4 ms·
I have to disagree with the "can easily tell within ten minutes if someone cannot pass muster" part. Interviewing is hard. We tend to make such snap judgments b
by sridharvembu 13y ago
I have to disagree with the "can easily tell within ten minutes if someone cannot pass muster" part. Interviewing is hard. We tend to make such snap judgments but those judgments reflect our own biases.
I have come to believe over the years that interviewing measures interviewing skills. Test scores measure test taking skills. Success on the job requires success-on-the-job (to coin a phrase) skills. All those things correlate, but the correlation coefficient is not super high. In fact, ignoring those correlations can be an effective strategy to find great people.
- Arnor 13y agoAren't "interviewing skills" essential to founders? Isn't a YC interview basically a chance to pitch your company and answer probing questions about your plan? Seems like a pretty fair qualification to me...
- iqster 13y agoIn deep tech, no.
- WalterSear 13y agoI don't think that's the case.
- dasil003 13y agoOnly if fundraising is your endgame, which admittedly it is for a lot of wantrepreneurs.
- theorique 13y agoFundraising is not a CEO's endgame, but it's very similar to the day-to-day of CEO work: promoting the company to others; being the public face; communicating clearly, concisely, and effectively; making sure that the company 'works' in all the ways that matter. All of these are 'soft skill' competencies that hackers tend to downplay. But you need someone who can do this and do it well.
- dasil003 13y agoI don't downplay the importance of those skills, but are they essential to all CEOs? Does every company need a public face? Absolutely not, at least not for startups, depending on your core competencies and what makes you a good CEO, the public facing stuff to the extent that it is necessary in any given company can be delegated.
- 001sky 13y agoThis is absurdly reductionist.
- pjscott 13y agoAssume for a moment that I don't know what you mean by 'reductionist'; why is it wrong?
- 001sky 13y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism[#] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism[#] In other words, you by failing to distinguish scaling phenomena (1->N) with a gating criteria (0,1), you are making an attribution error concerning the "essentialness" of your explanatory variable. For example: co-founders are typically not "interviewed" for the job. But (a) their selection is essential; and (b) if you can find a co-founder, you can find any lesser employee. It could be argued, that having the ability to "recruit" without formal interview is actually a more essential skill.
- Arnor 13y agoBetter than absurdly pompous...