
On Formal Credentials vs Experience-based Education - olalonde
http://blogs.zoho.com/general/how-we-recruit-on-formal-credentials-vs-experience-based-education
======
kenjackson
The thing with articles about this is that they seem to miss a few things:

1) Formal credentials don't exist in a vacuum. They're meant to signal that
you've done something.

2) OTJ training will be very effective for teaching someone the job. In fact
there was a time when it was expected that college grads would get OTJ
training. With that said, OTJ may not teach fundamentals applicable to many
different jobs.

3) The argument of vocational training applies even earlier than college. I'd
argue that starting at age 14 it would yield practical results for the
company. But I think its even less of a good idea for the student at that age.
And note, although you earn a lot less money in college, there's something
about college that multiplies the value of a dollar.

4) I'd argue that unless you're starting your own company, the ages from 17-21
are more enjoyable and reap greater benefit at most colleges than working.
Unless you truly dislike school or have a great idea, I'd put off working (and
honestly, even if you had a great idea -- it's probably better working on that
while in school, rather than employed).

In summary, I think Zoho's recruitment plan works well for the company, but
less well for a fairly large class of students.

------
AndyParkinson
While this is an anecdotal take on the whole topic of selection, there is
research out there that supports this (sort of).

Meta data analysis from thousands of studies shows that there is essentially 0
correlation between where someone went to school (or their GPA) and how well
they perform on the job once hired. See
[https://skitch.com/andyparkinson/reqfj/emotional-
intelligenc...](https://skitch.com/andyparkinson/reqfj/emotional-intelligence-
view-360-presentation) for a table of methods of selection and their
respective validities.

As you can see, the best thing you can do pre-hire is to have someone complete
a work-simulation. If you're hiring a mechanic to fix transmissions, give them
a broken transmission and a set time period to fix it. If you're hiring a
rails developer, give them a small project that takes a few hours to do and
see what happens. It is amazing how much you'll learn about that person in
those few hours. You'll see how he codes, communicates, etc. The more you can
try before you commit the better.

Here's a simple example... When we hire front-end developers, we have a
standard PSD file that we hand applicants and give them 2 hours to slice using
tableless html/css. No matter how much I fall in love someone when I interview
them, the results of this simple exercise will always sober me up (or throw me
head over heals). Its gotten to the point where I don't even want to spend
more than a few minutes talking front-end developers until I see the results
of this exercise.

Its not perfect. The correlation between results and success is still very
weak, but its the best we have.

~~~
kenjackson
_Meta data analysis from thousands of studies shows that there is essentially
0 correlation between where someone went to school (or their GPA) and how well
they perform on the job once hired_

The data may say that, but it likely omits a lot.

For example, if I have a candidate with straight A's from MIT, but I hire
someone else who had a 1.2 from Podunk State instead, I supsect that the
candidate from Podunk State had some other qualification that offset their
school and GPA.

This is the same effect that Google sees when their best employees don't ace
their interview loop. They actually have one person give them a very low
score. This tends to correlate to high performers, because it meant that
someone else fought for this candidate, which is a signal of something else
compelling about the candidate.

To put it another way, I suspect that if you randomly selected straight A
students from MIT versus D students from local community college, the MIT
students will outperform for a wide variety of professional jobs.

------
pg
"Paul makes a stronger point that people coming from humbler schools seem to
try harder to succeed."

I do? I don't remember having said that, at least not in those words.

~~~
silvajoao
A little meta, but how did you find you were misquoted in this particular
article?

1\. You read it by chance and found it?

2\. Someone notified you?

3\. Some software scans every article/comment submitted searching for "Paul"
and you review it later? :)

I certainly don't have the time to read every semi-interesting article, and I
suspect you don't either, so I'm curious about this finding.

~~~
pg
It's in the top 10 on the frontpage of HN. I usually at least glance at most
of those. Plus I'm interested in the topic.

------
rlmw
Its an interesting article about the recruitment process, and its great to
hear about someone trying something different in this regard and it working
out well. I'm not sure the HN title is entirely accurate. Its more an
'experience report' than a comparison.

In order to draw a fully qualified conclusion from the article I'd say, 'A
specially selected group of students, formally educated up to an A Level
standard [0] were able to equal the job performance of general university
educated students after being put through a University specializing in the
work that we do.'

I'm frankly surprised that the candidates who were put through this specialist
university weren't able to massively outperform those from more general
schools. Of course I don't really know how long Advent University lasts for,
or the extent to which you teach specialist skills or transferable skills.

It is a strange situation though - I've got a PhD and I know some friends who
have mediocre undergraduate grades, say 2.2s or 3s. They'd make great hires
and doing really well in their jobs. It would really be interesting to see if
anyone particularly targets this group in their hiring.

[0] UK qualification at pre Uni-age - I haven't enough idea how the education
in different countries compares are this age really to compare US/UK systems.

------
sblank
Funny, the article and these comments seem to miss the point. Credentials for
what?

If the job requires execution of a known process – automotive repair or
neurosurgery I’d want to make sure I’d hire someone who went to the school
that had the best experiential training (i.e. residency with lots of hands-on
training.)

If the job requires knowledge of specialized science or engineering
computations, I’d select students that have gone through a rigorous curriculum
in these subjects.

However, if the job requires creative thinking and searching for unknowns,
it’s not clear that a brand name school adds any value. I’d be looking for
individuals that are curious, agile, relentless, etc.

------
statictype
What about communication? Are they taught English? Or do they communicate in
Tamil (or some other local language)?

