
How to hire good people instead of nice people - gamechangr
http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice-people/
======
jaysonelliot
I like the idea of starting a conversation instead of the usual resume and
interview approach, but the example job listing (here:
<http://brookeallen.com/pages/archives/982>) came off as _creepy_ to me,
somehow.

Maybe it was the overly familiar tone from a stranger, or the slightly self-
centered focus on the prospective employer's own personality, or the
paternalistic tone of the listing, down to the closing line: "deal?"

I would personally not be comfortable answering an ad like that. I prefer my
professional relationships to at least begin with a more professional tone.
Phrases like "I will not hire anyone until we both understand and care about
each other" remind me of bosses I've had when I was younger that seemed to
want to treat me more like a son or nephew than an employee, and it always
made me kind of uncomfortable. I can imagine for a woman, this might set off
even more alarm bells than it does for me as a man.

Hire skilled, talented people. Looking for "good-hearted" people with "giving
personalities" sounds to me like I'm going to have to hug you at the end of
the day or something.

~~~
jt2190

      > I prefer my professional relationships to at least 
      > begin with a more professional tone.
    

Interestingly, if you dig into what he means by "good" I think that he's also
looking for more professionalism. His point:

    
    
      > "Nice people care if you like them; good people care 
      > about you."
    

Reminds me of this saying:

    
    
      "I'm not your friend, I'm your doctor."
    

For example, if I were overweight, I would expect my doctor to tell me to
loose weight, _every_ time I went for a visit. I would not expect him to stop
raising the issue because I was sensitive about my weight, and it upset me to
talk about it. My doctor must advocate for my own best interests, even if it
makes him uncomfortable to do so.

~~~
peterbessman
I think anything too different from the standard manner of hiring is going to
come off creepy to some extent. Much of the way we hire people is probably a
deeply ingrained cultural ritual, and large deviations from that script would
be disorienting.

Not to say that cultural rituals are a bad thing. Manners and etiquette keep
the machinery of society well lubricated and running smoothly, so I'm not a
fan of tossing them out and starting anew, tabula rasa.

At the same time, it wouldn't surprise me if the way America does hiring could
be improved. In particular, my experience of hiring in tech has been that it's
pretty tough to do much better than having 60%-70% of your hires work out. But
not only do companies have a tough time with hiring, there's this weird
phenomenon where large swathes of seemingly qualified people also have a hard
time getting hired. So I'm all for innovation in hiring to the extent that it
can fix these problems.

But are these problems really addressable by changes in hiring? It seems like
that would be pretty low hanging fruit, so I would expect businesses to have
figured this out already. The fact that they haven't makes me wonder if there
are other systemic explanations for the problems we're seeing.

For instance, in tech, relatively little filtering is done up front by
education and credentialing institutions. Sure, it helps to have a degree from
MIT, but there are substantial numbers of successful high-performers in this
field without a college education. By contrast, only around 40% of the people
who apply to medical school get in, but my understanding is that >99% of all
physician and surgeon hires work out. So perhaps tech businesses would
experience a similar rate of successful hires if there was something like the
medical school filter in the tech world.

As for the tech workers who have trouble getting hired, there are numerous
possible explanations. One could be the Dunning-Kruger effect, where low-
competence workers are unable to recognize their own skills gaps. Vivek Wadhwa
has previously argued that ageism is to blame here, and that tech is really an
up-or-out industry. Norm Matloff makes the case -- and granted it's quite
controversial and potentially inflammatory -- that abuses of the H1B visa
system are too blame.

Clear as mud.

Still, although I don't think the solution lies in this particular hiring
innovation -- which wasn't for tech, I'll grant, but the spirit of the
preceeding applies to the larger US economy, struggling as it is -- the
solution can only emerge from many different actors trying many different
things. In that regard, the guy gets my respect. I'm reminded of something
Linus Torvalds once said:

"I'm deadly serious: we humans have never been able to replicate something
more complicated than what we ourselves are, yet natural selection did it
without even thinking. Don't underestimate the power of survival of the
fittest. And don't ever make the mistake that you can design something better
than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a
feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit. Quite
frankly, Sun is doomed. And it has nothing to do with their engineering
practices or their coding style."

~~~
evacuationdrill
Vivek Wadhwa's article is here: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/silicon-
valley%E2%80%99s-da...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/silicon-
valley%E2%80%99s-dark-secret-it%E2%80%99s-all-about-age/)

------
svmegatron
I was all ready to get up into high dudgeon about hiring people who are
capable but can't get along with others - but that's not what this article is
about at all.

The author wants to hire people of integrity, not yes-men, and makes a
particular point of hiring people who complement his skills. He also touches
on several other points that might be undervalued in today's hiring climate.

Very good stuff IMO

~~~
busterarm
Definitely some great stuff. I've read a few of his other articles as a result
and wow! I'm totally impressed.

The securities industry gets a pretty bad rep. This guy has been a prop trader
and hedge fund manager and has integrity in spades; believe it or not but I'm
my experience that's a common trait with most of these guys.

------
VLM
I think his article is smoothly written to recruit noobs.

For example, I've been around for awhile, and when I hear the employer wants
"giving personality" I'd like to think that means I mentor people and do some
volunteer work. Been there, done that, think its cool. However experience has
shown that really means "doesn't complain about unpaid overtime and excessive
oncall and is a complete doormat".

Ditto stuff like "I give honesty and require it in return." I'd like to think
thats true, often it is, but then again often it just means I want a yes man
but can't say it so I'll talk about the opposite instead in compensation.

Some stuff is just creepy. "I won’t get between you and your dreams." My
personal life outside of work is none of your business unless coincidentally
we happen to overlap, in which case thats cool, although perhaps
professionally awkward. Creepy!

Some stuff I have never experienced in industry or even heard of. "If you
don’t have a requisite skill right now". You've got to be kidding.

Based on extensive observation, corporate communication about what's important
is usually a strong indication of what's absent other than a slogan, not
what's actually important. We believe in a work-life balance means their only
contribution toward a work-life balance is talking about having one, actual
implementation is strictly work oriented. Or "we're a professional
organization" means drunken frat boy antics. If their contribution to honesty
is exclusively bragging about how they like honesty, look out...

------
bretpiatt
New Quartz broken for me on iOS 4.3 (1st gen iPad never updated), can't see
past header, used <http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/lynx/lynx_viewer.php>
to read.

Interesting hiring practice idea, key point is the nice vs. good. The rest is
just sorting out how he figures it out.

I actually do not agree with hiring a brilliant jerk unless you know what you
are doing when you agree to work together. You can often select for both good
and nice, they do not have to be mutually exclusive.

~~~
alanh
I’m not sure you understood what he meant by “good.”

> _The opposite of good is bad. The opposite of nice is unlikeable._

That’s still a little vague. “Good” can mean “skilled” (as I think you
interpreted it), but he actually means “honest and ethical.” For instance:
“Deborah was … clearly qualified …, but she called … and said, ’I have to drop
out. I’m pregnant. The plan was that I wouldn’t tell you I was pregnant and
work for six months, go on leave, and decide later if I’d come back. But now I
realize I cannot do that to you, and I cannot do that to the other people who
might deserve the job more than me. Then it hit me that I cannot do that to
_anyone_ because I’m about to be a mom and I have to think about what kind of
role model I want to be for my child.’ … Good people like [Deborah] are hard
to find.”

~~~
Kurtz79
I agree... for me "good" in a working environment means "skilled, capable",
while "nice" could very well mean "caring, good hearted".

Someone that is likeable, social but a selfish bastard behind his façade it's
not what I'd call "nice".

But apart from that, I agree with most of the article, good points.

------
Adrock
If you're talking about degrees of "good," I like michaelochurch's breakdown
in this post:

[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/gervais-
macle...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/gervais-
macleod-14-expanding-alignment-plus-well-adjustedness/)

Exemplary > Heroic > Virtuous > Humane > Natural > Pliable > Corrupt >
Sadistic > Calamitous

I've gotten the most mileage from his astute distinctions in the middle range.

------
johnjlocke
There's some deep philosophy in the article. I wish everyone who was in charge
of hiring took this sort of care to place people. So refreshing to see that
integrity and honesty are still valuable assets.

~~~
_pmf_
> I wish everyone who was in charge of hiring took this sort of care to place
> people.

One problem would be that in bigger companies, the people in charge of the
hiring process are not the people doing the actual hiring.

------
jumblesale
An interesting approach, and it's refreshing to see an employer wanting to be
honest and open during the recruitment process, but it feels like this advice
has a limited audience. It's fine if you are hiring for a large established
hedge fund where you can afford attractive salaries but how many people are in
this situation?

A lot of hiring happens in response to a crisis like having to replace an
existing employee or having too much work for too few people. In these
situations it's not feasible to invite every candidate round for pizza and a
chat about ethics and then find all of them work. It's more about deciding
what to compromise on. For most companies it's going to be more about things
that are quickly testable: skill, experience, ability. 'Goodness' as the
article describes is much more difficult to elicit in a candidate. Like any
personality trait it's something that doesn't tend to manifest until much
further down the line when the new hire has settled into the role.

Allen doesn't really provide any details on how you would discover the
'goodness' of a candidate prior to hiring. Other than laying down the ground
rules of what he expects there's no mention of how he estimates this quality
in a candidate. According to his success stories the candidates simply self
select but this can't be a reliable method. What about people who use their
niceness to masquerade as 'good' people?

It's good advice to be open and honest with potential employees but I don't
really see what most recruiters can take away from this. Talented, experienced
individuals can be difficult enough to find without having to look for some
vague idea of how 'good' they are too.

~~~
ScottWhigham
_how many people are in this situation?_

I would guess almost every business that has < 10 employees is in this
situation.

 _It's good advice to be open and honest with potential employees but I don't
really see what most recruiters can take away from this._

I don't think this was _for_ recruiters; I think the target audience was for
the employer who has to hire without the help of a recruiter.

~~~
jumblesale
I think a 10 person organisation would probably still be at the stage where
they have a lot more to worry about in potential candidates and probably don't
have access to enough capital / cachet to be able to attract the ideal person.

~~~
ScottWhigham
There's so many assumptions in your statement(s) that it's hard to really take
them seriously. I don't know where you get the idea that "A successful company
making lots of money" and "Companies with more than 10 employees" always
intersect.

~~~
jumblesale
I'm not totally sure where you get the idea that I get that idea based on my
statement(s).

------
krichman
Thank you for posting this.

This article is incredibly refreshing, and I think people in the position to
hire new employees should definitely read this. I wish more people had such
integrity.

~~~
gamechangr
I posted this story to HN. I just wish there was a little more honesty in the
world, mostly because there is no real dialogue going on in most interviews. I
know his ideas are new (and some say creepy), but we need to swing the
pendulum the other way.

Honestly would increase the speed of productivity for everybody.

------
tonyblundell
I'd prefer to hire a nice person. Training nice people to be good at something
is easier than training skilled people to be nice :D

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Someone didn't read the article. It's about affable vs. having your best
interests at heart, not affable vs. skilled.

~~~
tonyblundell
Isn't learning to do the best thing for the business irrespective of your
instincts a skill?

------
biot
This provides some good parameters around whether you should continue working
at the job you currently have. Specifically:

    
    
      "If you have a dream, I need to know what it is so 
       we can figure out if this job gets you closer."
    

This makes me think twice about my present work.

~~~
arkades
You may want to consider reading "Winning", by Jack Welch. If that little bit
made you reconsider your job, his chapter on job fit would probably be right
up your alley.

~~~
biot
Thanks for that. On the People / Opportunity / Options / Ownership / Work
Content dimensions, I'm a 2/5... so yeah, maybe time to put some serious
thought into that.

------
blazespin
Classic case of projection. The guy works in hedge fund management where
success and 'goodness' is so easily observable (buy low sell high). His
observations make sense ... for his industry. For other industries and roles,
for example sales, niceness has its benefits.

~~~
300bps
I think you made the same mistake I did. I thought he meant "good" as in
skilled. He actually meant "good" as in "not evil".

------
chencha
I agree that hiring good-hearted people makes for a better employment -- and
who would argue against good-heartedness?

But he self-servingly equates your willingness to do more recruiting for him,
with "goodness." Being good comes in all flavors, and some of them don't
include the desire to work for free, as a recruiter, while your employment
offer is on the table.

------
klepra
I felt like author points out as being nice and good are exclusive traits. In
most cases, however, they complement.

~~~
Swannie
That is true, most of the time someone who is "good" (by the authors
definition) will also be "nice". But there are many times where being "good",
requires explaining to someone that their performance is below expectations,
or that their behaviour is not acceptable. This is not "nice" as the author
defined it.

(Though based on the common definition of nice, you can certainly be nice
about how you would make such an explanation!)

------
tzury

        Usually, employers rapidly scan the resume of each job  
        applicant looking for relevant education, skills, and 
        work experience. They select 10 candidates for telephone 
        calls, invite three in for interviews, 
        and hire the one they like the best.
    

Not sure in which industry this is the case, in our industry, i.e.
IT/Startups/Hackers, and here in Tel Aviv area, the last line is more likely
to be: "And then the Employee tells: 'I will let you know within a week or so,
whether or not I'd like to continue with the process.."

In those words, more or less. The fact is, that early screening process,
brings in the better people, and given there is an extremely high demand for
the "know-how", they know it, and stand for their benefits pretty well.

------
carlob
I was shocked to hear he ended up not hiring the pregnant woman, wouldn't that
be discriminatory?

~~~
precisioncoder
If a man was planning to work for just 6 months to fill a gap before he
started a job he was looking forward to would you hire him?

~~~
RobAley
If the job was for a fixed period (like maternity leave) and he was planning
to come back afterwards, and he was the right person for the job, then sure.
I've hired like that before.

People need time out in their lives for all kinds of reasons. If you're
playing the long-game when hiring, which you often are (or should be), then
you need to take that into account.

~~~
precisioncoder
In the right circumstances I would as well. I meant to simply point out the
general idea that substituting man for woman will imply if it's sexist or not.
In the article it also does not mention whether or not she was ever planning
to go back to work.

------
bnegreve
> _Nice people care if you like them; .... Nice people stretch the truth;_

It is a strange definition of nice.. if nice means hypocritical, and good
means honest then I agree that _good people_ are probably better.

In general I am a bit bothered by this very absolute vocabulary that we ear
everywhere in the tech world. We ear about _very talented_ people, _awesome_
teams, _beautiful designs_. For me all this is just advertising and shouldn't
be given too much attention. The reality is a lot more complex.

------
confusedsquirel
I was more interested in the site itself. As you scrolled to a new article, it
changed the URL. Then if you visited that URL in a new tab, it was the new top
of the page.

------
kuchaguangjie
Wow, I really want to work for/with people like the author.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
This sounds nice, but the truth is I'm usually good and sometimes nice.
Sometimes I can't even tell for sure. Are you certain you aren't
oversimplifying? Don't you really want people who define good the same way as
you do? For example, some people think a good email must have lots of
introductory information and something like Xs and Os at the end. May they
arrive at work early and endure many long meetings.

------
krenoten
"Nice people will allow you to hire them even if they know they are not among
your best candidates; a good person won’t let you hire them unless that is
what is best for you."

Uhhhhh... Isn't that exactly the kind of person who values the external more
than the internal that will go along with an evil plan?

------
znowi
"I want people with a good heart and a giving personality" - it's a little
weird to hear this from a proprietary trader and hedge fund manager :)

------
michaelochurch
I think that the fundamental problem is that we're used to a certain low-level
dishonesty in job prospecting. Even if you don't agree with it-- even if you'd
rather people see how you really are so you don't end up in inappropriate
roles-- you're expected to make nice and play along.

Job applicants have to overstate their willingness to subordinate. Very rare
is a talented person who wants to be a subordinate. Protege to an obvious
superior (by which I mean person of superior _skill_ )? Sure, but that's
different because there's an obvious symbiosis. Subordinate order-follower?
No, no one wants that.

On the flip side, hiring managers often overstate the autonomy and future
prospects associated with the role.

Companies overstate their need for "passion". Passionate people never see
themselves as subordinates. Proteges, possibly. Not subordinates. Never
happens, never will.

If you want people who are good at subordinating, you need to go to the other
end of the passion spectrum and find people who are happy just to have a job.
But no one wants to hire those because, even though they're often good at
well-defined tasks, they're taken to be kind of a bummer.

I feel like when people go too far to the good-not-nice extreme, you end up
with dialogues like this (obviously, more subtly)...

Hiring manager: all of the "vision" questions and tough technical brainteasers
are a false lead. In reality, we're looking to add excess capacity to which we
can delegate undesirable work. Also, the reason why we're overhiring is
because it makes managers happy to have overqualified subordinates so they can
say things like, "I have four Ivy Leaguers working for me".

Candidate: I don't _really_ see myself as a subordinate, and unless management
takes a direct interest in my career and I get the best projects available,
I'm going to start serving my own career interests in a matter of about 6
months.

No one would hire anyone if people were that honest.

~~~
rayiner
I hesitate to call it "dishonesty" because its like dating. Nobody lays all
their cards on the table while trying to get a date. Everyone paints the
idealized picture of themselves, tailored to the other person's expectations.
Its mutual, concensual deception. You don't disclose, and they don't want to
hear, that you're a fastidious basket case who will freak the moment the other
person moves something in your apartment.

------
wittysense
I really appreciate this. Thank you.

There are good employers, huzzah.

