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> You will go through 6-8 interviews!” I thought: “YOU will hire a bunch of unemployed people”. Can someone explain why HR managers have such a severe prejudic

by kephra 11y ago

> You will go through 6-8 interviews!” I thought: “YOU will hire a bunch of unemployed people”. Can someone explain why HR managers have such a severe prejudice against hiring unemployed people? Imho, its their job, to select those people from the unemployemnt pool that fits the company, and have the skills. A HR who only poaches employed people, is doing a bad job, and hiding his laziness under an evil prejudice.

gaius 11y ago
It's called validation, or social proof, and it shows up in all sorts of ways, incl. dating.
- kephra 11y ago
  So a HR who successfully poached an employed coder, hired someone who is willing to drop work at the moment he gets a better offer. The other HR stupidity is, that its much easier to get a raise, if you switch jobs often, then if you stay in a job long enough to be productive. The result are projects broken by HR causing to much fluctuation.
  - nosefrog 11y ago
    I don't think any of those approaches are the fault of HR. If you have a system where companies will pay more money for a new employee than to retain an old employee, then employee churn naturally follows from that.
    - vonmoltke 11y ago
      At what companies is paying new hires more than current employees not the fault of HR?
      - SandB0x 11y ago
        It can also mean whoever is in charge of the current team does not stand up for them within the company.
      - mooreds 11y ago
        Does HR dictate salary? My understanding is that HR has a seat at the table but so do the hiring managers.
  - NegativeK 11y ago
    > hired someone who is willing to drop work at the moment he gets a better offer That's grossly overgeneralized.
crdoconnor 11y ago
This is standard corporate CYA behavior. I think this quote from Keynes sums it up best: >"A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him. It is necessarily part of the business of a banker to maintain appearances, and to confess a conventional respectability, which is more than human. Life-long practices of this kind make them the most romantic and the least realistic of men." The Ivy league is a conventional and orthodox disaster. Nobody can blame you for hiring them, their credentials were impeccable! That previously unemployed guy, on the other hand...
- Ollinson 11y ago
  I wonder if there are actual educational benefits to attending an ivy league school beyond the commonly mentioned networking. Given a competent A student is there knowledge you will gain from the finance department at say Harvard that you wouldn't see at state university? A better example might be what's the measurable difference between an engineering degree at a low tier school versus MIT?
  - Thriptic 11y ago
    I got my bachelors in biochemistry at a mid tier school with a bad science program and am now at MIT for my PhD. The difference in quality of instruction at the undergrad level, access to undergrad research opportunities / internships, and breadth of course availability is immense.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mooreds 11y ago
I don't think she was saying that hiring unemployed people is a poor choice, just that if you require a number of on site interviews, your hiring process requires so much of the candidate's time you are selecting out people who may not have that time available. Some employed folks may make the time, but others won't. Note that the process she suggests (one phone screen, one on site and a decision) is good for unemployed applicants as well. Quick hiring decisions are good for all parties involved, as long as they are thorough.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Oh she's not implying it; she's saying loud and clear "Never hire unemployed people! They suck. They lost their job probably because they were laid off as the bottom 10% Their last employer didn't want them and neither do you!" Its terribly difficult to get hired when unemployed because of this bias.
notahacker 11y ago
> A HR who only poaches employed people, is doing a bad job, and hiding his laziness under an evil prejudice. But the reverse is also true. HR managers that devise a recruitment process so arduous only the unemployed (and possibly then only the involuntary unemployed) will consider participating in it is doing a bad job. There are good unemployed candidates, but there are more good employed candidates, and most of the good unemployed candidates also have better options than your 6-8 interview process, which also screams of bureaucracy, indecisiveness and pedantry further down the line.
hibikir 11y ago
The advantage of interviewing employed people is that you have a better chance of hiring someone that is competent. That's also the reason, in a one local company's case at least, that your list of employers is looked at, as some companies hire a very high percentage of frauds. One local employer, always looking for people, and not a bad place to work, has 3% of people pass the on-site interview, and it's not especially onerous: It shows you have general programming competency. Everything their exercise asks is something you'll use on the job. But most people that apply fail, because there is a local glut of people that know less than a proper entry level candidate, but ask for senior level salary. Those people tend to be the first to get laid off, and the ones that stay unemployed the longest. There are great unemployed people out there sometimes: A SF startup that is 95% remote laid off 60% of their staff three weeks ago, and anyone would be fortunate to get that unemployed talent when they can. HR has to shift through a lot of unemployed people that you probably don't want to hire to find a great programmer, and a great programmer probably already has a network that gets them snapped up in days. It's absolutely not fair to the good programmers that end up being unemployed for one reason or another, but given my experience interviewing, it's not hard to see why someone unemployed and without a good network gets passed up far more often than they deserve.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > The advantage of interviewing employed people is that you have a better chance of hiring someone that is competent. That's also the reason, in a one local company's case at least, that your list of employers is looked at, as some companies hire a very high percentage of frauds. How can you say that? All being emoyed means is that you got through the interview process and haven't annoyed anyone with the power to fire you. That hire may well be incompetent and looking to move out before they get fired.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > One local employer, always looking for people, and not a bad place to work, has 3% of people pass the on-site interview, and it's not especially onerous: It shows you have general programming competency. How many people who apply get an on-site interview? Has this company considered if their prescreening process is broken and is actually filtering out mos of the people who could pass the on-site interviews?

by kephra 11y ago

gaius 11y ago

It's called validation, or social proof, and it shows up in all sorts of ways, incl. dating.

kephra 11y ago
So a HR who successfully poached an employed coder, hired someone who is willing to drop work at the moment he gets a better offer. The other HR stupidity is, that its much easier to get a raise, if you switch jobs often, then if you stay in a job long enough to be productive. The result are projects broken by HR causing to much fluctuation.
- nosefrog 11y ago
  I don't think any of those approaches are the fault of HR. If you have a system where companies will pay more money for a new employee than to retain an old employee, then employee churn naturally follows from that.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    At what companies is paying new hires more than current employees not the fault of HR?
    - SandB0x 11y ago
      It can also mean whoever is in charge of the current team does not stand up for them within the company.
    - mooreds 11y ago
      Does HR dictate salary? My understanding is that HR has a seat at the table but so do the hiring managers.
- NegativeK 11y ago
  > hired someone who is willing to drop work at the moment he gets a better offer That's grossly overgeneralized.

crdoconnor 11y ago

This is standard corporate CYA behavior. I think this quote from Keynes sums it up best: >"A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him. It is necessarily part of the business of a banker to maintain appearances, and to confess a conventional respectability, which is more than human. Life-long practices of this kind make them the most romantic and the least realistic of men." The Ivy league is a conventional and orthodox disaster. Nobody can blame you for hiring them, their credentials were impeccable! That previously unemployed guy, on the other hand...

Ollinson 11y ago
I wonder if there are actual educational benefits to attending an ivy league school beyond the commonly mentioned networking. Given a competent A student is there knowledge you will gain from the finance department at say Harvard that you wouldn't see at state university? A better example might be what's the measurable difference between an engineering degree at a low tier school versus MIT?
- Thriptic 11y ago
  I got my bachelors in biochemistry at a mid tier school with a bad science program and am now at MIT for my PhD. The difference in quality of instruction at the undergrad level, access to undergrad research opportunities / internships, and breadth of course availability is immense.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mooreds 11y ago

I don't think she was saying that hiring unemployed people is a poor choice, just that if you require a number of on site interviews, your hiring process requires so much of the candidate's time you are selecting out people who may not have that time available. Some employed folks may make the time, but others won't. Note that the process she suggests (one phone screen, one on site and a decision) is good for unemployed applicants as well. Quick hiring decisions are good for all parties involved, as long as they are thorough.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Oh she's not implying it; she's saying loud and clear "Never hire unemployed people! They suck. They lost their job probably because they were laid off as the bottom 10% Their last employer didn't want them and neither do you!" Its terribly difficult to get hired when unemployed because of this bias.

notahacker 11y ago

> A HR who only poaches employed people, is doing a bad job, and hiding his laziness under an evil prejudice. But the reverse is also true. HR managers that devise a recruitment process so arduous only the unemployed (and possibly then only the involuntary unemployed) will consider participating in it is doing a bad job. There are good unemployed candidates, but there are more good employed candidates, and most of the good unemployed candidates also have better options than your 6-8 interview process, which also screams of bureaucracy, indecisiveness and pedantry further down the line.

hibikir 11y ago

The advantage of interviewing employed people is that you have a better chance of hiring someone that is competent. That's also the reason, in a one local company's case at least, that your list of employers is looked at, as some companies hire a very high percentage of frauds. One local employer, always looking for people, and not a bad place to work, has 3% of people pass the on-site interview, and it's not especially onerous: It shows you have general programming competency. Everything their exercise asks is something you'll use on the job. But most people that apply fail, because there is a local glut of people that know less than a proper entry level candidate, but ask for senior level salary. Those people tend to be the first to get laid off, and the ones that stay unemployed the longest. There are great unemployed people out there sometimes: A SF startup that is 95% remote laid off 60% of their staff three weeks ago, and anyone would be fortunate to get that unemployed talent when they can. HR has to shift through a lot of unemployed people that you probably don't want to hire to find a great programmer, and a great programmer probably already has a network that gets them snapped up in days. It's absolutely not fair to the good programmers that end up being unemployed for one reason or another, but given my experience interviewing, it's not hard to see why someone unemployed and without a good network gets passed up far more often than they deserve.

DanBC 11y ago
> The advantage of interviewing employed people is that you have a better chance of hiring someone that is competent. That's also the reason, in a one local company's case at least, that your list of employers is looked at, as some companies hire a very high percentage of frauds. How can you say that? All being emoyed means is that you got through the interview process and haven't annoyed anyone with the power to fire you. That hire may well be incompetent and looking to move out before they get fired.
vonmoltke 11y ago
> One local employer, always looking for people, and not a bad place to work, has 3% of people pass the on-site interview, and it's not especially onerous: It shows you have general programming competency. How many people who apply get an on-site interview? Has this company considered if their prescreening process is broken and is actually filtering out mos of the people who could pass the on-site interviews?