

Blind Auditions Could Give Employers a Better Hiring Sense - mtviewdave
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/05/28/410264592/blind-auditions-could-give-employers-a-better-hiring-sense

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organsnyder
Blind 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/b...](http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-
leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias)

~~~
pervycreeper
The 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
As 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.

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paulhauggis
"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.

~~~
jtreminio
> "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).

~~~
thoman23
Wait, 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?

~~~
meowface
One major tech company I interviewed for explicitly recommended blue jeans,
and said I'd be outdressing the interviewer if I went any higher than that.

~~~
thoman23
And yet engineers wonder why we are thrown into open offices like cattle and
compensated with foosball tables and Mountain Dew. We are skilled professional
workers. How about starting with some self-respect? Grow up and put on a
collared shirt at least. (NOTE: This is not directed at the parent
commenter...I'm just ranting in general)

~~~
EliRivers
What I would sometimes really, really like to wear at work, is a three-piece
suit, minus the jacket. So smart suit trousers, a well ironed tailored (i.e.
made to measure) shirt with a good tie, and a waistcoat. The waistcoat ensures
that the tie doesn't flap, and also neatly covers the join twixt shirt and
trousers - no unsightly loose shirt on display (because, if you wear a shirt,
it's going to loosen as you move around). Shirt sleeves folded back from the
cuffs (which require cuff-links to join, such that when not joined they're
free enough to fold back smartly) and the sleeve prevented from loosening
unduly with a discrete sleeve garter.

Look smart, feel smart, and a clear separation for me between dressing for
work (and thus being in professional work mode - this would be advantageous to
my employer), and dressing for not work. As it is, at my current place, I can
dress like this, which is nice.

However, the majority of tech places seem to have strict dress codes
(brilliantly, hidden behind protestations that there's totally no dress code,
no no no, although last week we [1] didn't hire someone because he wore a suit
to the interview, but that's not for violating the dress code at a job he
didn't even work at, no no no), and someone dressing smartly rather than the
uniform of jeans/chinos and t-shirt, would cause uncertainty and unsettlement
amongst the workers, many of whom would not be able to effectively work with
someone who is not just like them.

[1] General case "we". If I ever hear someone come out of interviewing a
candidate and suggest that dressing smartly was a negative, I go absolutely.
Nuts. Hasn't happened for a very long time.

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mattbee
My 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...](https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by-anonymous-
interview)

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
Sounds 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?

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codingdave
Specific 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
> 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
We 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
If only there was some people could act like professionals, able to work with
people who aren't cultural clones of each other.

~~~
A_COMPUTER
What 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.

~~~
EliRivers
"Cultural fit" is code for "just like us". It's not code for "can do the job
needed to a high standard". It's not code for "would work well with our
current employees". If that's what is was, people wouldn't say "cultural fit".
They wouldn't say they interviewed for "cultural fit". They'd be interviewing
for professionalism and ability to do the job and ability to work well with
other employees, and people who turned up to a job interview wouldn't get
turned down because they wore a suit to the interview while the interviewer
dressed like a slob in a retro-ironic t-shirt.

It's code for "just like us". "Cultural fit" is important for workplaces which
contain a number of people already who couldn't work with someone different;
at that point, you look out over your homogenous banks of identikit employees,
and wonder how vulnerable you've become because you all think the same, and
how many excellent applicants you've turned down because they weren't just
like us.

If anything, you should hire for NOT cultural fit. You should hire for people
who think differently, who will bring new ideas, new perspectives. Who will
see the gaps in your current products because they're bringing a different
perspective. Instead of hiring the same person over and over, duplicating
existing ways of thinking and reinforcing the same mistakes, the same
vulnerabilites, the same blind spots, hire people who can fill in those gaps
and actually bring something new to the table and see those mistakes and those
vulnerabilites.

~~~
codingdave
Wow. I'm not even sure where to begin. Clearly, you do not understand what we
are talking about when we say "cultural fit".

People do work differently. They have their own communication styles,
leadership styles, and working styles. Some of those styles work better
together than others. That is is not a judgment call of saying any one style
is better or worse, it is just saying that mixing incompatible styles can
build a dysfunctional team. So knowing who you have on board, and how they
work and communicate, lets you hire compatible styles.

This has nothing to do with diversity of people. Very diverse people can still
have compatible working styles.

~~~
tptacek
Then provide us with a precise definition of "culture fit", and some notion of
how you screen for it.

Maybe none of us will disagree with it. Few of us have a problem with a "no
asshole rule", for instance.

Precision is important here, because it needs to be communicated to everyone
who interviews, lest "culture fit" assume its inevitable role of "escape hatch
for allowing interviewers who are having a bad day to neg anyone who doesn't
jump out at them as someone they'd enjoy having a beer with".

~~~
codingdave
I'm getting the sense that maybe the groups I work with just have a bit of
"secret sauce" going on here. Clearly, it works quite well for us, without the
problems being expressed/experienced by other folks here... but just as
clearly, I'm not communicating it effectively.

In any case, this thread is starting to feel toxic to me, so I'm not all that
interested in getting even deeper into it by answering your questions, even
though I do appreciate the respectful and helpful way in which you asked.
Thanks for that.

But this may be a topic better addressed another day, using a different venue.

~~~
EliRivers
While I agree that this discussion should end, how do you know it works quite
well for you? How do you know that you haven't rejected some candidates, on
grounds of "culture fit", who would have been really valuable employees?

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edoceo
I'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.

------
justincormack
Bytemark in the UK have started hiring by initial anonymous interview
[https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-
by...](https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by-anonymous-
interview)

~~~
richmarr
Really interesting, thanks for sharing

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splicer
A coding challenge isn't going to tell me whether you might be an asshole
who's hard to work with.

~~~
thirdtruck
It's more about having less non-assholes filtered out prematurely by biased
skill tests and evaluations.

