4 ms·

I very much dislike the idea that you can't give special treatment to individual candidates. The job of a recruiter is to find the best candidate for the job, n

I very much dislike the idea that you can't give special treatment to individual candidates. The job of a recruiter is to find the best candidate for the job, not to treat all candidates equally. Now obviously we can't go around discriminating against candidates based on attributes not relevant to their ability to perform (ie gender, race, religion etc), but that doesn't mean we can't make use of any extra information we might be able to garner about a person. If a particular candidate, who happens to fail part of the interview, still seems like a good choice, by all means look for additional means of evaluation. I once had an interview, where I spoke with a few people very positively for about 3 hours, it was going great. There was no sign of a technical test, so I had assumed by this point that they either didn't do them, or they'd be in a second round of interviews. Then they realised they'd forgotten to give me the technical test, which they then gave me and I screwed up for whatever reasons. Upon learning that I'd aced every part of the interview except the programming test, I mentioned they had an employee who'd worked with me on previous projects and could vouch for my coding ability. But they said they couldn't use that information because it would be unfair to other candidates. This was a long time ago, and I didn't really lose much by not getting the job, but it always felt like the approach they took was wrong.

tehwalrus 13y ago
> The job of a recruiter is to find the best candidate for the job, not to treat all candidates equally. I won't disagree, but I would like to restate that a little more carefully: "The job of a recruiter is to measure which candidate is best for this job, fairly and without bias." As you point out, there are quite a few reasons that people try to weedle out of actually hiring the best person, some of them not so savory (subconscious preference for white, male people - but it depends on the company, and the culture). It should be hard, but not impossible, to override the default procedure - and for exceptional cases only. Certainly, in the Article, the flawed psychometric test should not have been grounds to reject the best-performing candidate in the room. But similarly, personality (or appearance) should also not be a reason to promote someone over their ability to do the job.
- andrewingram 13y ago
  It's probably true that in my example, I was good but not exceptional enough to justify overriding procedure. Thanks for giving me that perspective!
hga 13y ago
That was very possibly a white lie. In this egalitarian, self-esteem is paramount era, many will be more comfortable saying "it wouldn't be fair" as opposed to "you FAILED." Another employee vouching for you isn't quite the same thing.
codygman 13y ago
The problem here is that it's very hard for people to not discriminate at all based on attributes not relative to ability such as gender, race, religion, etc. For example, many people have racist tendencies but rationalize them as something else. "There is a big group of male magentas dressed the same over there, I should avoid them because they are almost certainly a gang" is rationalized as: "I don't avoid the group of male magentas dressed the same because I'm racist and assume that most magentas are in a gang, but because I've been taught common sense. Common sense dictates people that look like that must be gangsters." Perhaps if we interviewed people without being able to see them, their name, or anything about them and using voice obfuscation we could eliminate a lot of bias?
- andrewingram 13y ago
  It's indeed very hard to avoid discrimination. I'm not proud to admit that I have racist, and even sexist tendencies. I have just enough self-awareness to recognise that I've done it after the fact, but it's much harder to stop myself in the process of discrimination and behave differently. I imagine a significant number of people are similar to myself in this regard, I would love to see more discussion about it. Because I feel it's the subtle prejudices we all have that create the real problems, rather than the smaller (but louder) groups of overtly prejudiced people.
- token_female 13y ago
  Obligatory: If you think you don't do this, take this test and get back to me: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

tehwalrus 13y ago

> The job of a recruiter is to find the best candidate for the job, not to treat all candidates equally. I won't disagree, but I would like to restate that a little more carefully: "The job of a recruiter is to measure which candidate is best for this job, fairly and without bias." As you point out, there are quite a few reasons that people try to weedle out of actually hiring the best person, some of them not so savory (subconscious preference for white, male people - but it depends on the company, and the culture). It should be hard, but not impossible, to override the default procedure - and for exceptional cases only. Certainly, in the Article, the flawed psychometric test should not have been grounds to reject the best-performing candidate in the room. But similarly, personality (or appearance) should also not be a reason to promote someone over their ability to do the job.

andrewingram 13y ago
It's probably true that in my example, I was good but not exceptional enough to justify overriding procedure. Thanks for giving me that perspective!

hga 13y ago

That was very possibly a white lie. In this egalitarian, self-esteem is paramount era, many will be more comfortable saying "it wouldn't be fair" as opposed to "you FAILED." Another employee vouching for you isn't quite the same thing.

codygman 13y ago

The problem here is that it's very hard for people to not discriminate at all based on attributes not relative to ability such as gender, race, religion, etc. For example, many people have racist tendencies but rationalize them as something else. "There is a big group of male magentas dressed the same over there, I should avoid them because they are almost certainly a gang" is rationalized as: "I don't avoid the group of male magentas dressed the same because I'm racist and assume that most magentas are in a gang, but because I've been taught common sense. Common sense dictates people that look like that must be gangsters." Perhaps if we interviewed people without being able to see them, their name, or anything about them and using voice obfuscation we could eliminate a lot of bias?

andrewingram 13y ago
It's indeed very hard to avoid discrimination. I'm not proud to admit that I have racist, and even sexist tendencies. I have just enough self-awareness to recognise that I've done it after the fact, but it's much harder to stop myself in the process of discrimination and behave differently. I imagine a significant number of people are similar to myself in this regard, I would love to see more discussion about it. Because I feel it's the subtle prejudices we all have that create the real problems, rather than the smaller (but louder) groups of overtly prejudiced people.
token_female 13y ago
Obligatory: If you think you don't do this, take this test and get back to me: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html