
Ask HN: How do you hire outside of your area of expertise? - mc3
For example, you need to hire a machine learning expert, but you don&#x27;t have any machine learning knowledge to test if they are any good.
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jppope
Most organizations use a really flawed methodology to hire people in the first
place (some combo of phone scree, behavioral, technical screen, team
interview). Whether you know the area you're interviewing for or not... you
aren't going to figure out if someone knows their shit in 3 hours of talking
to them anyway because the only way to know for sure if someone can do
something is to have them actually do that thing. Unfortunately most companies
don't like this concept (this is not a reference to take home projects...)

Assuming you want to skip actually working with the prospect and you want to
try to assess via an interview format, you're looking for one thing: Will this
person help your company make money? I.E. will they get results.

While you can never answer that question for sure, looking for human beings
that are results oriented is a reasonable first step. Machine Learning as an
example is typically a project based type of work. Ask about their projects,
how it went, and what was the result. If you talk to enough people about the
results of their work, someone will stand out (maybe many people)... then you
can move along to what normal hiring managers do anyway: hire who they like
the most or pick out of a hat.

The other thing you can do is get expertise in the area.

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muzani
> The other thing you can do is get expertise in the area.

This seems absurd at first, but it's a good idea in general. If my work
involves hiring someone who does X, I should definitely have enough knowledge
of X to make decisions on that. It doesn't have to be enough knowledge to
implement X myself... but enough to make informed choices.

~~~
jppope
...basically having a "Steve jobs" level of understanding. (Steve was known to
deeply understand technical concepts but without actually knowing how to code)

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muzani
Similar to how I'd interview someone who is smarter than me in my area of
expertise.

Try to flip the roles. Treat the applicant like a consultant/mentor. Tell them
about actual problems that you need solved. See how they solve them or improve
on your solution. Compare between different applicants.

You'll want to look for clarity in their solution. Someone who overcomplicates
their solution is probably bullshitting you. Someone who slows down and
explains everything clearly probably understands what they're talking about.
Like someone who says, "I would implement ABC here" and doesn't explain the
advantages and disadvantages of ABC likely has weak knowledge.

With some of the smarter people I've worked with, they make no assumptions,
and establish terms. "Are you familiar with ABC? No? Well, you know A? A is
flawed for this solution because ___, and so we use ABC instead of A, even
though ABC has this disadvantage over A."

