
Will you rate people who interviewed you for a project/gig on Applygo.com? - applygo
Picture this. You’re going in for a job interview. Or you’re going to interview someone. You open the Applygo app (to be built sometime in the future) and look up the people who you’re going to meet. Their information pops up, with a rating by other people they’ve interviewed with in the past. BOOM. A high rating tells that you’re going to love working with this person, and a low rating tells you to run the other way.
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jeffmould
That's tough. Interesting concept, but I think there are a few flaws:

1\. A person that does not interview well may tend to provide a lower rating.
This ties into personality as well.

2\. Basing your decision to work at a company off a single point of input such
as a specific interviewer's score, is narrow minded. The company could be a
great place to work and/or the interviewer could be a great person to work
with; however, they are just a poor interviewer.

3\. In cases where the interviewer/interviewee may already know each other
well, the review could be skewed.

With these two things in mind though, I think there is a market here, just not
in the way you are approaching it here. I would sell it as a service to HR
departments. After a company completes an interview, the interviewee gets an
email asking them to rate their interviewer. The company can in turn use that
feedback to adjust their interview process, and/or possibly remove an
interviewer from a position if they continuously have poor feedback.

~~~
applygo
Excellent points, thank you. I should clarify- the goal is to rate
individuals, not companies. Often times, our perception of an entire org is
based on our interaction with one person who works there. People quit bosses,
not companies, so for your #2 point - this would be the rating to start with,
which could ultimately expand to include confidential ratings on co-workers,
bosses etc, thereby painting a more holistic view of the org. For your point
#1 and #3, the service would tap into the wisdom of the crowd, so even a few
biased ratings should get absorbed in the aggregate and shouldn't
statistically alter the true rating on an individual interviewer.

I'm in corporate HR and don't think there is a market of HR buyers, since
existing HR systems can easily incorporate a survey instrument. My goal is to
get individual ratings by people of each other so job seekers can make a more
informed decision. For example, Amazon has been in the news. My take is that
it's not the right place for everyone and even in the org there are different
managers - good and bad. What would matter to me and you, I assume, is the
individuals we are going to report to and work with. And today no service
solves for this as far as I know.

~~~
jeffmould
Actually I have never quit a boss, I have always quit a company. If the
culture is good at a company and I generally enjoy the atmosphere and other
co-workers, I will try to find an opportunity to change bosses or address the
problem head-on. Now if the entire company culture sucks and I don't see
myself happy in the company then I will quit.

Amazon is a poor example, that has nothing to do with a specific individual
who is horrible at interviewing. That is a rating on the entire company as a
whole.

No offense, but I think you are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
If I were looking for a job, and I would say that this probably applies to
most people, I will research openings, research the company if I am not
familiar with it, try to find people within my network who either work there
or have friends/family that work there, and get a general overview. I will
look at sites like Glassdoor that provide a candid look into most companies
from the employees angle. Yes, the people I am going to work with are
important, but I am going to judge that based on my interview and own personal
interactions. Who I like and get along with is going to be completely
different than who you like and get along with. And while there may be
similarities between the two groups of people, in the end there is always some
difference. I, personally, would never base my decision to work at a company
off of a single interaction with a single person. It could be the interviewer
is having a bad day or you as an interviewee are having a bad day.

To me I think you are going to run into a critical issue of the people doing
the majority of the rating will be the ones who had poor interviews in general
or didn't get hired. They are looking to vent their frustration. I would bet
that you would find companies like Google or Microsoft that would skew towards
bad interviews, because the people that would do the majority of the rating
would have found the interview process challenging.

~~~
applygo
Re: quitting a company v. boss, it sounds to me that you "quit" the boss by
changing bosses or addressing the problem head-on. But I take your point.

You're correct in the job search approach - research the openings, company and
people in your network for a general overview - but the hypothesis is, users
would like to know what people thought of the specific individual (boss, co-
worker etc.), to help them an more informed decision. When you compile
numerous ratings about one person, then you're tapping into the wisdom on the
crowd.

Your last two points about who will provide the ratings are valid - I don't
have an answer for it yet. It is possible initial users will be
disgruntled/poor/challenged interviewees and will be vocal. My broad goal (as
a corporate HR guy) is to find bad interviewers, interviewees and interviews
and fix them. One area where HR always underinvests, or invests poorly, is
training people to be good managers. There is a long running poll by Gallup
that shows immense dissatisfaction in the workforce, and the manager has the
largest impact. So if we can find the right bosses/colleagues thru a more
transparent interview process, then I think we will have a chance to change
people's work lives.

~~~
jeffmould
Your statement goes back to my original point. This isn't a tool for
jobseekers. It is a tool for HR departments to utilize in determining how
effective their interview process is so they can more efficiently make
adjustments so as to hire the best people. It should be sold as such, not as a
"rate your interviewer" tool that jobseekers use to determine which
companies/bosses they want to work for.

I have a friend who does not like conducting interviews. He cringes every time
he knows he has to do one for the company, and the company knows to avoid
having him interview. Yet he still does them from time to time, when the
company absolutely needs someone. He always tells me that the person must have
thought he was the worse interviewer ever. On the flip side though, he is a
great manager, fair and fun to work for, he will stand up for his team to
management and knows how to play the politics that can be in an office, and I
would say without a doubt that if you asked all his coworkers they would say
the same about him. So a tool like this would penalize him for something out
of his control.

~~~
applygo
So manage the interview process and feedback for the company not interviewee?
Hmm, hadn't thought of that since most large organizations have an Applicant
Tracking System in place that may have this feature.

Thank you for the great feedback.

~~~
jeffmould
I wouldn't do the process, just the feedback. Build a value add around the
feedback, such as interview critique/coaching services, training, etc... Make
it about optimizing the interview process to make smarter hires.

~~~
applygo
There are plenty of services that offer interview prep advice and numerous
independent consulting services in feedback. These don't scale and not what I
want to do.

I'm doing more research and think there is something to "collective
intelligence" or wisdom of the crowd. I'm not going to argue if a crowd is
wise or not, but data show that the crowd gets it right within a fraction of
the right answer. What I'm proposing is a type of feedback, but one that can
scale globally. The crowd should be able to predict closely what a person is
like to work with, or so I think. This addresses the extreme cases we've
discussed on the thread here. I'm still researching this - can crowds predict
with the same accuracy as it is at arriving at an already known answer like
how many jelly beans are in a jar etc.

Here is some examples of what I'm talking about:
[http://youtu.be/iOucwX7Z1HU](http://youtu.be/iOucwX7Z1HU)
[http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1406/1406.7563.pdf](http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1406/1406.7563.pdf)
[http://m.sciencemag.org/content/330/6004/686.abstract?view=a...](http://m.sciencemag.org/content/330/6004/686.abstract?view=abstract&uritype=cgi)

