediocre work.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

starpilot 14y ago

It sounds like he's trying to connect a candidate's well-roundedness and interpersonal fit with job ability. The last sentence says it all: > But if a candidate can’t even tell you why they liked their last job, or what they got out of their college experience, or any of the million other questions that speak to their basic humanness… Then no amount of experience will make them valuable. That's his thesis I think, but he defends it very poorly. > As it turned out, we eventually did find someone for that position, with a lot less relevant experience. But she learned the job in about six weeks, and her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around. How do you know this? The other guy couldn't name his favorite book therefore he couldn't do the job? What past experiences do you have to back this up? > A person who has no hobbies, and can’t even exaggerate one, almost certainly lacks the ambition to make your company valuable. They are probably a loser. Again, why? I don't consider no hobbies == no ambition to be self-evident. One common aspects of CEOs is that their ambition for running a company pushes out everything else from their life (for better or for worse). Having no life could speak of too much ambition. It just sounds like he's trying to justify cliquishness with vague correlations to being a good worker. "Loser" to him amounts to, "a person I do not like for my own personal reasons."

pooriaazimi 14y ago

Maybe he didn't like English Literature - his passion was film, or programming, or architecture and he discovered it later (and he couldn't change his major then). Or his college had lousy Film teachers or didn't offer any programming/architecture classes so he decided to go with English even though he didn't like it. Or maybe he partied all college, and then graduated and found more about the "real" world and got his act together. I agree (in general) with wanting employees that aren't single-minded and have no hobby/passion outside of their work, but in this particular case I absolutely disagree with author's decision (based on his article).

gavanwoolery 14y ago

Here is a sure-fire way to weed-out potential winners: base your judgement on some dumb interview questions or metrics. I have failed many interviews. But anyone who I have ever worked for has praised the hell out of my work. Interviews have never been a good way of finding ideal candidates. The best way, IMHO: Give the interviewee one week's worth of work as an "internship". If they care about working for you, they will do it. It gives them a chance to prove themselves, and you a chance to really evaluate how well they can do the job.

kamaal 14y ago
There is a reason why interviews don't work. Because what you know is never a true indicator of what you can do.

outworlder 14y ago

The author might have a point. The world is filled with automatons, without passion or even mensurable interests. He might be right in not hiring the candidate, but we cannot know if he was, in fact, a 'loser' (by some definition of 'loser'). It might be the case that the candidate actually didn't find academy very enjoyable and spent all day drinking instead. Which most do, at some point. In that case, he could've been too shy to admit it, or did admit it and the author was too obtuse to change the subject. See, we are dealing with his perception. If the candidate could write his angle, then we could try to infer something. It might even be the case that the candidate (with lots of experience) found the interview to be meaningless and boring and wanted to leave. And generic answers are a nice way to end a conversation.

datalus 14y ago

I thought this article was informative. It's good info for anyone not wanting to work for a tool.

pygorex 14y ago

Let me get this straight. The author asserts the following: Lesser managers will try to stump candidates with horrible brain teasers along the lines of “Describe a time you got into a bad situation and resolved it effectively?” — or crap like that. What hard-hitting, incisive questions does the author ask instead? Which of your previous jobs did you enjoy the most? What do you think of our web site? Tell me about your hobbies... You've got to be kidding me. These are all soft-ball questions. What amazes me is that the author's company already has a hiring process in place. But he feels justified in abandoning this process at the end when an interviewee doesn't provide correct responses to an arbitrary list of soft-ball questions.

joshmlewis 14y ago

What if this guy was shy or a bit of an introvert? I know if I were in that situation I may not have all the "correct" answers, especially if I were in a room with someone like the author. If you make me feel wanted or interesting I can talk about anything, if you make me uncomfortable and sound like a jerk? Especially in a job interview, you can believe I'd be nervous and may not have all the best answers. As far as hobbies go, I like auto racing, but other than that all my time is devoted to startuping and freelance work, which I love dearly. Books? Last one I read was How to Win Friends and Influence People and other than that, I can't remember the last one I've read. All that to say, maybe this guy didn't click with the author, but doesn't give you the right to call him a loser. That's just bullshit.

connor 14y ago

This article came across as offensive. Honestly if a company is actively classifying people as losers, it's not really the type of company I'd like to work at. A better hiring policy might be 'hire amazing people' and then look for the amazing in people. This approach is so negative and off-putting.

georgemcbay 14y ago

"As it turned out, we eventually did find someone for that position, with a lot less relevant experience. But she learned the job in about six weeks, and her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around." Could you tell me a bit about your hobby of predicting the future, Mr Goldberg? Who would you say are your top 5 clairvoyants?

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Ok, I read it, I knew it was link bait going in, and felt it tweak "Those Buttons" that such things do. I'd like that 5 minutes of my life back. TL;DR summary I got from it was "I use these questions to decide if I'll enjoy working with someone, and I don't hire them if I don't like their answers." and interspersed with a bit of aspersions on people who aren't good at "small talk." One of the interesting things that is oft overlooked in the angst of hiring is actually the angst of firing. Really. I mean the only reason you want to be super super careful about hiring someone is because if they don't work out then you've wasted that time. But if you can lower the cost of hiring enough, and make firing pretty straight forward, then the economics can change. One summer I worked for McDonalds (the fast food chain) for all of four weeks, two in a 'training store' and then two in my assigned store. I was fired pretty quickly. During my training (hamburger flipping) the store manager explained that (at the time) McDonalds would hire anyone with a pulse and no criminal record. They would then train them briefly, and watch them closely, and decide early on if they wanted to keep them around. My "problem" was that the store had an algorithm for queuing up burgers which, from my perspective at the grill, was broken. Our store had way more people who ordered Quarter Pounders (one 4 oz patty) than BigMacs (two 2 oz patties). The algorithm though said you had to 'start' twice as many 2 oz patties as 4 oz patties just before the lunch rush. We always were throwing out 2oz patties (you can't sell them after they've been on the warmer too long). So I started cutting back on the 2oz patties I started. Big mistake :-). Got "the talk" which was "We hire people to do things the way we want them done, you may not agree with how things are done but if you want to keep working here you have to do what we say." Silly me (it was only my second 'real' job) I kept trying to find ways to optimize the system and not get caught. At the two week point my manager recognized that I was a 'trouble maker' and couldn't follow instructions. End of my career right there. Now the moral of the story isn't to make fun of McDonalds but to point out that they made acquiring good "fits" for the company straight forward by building a lighter weight hire/fire process than most places have. Folks I know who have worked at Microsoft suggested they had systems which did something similar, hiring at temps, then converting to full time. This made it easier to fire people who were temps in the first place. Google kinda of did that with their 'slotting' process.

Steko 14y ago

There's some good and bad stuff in this post. The good part: "[these questions] can help identify winners even amongst the nervous, “I don’t interview well” types of people who may warm up and shine on the job. And I’ve hired a lot of great people who don’t interview especially well. But when I jump into the above questions, they are able to speak eloquently to how dynamic and thoughtful they are as people." So yeah this is a technique that's worked for him to help "find winners" that he otherwise wouldn't have. The bad part is, rather obviously, the assumption that anyone that doesn't pass his test is a loser: "her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around." This is a serious case of choice supportive bias and because it's the focus of the article people are justifiably piling on the author. No you don't know that person is a loser. If it was that easy to find losers the billions of dollars used in hiring would have found this out already.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

sidcool 14y ago

Not a very insightful read. Again, not sure why so many votes for this post. But differences exist.