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Blind Auditions Could Give Employers a Better Hiring Sense
- paulhauggis 11y ago"Calderon learned to code at an intense boot camp for Latinos. She says the men in her class have had an easier time getting jobs than the women, even though they learned the same skills." Honestly, after reading this, it really makes me wonder about why she wasn't getting hired. A bootcamp in coding isn't going to really give you enough skills to do the job. Superficially, you might be able to get a few things to work and mash together some frameworks, but to truly understand, it takes many more years of learning and discipline. I wouldn't hire someone that only went through a bootcamp for a developer position.
- randall 11y agoI would if they were aligned with the company mission. I'd hire basically any ex professional video editor / producer with boot camp coding experience. I want engineers who empathize first. I don't need the 10x engineer who doesn't care. That probably will change as our company grows, but the first maybe 10 engineering hires should probably empathize with the problem for which you're solving, vs be a top flight cs major.
- busterarm 11y agoYour company looks like it's doing something seriously cool. It sort of reminds me of how revolutionary Video Toaster was back when Amigas were a thing. I wish I knew more about this space - Video is super interesting and a problem I would love to work on.
- randall 11y agoWell we're not hiring yet but we should chat!
- jtreminio 11y ago> "I think, overall, when I do go interview, I kind of have I guess what some people would term flamboyant taste in colors and patterns," she says. "I do tend to wear very like loud and dangly and big earrings and I have gone in like bright green sports coats and things like that, but I still think are professional — they're just colorful." Depending on where she's interviewing, that dress code may not match what they're after. That said, my last several jobs I landed, I went in blue jeans and conference swag (startup tshirts).
- thirdtruck 11y ago> That said, my last several jobs I landed, I went in blue jeans and conference swag (startup tshirts). That's the implicit dress code. It's just hard to notice because it's converged on standard male developer attire. Conversely, a female interviewee is caught in the paradox of (a) appearing "too informal" by social standards for feminine attire if she dresses the way described above, or (b) appearing "too formal" if she does conform to social expectations for her gender. Never mind that women have an inordinately hard time finding non-unisex conference swag in their sizes in the first place.
- A_COMPUTER 11y agoThis comes across as coded speech for "I don't have to suppress my individualism, everything should change for me." Well, she's in Texas, not the Silicon Valley bubble. If she chooses to do that then she's going to have a harder time getting a job. (Also, if you look at her Twitter, she got a job about a month ago, so she apparently found a place where she's a good fit.)
- pjc50 11y agoNo more so than the traditional developer refusal to wear suits and ties, surely?
- thoman23 11y agoWait, you went to the interview in blue jeans and a t-shirt? Do people do that? What's wrong with putting on some real clothes for one day?
- itsdrewmiller 11y agoThe exact same thing should apply to the men, who are apparently having an easier time getting hired...
- paulhauggis 11y agoWe don't know the skills of any of the men that got hired. Her idea is that they are getting hired. Did one of them get hired? Did all of them get hired? What were their skills before the class?
- learnstats2 11y agoWe will never know about this one individual data point, but discriminatory hiring happens at all levels. It would not surprise me if men were accepted into the class from a lower skill base. That's the reality for this industry.
- richmarr 11y agoNot saying your skepticism isn't valid, there's always value in a contrary opinion, but let's be clear, the research points to discrimination being a measurable effect. Studies on this topic support an opinion that descrimination is likely. Eg. Moss-Racusin et al (2012) which found that female students applying for jobs were seen as less competent than male students with identical application materials. Eg. Heilman et al (2004), which found that women who succeed in male-dominated fields are percieved as not likeable.
- paulhauggis 11y agoMan, the people here on HN really doesn't like open and honest discussions. If the whole point is to circle-jerk one type of opinion, why bother even having a comment section?
- Spooky23 11y agoThat's what she said. It also sounded like she showed up to job interviews with loud and gaudy clothing. Interviews are a show, you need to appeal to the audience.
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- justincormack 11y agoBytemark in the UK have started hiring by initial anonymous interview https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by-anonymous-interview https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by...
- richmarr 11y agoReally interesting, thanks for sharing
- splicer 11y agoA coding challenge isn't going to tell me whether you might be an asshole who's hard to work with.
- thirdtruck 11y agoIt's more about having less non-assholes filtered out prematurely by biased skill tests and evaluations.
- lordnacho 11y agoGlue a chat function to it, and you can talk to the person without knowing their sex or accent.
- fsk 11y agoDoing well on a coding challenge doesn't mean I won't be screened out later for being a "bad cultural fit", which is one reason I see them as a waste of my time.
- codingdave 11y agoSpecific performance on a challenge is certainly a piece of the puzzle. But cultural fit is also important. And someone who may be less than perfect in their "audition" could likely be mentored into a great employee, if their cultural fit is close to perfect. One of my standard statements is that the ability to do a job is not a guarantee to get the job - it is just the base requirement to even be considered.
- jldugger 11y ago> But cultural fit is also important. Is it? I fail to see how preferring Dr Who over BSG is relevant to becoming a great employee, or more seriously, how hiring managers selecting for "cultural fit" doesn't end up as 'I prefer to work with people who put work ahead of family, health, and sanity.' With maybe a tinge of discrimination bias. IMO, the right place for cultural fit isn't in the hiring step, it's in the recruiting and application steps, when you broadcast what your workplace environment is, what the priorities are, and then applicants choose to work within that culture or not.
- bjelkeman-again 11y agoWe quite successfully do the "cultural fit" interviews early in our process. It is true that the recruiting and application part is the great filter, but there still needs to be people who understand our organisation really well involved in this step to see if this is the right person. The right person can learn new skills, but we find it hard to take someone with poor cultural fit and make the personal chemistry work.
- EliRivers 11y agoIf only there was some people could act like professionals, able to work with people who aren't cultural clones of each other.
- A_COMPUTER 11y agoWhat exactly do you think culture is? Hiring for company culture could be as simple as having a no asshole rule or preferring people that can capably balance their home-work life rather than 10x until they burn out in a year and a half and quit.
- edoceo 11y agoI've been using and promoting a similar process (including side-by-side, blind comparison) since 2010 on ars.io As an ATS it removes photos and names, just shows candidates side-by-side allowing managers and team members to quickly rank-sort the applicants without gender or nationality bias. Combine that with our "gig-to-hire" process and the result is lower time to find higher quality candidates. I wish I was better at press.
- organsnyder 11y agoBlind auditions made a huge impact in increasing gender diversity in professional orchestras: “In the 1970s and 1980s, orchestras began using blind auditions. Candidates are situated on a stage behind a screen to play for a jury that cannot see them. In some orchestras, blind auditions are used just for the preliminary selection while others use it all the way to the end, until a hiring decision is made. “Even when the screen is only used for the preliminary round, it has a powerful impact; researchers have determined that this step alone makes it 50% more likely that a woman will advance to the finals. And the screen has also been demonstrated to be the source of a surge in the number of women being offered positions.” http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/b...
- pervycreeper 11y agoThe problem with that study is that they didn't control for all the other possible influences on the change. The comparison was made between different orchestras in different years.
- richmarr 11y agoAs I've commented elsewhere, there are plenty of other studies. Eg. Moss-Racusin et al (2012) which found that female students applying for jobs were seen as less competent than male students with identical application materials.
- mattbee 11y agoMy company has just launched an anonymous interview process for 3 open positions - https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/ https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/ . We only take a mobile# and an alias, and just talk to candidates over IM for 2/3 interviews. I blogged about the rationale - https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by-anonymous-interview https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by... re: the post on gapjumpers, I'm not sure about asking someone to do (what appears to be) a 1-2 day programming exercise on their own time to prove themselves for a job. That favours people with the most time to put aside - and it's a heck of a lot of wasted effort for the candidate who gets rejected. I don't think that's as fair as it should be. We're using anonymous interviews for all our positions (not just development), and it's great to get a sense of personality without thinking about gender, age, race or anything else irrelevant. When we turn people down, we don't even know who they were. I _think_ that's a good thing for both sides. I'm not going to pre-judge what's happening with our process, but so far we've got through a load of interviews without stress, and got very strong impressions from these 30 minute initial chats. Second interviews will start happening the week after next & I'll write about it once we've got this batch of recruits through the door.
- meowface 11y agoSounds like a really good idea. I assume you guys are gathering metrics on this, and will compare the demographics of people who got hired and rejected in the anonymous process vs. the previous one?