
Losers exist. Don’t hire them - nikunjk
http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/05/losers-exist-dont-hire-them/
======
potatolicious
Oh yay. Another "if you don't do things my way (which I never back up with
anything more than hand-waving - I don't even have actual anecdotes), you're
doing it wrong" blog post.

Whew, what a mouthful.

Seriously. Even if we don't play the "anecdotes != data" game, this guy makes
a _lot_ of large, sweeping claims without even using personal experience to
back it up. There's no "this one time I ignored my own advice and ended up
getting burned" - no, the _entire_ post is a giant exercise in supposition.

Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the entire rest of his team loved
the candidate, and _all_ of their opinions were immediately forfeit because
the boss didn't like him. What does this say about the level of confidence and
trust that one has in his team when you're so willing to discount their
judgment _entirely_?

But by all means, keep these posts coming, they are forming a valuable mental
list of people to not work for.

~~~
tptacek
_Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the entire rest of his team loved
the candidate, and all of their opinions were immediately forfeit because the
boss didn't like him. What does this say about the level of confidence and
trust that one has in his team when you're so willing to discount their
judgment entirely?_

I didn't pick this up on the first read, but, yep, there it is, plain as day.
Hilarious. A whole team of people interviewed this guy for the role, votes to
hire, and then he asks what century of English writing the guy likes best and
_woosh_ done.

So at the very least you'd think, this guy should be the _first_ interview
anyone gets, because if you're not going to pass the "favorite era of English
literature" or "favorite aspect of Sino-Indian relations" or "most preferred
basket-weaving maneuver" question, you might as well not waste the time.

------
diego
The author of this article is a jerk. He calls someone a loser because he or
she may not be a good fit for a job. This is not someone you'd want to have as
a boss.

A good manager would write a more compassionate and empathetic article with
the same takeaways, and without the inflammatory tone.

~~~
epoxyhockey
You beat me to the punch. This article says more about the author than it does
about the candidate.

Obviously, the candidate didn't want to talk about his English major, but the
author kept hammering away from every angle anyway. Then, when the author
doesn't get any meaty info on the English studies (AKA doesn't get his way),
he takes his ball and goes home.

He tries to rationalize his way out of passing on the candidate, that the
actual sales team enthusiastically approved: _we eventually did find someone
for that position, with a lot less relevant experience. But she learned the
job in about six weeks, and her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the
unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have
stumbled around._

~~~
eropple
_Obviously, the candidate didn't want to talk about his English major, but the
author kept hammering away from every angle anyway._

Setting aside that the questions are obviously just designed to smoke out
whether you're a human being or a meat robot: it's a sales position (account
management is still sales). If you can't effectively shift a determined person
off of something you don't want to talk about--for whatever reason--you are
probably not somebody who a company wants in a sales/customer-facing role.

------
brianchu
I don't get this author's reasoning here. Maybe the candidate partied all
through school but got his career together after graduating. Maybe the
candidate went through school and never really figured out what he wanted to
do in life until after he graduated. Maybe three years into college the
candidate realized he actually hated English but got the degree because he
wanted to graduate in four years. The list goes on...

Just because someone didn't really do much with their life 5 years ago does
not mean they're a useless loser today.

I noticed that the author is a "failed investment banker." Maybe there
wouldn't be much the author could say about that job either - filling out
spreadsheets and formatting Powerpoints are _totally_ fascinating activities.

------
starpilot
It sounds like he's trying to connect a candidate's well-roundedness and
interpersonal fit with job ability. The last sentence says it all:

> But if a candidate can’t even tell you why they liked their last job, or
> what they got out of their college experience, or any of the million other
> questions that speak to their basic _humanness_ … Then no amount of
> experience will make them valuable.

That's his thesis I think, but he defends it very poorly.

> As it turned out, we eventually did find someone for that position, with a
> lot less relevant experience. But she learned the job in about six weeks,
> and her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable
> — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around.

How do you know this? The other guy couldn't name his favorite book therefore
he couldn't do the job? What past experiences do you have to back this up?

> A person who has no hobbies, and can’t even exaggerate one, almost certainly
> lacks the ambition to make your company valuable. They are probably a loser.

Again, why? I don't consider no hobbies == no ambition to be self-evident. One
common aspects of CEOs is that their ambition for running a company pushes out
everything else from their life (for better or for worse). Having no life
could speak of _too much_ ambition.

It just sounds like he's trying to justify cliquishness with vague
correlations to being a good worker. "Loser" to him amounts to, "a person I do
not like for my own personal reasons."

------
gavanwoolery
Here is a sure-fire way to weed-out potential winners: base your judgement on
some dumb interview questions or metrics.

I have failed many interviews. But anyone who I have ever worked for has
praised the hell out of my work. Interviews have never been a good way of
finding ideal candidates. The best way, IMHO:

Give the interviewee one week's worth of work as an "internship". If they care
about working for you, they will do it. It gives them a chance to prove
themselves, and you a chance to really evaluate how well they can do the job.

~~~
kamaal
There is a reason why interviews don't work.

Because what you know is never a true indicator of what you can do.

------
freework
I've always felt like the best way to hire is to think in terms of teams
instead of in terms of people. If you team is lacking communication skills,
hire someone who have good communication skills, ignoring most other traits
such as intelligence. If your team has great communication but is lacking in
problem solving ability, then you should focus on hiring a really smart
person, ignoring their communication skills. For this reason, I by default
disagree with any article that decrees a certain trait that is "un-hirable"

The best team I was every on was a team that was basically hired randomly. The
boss had tons of money (rich daddy was investor) and needed to hire 10+ devs
pronto. Some people on the team were idiots, some were brilliant, some were
communicative, some weren't, etc. No one was perfect individually, but we were
all perfect as a whole.

------
tokenadult
The author of this article is a loser. (But I give him props for acknowledging
in his author profile,

<http://pandodaily.com/author/goldbergbryan/>

"Previously, he was a failed investment banker." AFTER EDIT: and remember, he
introduced the word "loser" into the thread by how he chose the title for his
blog post.) Maybe he'll be a winner in the future, and I wish him well, but I
wouldn't advise following his hiring procedures. He has hiring authority at a
business corporation, but he hasn't done even elementary research on company
hiring procedures. He writes, "But then it was time for him to interview with
me. I didn’t ask him very many questions about sales, advertising operations,
invoicing, collections, or any of the handful of other tactical skills we
wanted. I just grilled him on the bottom fourth of his resume — you know, the
one about hobbies and college."

And he thinks that by doing that he is identifying winners, even as he is
proud of his ignorance of about a century of research on company hiring
procedures. There are many discussions here on HN about company hiring
procedures. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many
useful references on the subject, which I have gathered here in a FAQ file.
The review article by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, "The Validity and
Utility of Selection Models in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical
Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings," Psychological Bulletin, Vol.
124, No. 2, 262-274

[http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...](http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf)

sums up, current to 1998, a meta-analysis of much of the HUGE peer-reviewed
professional literature on the industrial and organizational psychology
devoted to business hiring procedures. There are many kinds of hiring
criteria, such as in-person interviews, telephone interviews, resume reviews
for job experience, checks for academic credentials, personality tests, and so
on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after
they are hired in a wide variety of occupations.

[http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes...](http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes.aspx)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States,
prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most
other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general
mental ability test.

The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable
secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work
reasonably well. One is a general mental ability (GMA) test (an IQ-like test,
such as the Wonderlic personnel screening test). Another is a work-sample
test, where the applicant does an actual task or group of tasks like what the
applicant will do on the job if hired. (But the calculated validity of each of
the two best kinds of procedures, standing alone, is only 0.54 for work sample
tests and 0.51 for general mental ability tests.) Each of these kinds of tests
has about the same validity in screening applicants for jobs, with the general
mental ability test better predicting success for applicants who will be
trained into a new job. Neither is perfect (both miss some good performers on
the job, and select some bad performers on the job), but both are better than
any other single-factor hiring procedure that has been tested in rigorous
research, across a wide variety of occupations. So if you are hiring for your
company, it's a good idea to think about how to build a work-sample test into
all of your hiring processes.

Because of a Supreme Court decision in the United States (the decision does
not apply in other countries, which have different statutes about employment),
it is legally risky to give job applicants general mental ability tests such
as a straight-up IQ test (as was commonplace in my parents' generation) as a
routine part of hiring procedures. The Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424
(1971) case

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&q=Griggs+Duke+Power&hl=en&as_sdt=2,24)

interpreted a federal statute about employment discrimination and held that a
general intelligence test used in hiring that could have a "disparate impact"
on applicants of some protected classes must "bear a demonstrable relationship
to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used." In other words,
a company that wants to use a test like the Wonderlic, or like the SAT, or
like the current WAIS or Stanford-Binet IQ tests, in a hiring procedure had
best conduct a specific validation study of the test related to performance on
the job in question. Some companies do the validation study, and use IQ-like
tests in hiring. Other companies use IQ-like tests in hiring and hope that no
one sues (which is not what I would advise any company). Note that a brain-
teaser-type test used in a hiring procedure could be challenged as illegal if
it can be shown to have disparate impact on some job applicants. A company
defending a brain-teaser test for hiring would have to defend it by showing it
is supported by a validation study demonstrating that the test is related to
successful performance on the job. Such validation studies can be quite
expensive. (Companies outside the United States are regulated by different
laws. One other big difference between the United States and other countries
is the relative ease with which workers may be fired in the United States,
allowing companies to correct hiring mistakes by terminating the employment of
the workers they hired mistakenly. The more legal protections a worker has
from being fired, the more reluctant companies will be about hiring in the
first place.)

The social background to the legal environment in the United States is
explained in many books about hiring procedures

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-
GZkw6...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-
GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA271&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrlOV&sig=ctblj9SW2Dth7TceaFSNIdVMoEw#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false)

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-
GZkw6...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-
GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA95&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrnMW&sig=LKLi-
deKtnP20VYZo9x0jfvqzLI#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false)

Some of the social background appears to be changing in the most recent few
decades, with the prospect for further changes.

<http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full>

[http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R...](http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf)

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWl...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWlMYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology+%22predictive+validity%22+Duke+Power&ots=5O9Hx_E1vY&sig=g-zERWztBWq3h4guEuv9VVkTh8I#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology%20%22predictive%20validity%22%20Duke%20Power&f=false)

Previous discussion on HN pointed out that the Schmidt & Hunter (1998) article
showed that multi-factor procedures work better than single-factor procedures,
a summary of that article we can find in the current professional literature,
for example "Reasons for being selective when choosing personnel selection
procedures" (2010) by Cornelius J. König, Ute-Christine Klehe, Matthias
Berchtold, and Martin Kleinmann:

"Choosing personnel selection procedures could be so simple: Grab your copy of
Schmidt and Hunter (1998) and read their Table 1 (again). This should remind
you to use a general mental ability (GMA) test in combination with an
integrity test, a structured interview, a work sample test, and/or a
conscientiousness measure."

[http://geb.uni-
giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri...](http://geb.uni-
giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf)

But the 2010 article notes, looking at actual practice of companies around the
world, "However, this idea does not seem to capture what is actually happening
in organizations, as practitioners worldwide often use procedures with low
predictive validity and regularly ignore procedures that are more valid (e.g.,
Di Milia, 2004; Lievens & De Paepe, 2004; Ryan, McFarland, Baron, & Page,
1999; Scholarios & Lockyer, 1999; Schuler, Hell, Trapmann, Schaar, & Boramir,
2007; Taylor, Keelty, & McDonnell, 2002). For example, the highly valid work
sample tests are hardly used in the US, and the potentially rather useless
procedure of graphology (Dean, 1992; Neter & Ben-Shakhar, 1989) is applied
somewhere between occasionally and often in France (Ryan et al., 1999). In
Germany, the use of GMA tests is reported to be low and to be decreasing
(i.e., only 30% of the companies surveyed by Schuler et al., 2007, now use
them)."

Integrity tests have limited validity standing alone, but appear to have
significant incremental validity when added to a general mental ability test
or work-sample test.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_integrity_testing>

[http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1](http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1)

<http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF>

[http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports...](http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-14602.html)

Winners exist. Learn from them.

~~~
arockwell
Author is definitely a winner. He founded Bleacher Report. Disclaimer: I work
there.

It's fine to disagree, but it's a pretty lame attack him based on a selected
portion of his bio.

~~~
tptacek
_But it's a pretty lame attack him based on a selected portion of his bio._

This comment is like 10,000 spoons, when all you need is one spoon.

~~~
dctoedt
The lyric is actually "when all you need is a knife" --- but that might have
been intentional on your part, Thomas?

~~~
tptacek
I like to strike my little blow against how little irony is actually in that
song.

------
pan69
It's quite true. Losers exist. Don't work for them.

------
pooriaazimi
Maybe he didn't like English Literature - his passion was film, or
programming, or architecture and he discovered it later (and he couldn't
change his major then). Or his college had lousy Film teachers or didn't offer
any programming/architecture classes so he decided to go with English even
though he didn't like it. Or maybe he partied all college, and then graduated
and found more about the "real" world and got his act together.

I agree (in general) with wanting employees that aren't single-minded and have
no hobby/passion outside of their work, but in this particular case I
absolutely disagree with author's decision (based on his article).

------
jasonkostempski
Idiot assholes hiring people based on 'clever' interview techniques exist.
Don't work for them.

~~~
sjtgraham
<http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

~~~
jasonkostempski
u r a self-important dilettante!!!!!!!!!!

------
chill1
The word "Loser" might be a bit off putting, but if you can get past that, the
approach the author of the article describes is a good way of getting to the
core of the person you're interviewing.

~~~
TillE
Not really the core of the person, it's more like the FizzBuzz to verify that
they have some kind of basic personality and the ability to talk about things.

That's fine, but hardly groundbreaking. I haven't done many job interviews in
my life, but the kind of questions he suggests seem common enough.

------
outworlder
The author might have a point. The world is filled with automatons, without
passion or even mensurable interests. He might be right in not hiring the
candidate, but we cannot know if he was, in fact, a 'loser' (by some
definition of 'loser').

It might be the case that the candidate actually didn't find academy very
enjoyable and spent all day drinking instead. Which most do, at some point. In
that case, he could've been too shy to admit it, or did admit it and the
author was too obtuse to change the subject.

See, we are dealing with his perception. If the candidate could write his
angle, then we could try to infer something. It might even be the case that
the candidate (with lots of experience) found the interview to be meaningless
and boring and wanted to leave.

And generic answers are a nice way to end a conversation.

------
pygorex
Let me get this straight. The author asserts the following:

 _Lesser managers will try to stump candidates with horrible brain teasers
along the lines of “Describe a time you got into a bad situation and resolved
it effectively?” — or crap like that._

What hard-hitting, incisive questions does the author ask instead?

 _Which of your previous jobs did you enjoy the most?_

 _What do you think of our web site?_

 _Tell me about your hobbies..._

You've got to be kidding me. These are all soft-ball questions. What amazes me
is that the author's company already has a hiring process in place. But he
feels justified in abandoning this process at the end when an interviewee
doesn't provide correct responses to an arbitrary list of soft-ball questions.

------
ChuckMcM
Ok, I read it, I _knew_ it was link bait going in, and felt it tweak "Those
Buttons" that such things do. I'd like that 5 minutes of my life back.

TL;DR summary I got from it was "I use these questions to decide if I'll enjoy
working with someone, and I don't hire them if I don't like their answers."
and interspersed with a bit of aspersions on people who aren't good at "small
talk."

One of the interesting things that is oft overlooked in the angst of hiring is
actually the angst of firing. Really. I mean the only reason you want to be
super super careful about hiring someone is because if they don't work out
then you've wasted that time. But if you can lower the cost of hiring enough,
and make firing pretty straight forward, then the economics can change.

One summer I worked for McDonalds (the fast food chain) for all of four weeks,
two in a 'training store' and then two in my assigned store. I was fired
pretty quickly. During my training (hamburger flipping) the store manager
explained that (at the time) McDonalds would hire anyone with a pulse and no
criminal record. They would then train them briefly, and watch them closely,
and decide early on if they wanted to keep them around.

My "problem" was that the store had an algorithm for queuing up burgers which,
from my perspective at the grill, was broken. Our store had way more people
who ordered Quarter Pounders (one 4 oz patty) than BigMacs (two 2 oz patties).
The algorithm though said you had to 'start' twice as many 2 oz patties as 4
oz patties just before the lunch rush. We always were throwing out 2oz patties
(you can't sell them after they've been on the warmer too long). So I started
cutting back on the 2oz patties I started. Big mistake :-). Got "the talk"
which was "We hire people to do things the way we want them done, you may not
agree with how things are done but if you want to keep working here you have
to do what we say." Silly me (it was only my second 'real' job) I kept trying
to find ways to optimize the system and not get caught. At the two week point
my manager recognized that I was a 'trouble maker' and couldn't follow
instructions. End of my career right there.

Now the moral of the story isn't to make fun of McDonalds but to point out
that they made acquiring good "fits" for the company straight forward by
building a lighter weight hire/fire process than most places have. Folks I
know who have worked at Microsoft suggested they had systems which did
something similar, hiring at temps, then converting to full time. This made it
easier to fire people who were temps in the first place. Google kinda of did
that with their 'slotting' process.

------
Steko
There's some good and bad stuff in this post.

The good part:

"[these questions] can help identify winners even amongst the nervous, “I
don’t interview well” types of people who may warm up and shine on the job.
And I’ve hired a lot of great people who don’t interview especially well. But
when I jump into the above questions, they are able to speak eloquently to how
dynamic and thoughtful they are as people."

So yeah this is a technique that's worked for him to help "find winners" that
he otherwise wouldn't have.

The bad part is, rather obviously, the assumption that anyone that doesn't
pass his test is a loser:

"her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable —
tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around."

This is a serious case of choice supportive bias and because it's the focus of
the article people are justifiably piling on the author. No you don't know
that person is a loser. If it was that easy to find losers the billions of
dollars used in hiring would have found this out already.

------
joshmlewis
What if this guy was shy or a bit of an introvert? I know if I were in that
situation I may not have all the "correct" answers, especially if I were in a
room with someone like the author. If you make me feel wanted or interesting I
can talk about anything, if you make me uncomfortable and sound like a jerk?
Especially in a job interview, you can believe I'd be nervous and may not have
all the best answers. As far as hobbies go, I like auto racing, but other than
that all my time is devoted to startuping and freelance work, which I love
dearly. Books? Last one I read was How to Win Friends and Influence People and
other than that, I can't remember the last one I've read. All that to say,
maybe this guy didn't click with the author, but doesn't give you the right to
call him a loser. That's just bullshit.

------
neumann_alfred
"There’s a Beck song about people like that."

 _(this is song two on the album / this is the album right here / burn the
album)

tonight the city is full of morgues / and all the toilets are overflowing /
there's shopping malls coming out of the walls / as we walk out among the
manure

that's why / I pay no mind / I pay no mind / I pay no mind

give the finger to the rock 'n' roll singer / as he's dancing upon your
paycheck / the sales climb high through the garbage-pail sky / like a giant
dildo crushing the sun

that's why / I pay no mind / sleep in slime / I just got signed

so get out your lead-pipe pipe dreams / get out your ten-foot flags / the
insects are huge and the poison's all been used / and the drugs won't kill
your day job...honey

that's why / I pay no mind / I pay no mind / I pay no mind

that's why / i pay no mind [x7]_

------
georgemcbay
"As it turned out, we eventually did find someone for that position, with a
lot less relevant experience. But she learned the job in about six weeks, and
her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable —
tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around."

Could you tell me a bit about your hobby of predicting the future, Mr
Goldberg?

Who would you say are your top 5 clairvoyants?

------
Pkeod
Liking solitaire doesn't make someone a loser.

------
connor
This article came across as offensive. Honestly if a company is actively
classifying people as losers, it's not really the type of company I'd like to
work at. A better hiring policy might be 'hire amazing people' and then look
for the amazing in people. This approach is so negative and off-putting.

------
benguild
I find this video quite relevant for this particular candidate,
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L_cGjQSR80>

------
sidcool
Not a very insightful read. Again, not sure why so many votes for this post.
But differences exist.

------
datalus
I thought this article was informative. It's good info for anyone not wanting
to work for a tool.

------
michaelochurch
So who should hire the "losers", then?

The creative, ambitious, energetic people have a lot of leadership potential
and can do great work if motivated properly, but also fall down on the
undignified grunt work that's at least half of what most companies need to
have done (or think they need).

If you're hiring for a company like Valve that expects people to work at a
high creative level, then these interview questions are good, because you need
to select the people who will do well in a high-autonomy environment. If
you're just looking to get grunt work done without complaint, you're probably
better off favoring a person with a bland personality who can get the job
done.

Much of the trouble that companies create for themselves is in hiring the most
appealing people and then putting them on mediocre work.

