
How Not to Hire - moron4hire
http://moron4hire.tumblr.com/post/60891800011/how-not-to-hire
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jlebron2
> That could be 15 years of hiding behind far more competent teammates at a
> company that has a pathological problem with not firing under-performers

Funny that you mention that. It turns out it costs the company a pretty penny
to replace "under-performers" so they just keep them around instead.

[http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2012/11/...](http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2012/11/16/44464/there-
are-significant-business-costs-to-replacing-employees/)

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moron4hire
This doesn't seem to account for anti-productivity at all, i.e. people who
create more work by the end of the day than they complete. It's hard to
quantify anti-productivity, let along get anyone reviewing work to admit that
anti-productivity has occurred. Our work culture tends to value activity over
all else, so the common sentiment is that a warm butt in the chair is better
than nothing, even if that warm butt is making more work for everyone else.

I'm hoping that my method will actually ameliorate much of this. By starting
the person part-time, perhaps their familiarity with the project builds
"faster" over a unit-work-time than it would otherwise (I've personally found
my comfort level with a project to be in some part a function of calendar
time). In this way, I'm also not spending a lot on the candidate search
itself.

The idea is to spend less time on much-higher-yield methods of finding people
who are better suited to the job crossed with people who are happier with the
environment of the job. It _is_ about avoiding turn-over, but not in this
perverse way of "ignore the problem because the alternative is worse", but by
trying to avoid the hiring of a bad worker in the first place.

In this system, you'll never see a job notice from me. You won't know I have a
need for an employee unless I ask you to come work for/with me. You'll only
ever get a job offer from me if A) I know you're not an idiot, and B) I know
you're available. Yes, that means I have to know the person very well already.
If I have an opening that needs to be filled and I don't currently know of
someone that fills it, then it is likely to be a long time before it gets
filled, if I do nothing.

But then again, it's not like sifting through resumes is providing quality
applicants. The resume and job interview are so poor of a selection process
that I'm willing to try just about anything else.

There is also an element of respect for the worker involved in what I'm doing.
I don't think I have a right to monopolize a person's time. I think people
should have the time to be engaged in many pursuits. I want it to be up to
them to choose how much they work. I want them to have the ability to find
other work as well. The idea being, people who are happier in their work-life
balance will be more productive.

Of course, we'll see.

~~~
jlebron2
Great points, I definitely agree. Anti-productivity of one employee can become
a plague and affect numerous employees and the resume and job interview
process is indeed broken. Good luck with your system and look forward to
hearing how it turns out.

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polemic
> _" He will know exactly what I charge the client and what I give to him out
> of that."_

In my experience this is exactly how traditional engineering firms work. It
seems to work for them, I'm not sure why a software consultancy would work
differently. Do they?

Regardless, if you give people the power to manage their work, to bill their
clients appropriately, to take _ownership_ for the work, then the right people
will thrive and the rest will find it far too transparent to hide behind.

~~~
ams6110
I've worked as an employee of a consultancy a few different times, and I've
never been informed about the rates at which I was billed to clients.

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moron4hire
Yes, neither have I. On a few occasions, I accidentally stumbled on the
numbers and was quite shocked to see that it was whole-number multiples over
what I earned. Large, whole-numbers. Especially on government contracts.

~~~
polemic
AFAIK 2.5% - 4% is about normal. A lot of that goes into marketing, bidding on
projects, etc. It's not actually that shocking when you look at where the cost
goes: it's not just "your time * multiplier", more like "how many hours of
_other_ work are required to support one hour of actual work".

~~~
sokoloff
I'm assuming you mean 2.5 times, not a 2.5% margin. Even odesk takes more than
2.5%.

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jackschultz
I'm currently in the job hunting situation out of college and, along with
sending out resumes, I'm working on a bunch of different side projects to try
to show that I can a) actually execute, and b) learn new things.

Not sure if it's the best way to work on getting hired, but I don't want to
practice "interview questions". I know I don't do as well in interview because
of my lack of specific preparation, but I feel like I'd be a better candidate
than someone who just prepares for an interview. Curious to see how that might
affect potential employers.

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vinceguidry
You don't need to "show" that you can learn new things, you just need to learn
new things. And keep doing it. At first you have to do it on your own, but
eventually you'll get paid to do it.

The biggest trick to getting there is inspiration. You need to be excited
about the possibilities. You'll get ten times farther in an interview if you
can enthusiastically tell your interviewer how much fun you're having with
Angular.js. Or that project that kept you up til 3am because you just couldn't
put it down.

You need to stop looking at your career as some set of criteria you have to
fill and start looking at it as the most fun you're going to have, like ever.
Seriously, building shit is fun.

~~~
jackschultz
I think you have to show that you can learn new things. How else can someone
justify hiring someone if they haven't demonstrated that they're capable of
picking up a new piece of technology? I was trying to say that I wanted to
show my value by producing actual things rather than being able to write code
on paper.

It's also funny that you mentioned Angular since I wrote launched a little app
using it today.

~~~
vinceguidry
> How else can someone justify hiring someone if they haven't demonstrated
> that they're capable of picking up a new piece of technology?

Demonstrations are nice, but you're generally not going to get the chance to.
I interviewed four times in the past year for jobs and got three offers, and
I'd have gotten an offer on the fourth if I'd shown more interest in the
position.

The people interviewing me never took more than a glancing look at my
portfolio website. I've never written code on paper. I've never had to live
code. It's only very few pure-software shops that do things like that.

Chances are you'll be interviewing at banks, or marketing companies, or at any
of the vast majority of coding jobs that aren't supporting businesses in the
technology sector. The people that run these businesses don't care half as
much about technical chops. They do want to know if you can do your job, but
in the non-technology world, attitude is more important.

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muhuk
Spot on. Job boards need to fail more than they successfully place people, so
that employers and job seekers keep trying. Similarly it's not in the dating
sites best interest if everybody finds their soul mate. They need losers.
Losers with money to spend. Same is true with your personal trainer in the
gym, she/he only wants you to keep training safely and continuously.

In all these examples the incentives with the primary actors and the middlemen
doesn't align.

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educating
> So we will see. This could be a complete failure...

There you go guarding yourself from a possible bad decision.

The trick in hiring is to trust your gut. Your gut might be wrong, but it is
often better than everything else.

A simple up, down, or sideways (which is usually down) vote by the
interviewers without having to give a reason is much better than trying to
rationalize and enumerate the pros and cons. It isn't perfect, because an
interviewer could be a racist, sexist, etc. but the cultural fit is much more
important than what is on paper to hire and it is hard to judge much else
during the interview, other than the ability to interview well.

I'm a big fan of the 90-day trial period. If the person coming in knows right
away it is a bad fit, they'll be looking for a job right away to avoid being
laid off on the 90th day.

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robotcookies
Can anyone else verify the '2 out of 600 applicants could actually do the job'
statement. I've heard something like 1 in 100 but I just can't believe numbers
like these.

~~~
sokoloff
Sadly, it's more true than you can probably imagine.

Realize though, that the pool of people actively applying to jobs is, on
average, FAR worse than the total population. Even companies who are pretty
bad at hiring can make some kind of selection for quality, and great engineers
get fired way less than terrible engineers, so in theory, the very worst
engineers in the world would continually apply for jobs and never be hired, or
would be quickly fired.

My experience suggests that it's very rare to get a superstar from any passive
method (that finds active job seekers). That pool is just to dilute with
talent. To get the strong candidates, you have to be active (to have a shot at
the passive candidates) or extremely lucky.

It's no surprise to find only 1 in 100 of unemployed engineers are truly good.
If you just post openings, you're unlikely to interview even a representative
sample of the population, let alone an above-average sample.

~~~
kunil
If that is true, I can relate the HR or hiring people. It must be bad when
majority of applicants are not suitable to job at all.

~2 months ago I started searching for a new job. I only applied that actually
suits to me and I am capable. I only applied 3 places and all interviewed me,
in the end I got 2 offers (I am starting next week!). I guess that is just me.

~~~
busterarm
I have the same experience as you. I really cherry pick what jobs I apply for
and I almost always get an interview and an offer. There's only two times to
my memory that I didn't get an offer and one was because I was lied to about
what job I was applying for.

I really can't understand people who just blast their resume out for every job
they're not qualified for.

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dpanah
Top notch!

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moron4hire
thanks!

