5 ms·

I'm not sure the conclusion here is that remote tests are bad. It's also possible that your screening methods didn't do a good enough job. (As a disclaimer, I'm

I'm not sure the conclusion here is that remote tests are bad. It's also possible that your screening methods didn't do a good enough job. (As a disclaimer, I'm a terrible interviewer, but...) I believe that by the time a candidate gets into a room with me, that my team and I should have a good idea about whether this person will work out or not. If I make them take time out of their day, and I take time out of my day, and then 10 minutes into it I realize they don't know what they're talking about, I see that as my screw-up. I shouldn't have let them get this far. You know what I mean? Right now at my job, we don't do a good enough job of this. I get candidates that walk through the door that can't code more than "Hello World!" without screwing up. I'm not happy about that. This post, I think, enumerates a large number of things that you can do to determine worthiness before they even walk through the door -- the remote test is only a small part of it. If all you're doing is a remote test, then maybe you need to do more, yes?

bduerst 12y ago
I honestly believe that the recruiting/hiring market is ripe to be flipped on it's head for these reasons. I just can't think of any way to do it that can scale though. There are the hired.com models where independent experts thoroughly vet the candidate, but that involves a lot of manual interaction.
- Jemaclus 12y ago
  My big problem with Hired.com and similar sites is that there's no incentive for anyone to be honest. I have no incentive to say "not interested" to anyone, and they have no incentive to back up the salary they post. It's the equivalent of the "always swipe right" strategy on Tinder -- it's in your best interest to say "maybe" or "interested" to everything, because otherwise you don't know if you're missing out on opportunities. What I really want as a hiring manager is for someone to show up and say "Here's Candidate A. We think they're strong because X, Y, Z, and here's the proof." Someone whose mission is to honestly find me the best candidate, who isn't just trying to place someone as fast as possible so they get their commission. Most recruiters I know are interested in placing a good candidate as quickly as possible, but there are a lot of problems with this. "Good" isn't "best", and often times the recruiters don't know the difference between Java and Javascript, and I wind up with junk resumes in my inbox. So how do we fix this? I have no idea. But there's gotta be a way. I don't think that way is going to be scalable with a simple web application. I think you have to have a secret weapon that nobody else has, and maybe that's just a group of in-industry professionals that vet candidates on your behalf, or maybe it's some incredible machine learning algorithm, or maybe it's something else entirely. As a job seeker, I want to get the best job I can, and as a boss, I want the best employees I can get. And I don't think those things are mutually exclusive at all.
  - bduerst 12y ago
    Resale is incentive to be honest - i.e. you place a good candidate, they hiring company will come back to you. Hired.com will turn away people they don't think of as good candidates, but usually after people manually review their profile.
    - Jemaclus 12y ago
      Yeah, but I think the resale factor is exaggerated. If they send you a "good" candidate, you might go back to them, but they're just finding the first "good" candidate they can rather than finding the "best". I wonder if The Secretary Problem could be used to calculate data points for whether a candidate is good or not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

bduerst 12y ago

I honestly believe that the recruiting/hiring market is ripe to be flipped on it's head for these reasons. I just can't think of any way to do it that can scale though. There are the hired.com models where independent experts thoroughly vet the candidate, but that involves a lot of manual interaction.

Jemaclus 12y ago
My big problem with Hired.com and similar sites is that there's no incentive for anyone to be honest. I have no incentive to say "not interested" to anyone, and they have no incentive to back up the salary they post. It's the equivalent of the "always swipe right" strategy on Tinder -- it's in your best interest to say "maybe" or "interested" to everything, because otherwise you don't know if you're missing out on opportunities. What I really want as a hiring manager is for someone to show up and say "Here's Candidate A. We think they're strong because X, Y, Z, and here's the proof." Someone whose mission is to honestly find me the best candidate, who isn't just trying to place someone as fast as possible so they get their commission. Most recruiters I know are interested in placing a good candidate as quickly as possible, but there are a lot of problems with this. "Good" isn't "best", and often times the recruiters don't know the difference between Java and Javascript, and I wind up with junk resumes in my inbox. So how do we fix this? I have no idea. But there's gotta be a way. I don't think that way is going to be scalable with a simple web application. I think you have to have a secret weapon that nobody else has, and maybe that's just a group of in-industry professionals that vet candidates on your behalf, or maybe it's some incredible machine learning algorithm, or maybe it's something else entirely. As a job seeker, I want to get the best job I can, and as a boss, I want the best employees I can get. And I don't think those things are mutually exclusive at all.
- bduerst 12y ago
  Resale is incentive to be honest - i.e. you place a good candidate, they hiring company will come back to you. Hired.com will turn away people they don't think of as good candidates, but usually after people manually review their profile.
  - Jemaclus 12y ago
    Yeah, but I think the resale factor is exaggerated. If they send you a "good" candidate, you might go back to them, but they're just finding the first "good" candidate they can rather than finding the "best". I wonder if The Secretary Problem could be used to calculate data points for whether a candidate is good or not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem