
Ask HN: Why are jobs gotten via referrals but online blind dating is now normal? - tempsy
Seems like companies believe the best hire is connected to their existing workforce in some way e.g. well known that most jobs are sourced through some internal referral.<p>And yet as a society we&#x27;ve increasingly moved on to blind dating via dating apps like Tinder instead of meeting people via a mutual connection.<p>Logically you&#x27;d think the &quot;optimal&quot; strategy for hiring and dating would be similar. In this case, either via a mutual connection or not.<p>And yet we see this divergence in strategy. Why is that?
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munificent
Commitment in online dating is much more incremental than in job hiring. With
a dating app (as I understand it, I haven't used them), the process is like:

1\. Get matched.

2\. Chat online back and forth.

3\. Go on a date.

4\. If that works well, maybe another, etc.

At any point, either party can call it off or just ghost. There are many easy
exit points, so it makes sense for the top of the funnel to be as wide as
possible in the hopes that a candidate makes it all the way through. There is
little harm in taking at least the first step or two with many participants.

With hiring, interviewing uses valuable employee time. Once an offer is
extended and someone is hired the company is effectively fully committed to
them. The employee is even more committed since they likely quit their
previous job.

~~~
Kinrany
I wonder if jobs will also move in this direction.

Open source seems to be the closest thing. It's possible to shift one's time
between projects gradually.

I suspect the main obstacle is that it's hard for a salary to be gradual. We
need a more sophisticated scheme. Something like automatic per-issue bounties.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I wonder if jobs will also move in this direction.

They already have, where there is any commitment at all; that's what formal
probationary periods, earned tenure, and temp/contract-to-hire arrangements
are.

Of course, much work has moved past even the idea of commitment on either
side.

> I suspect the main obstacle is that it's hard for a salary to be gradual

It's not hard at all, plenty of jobs that are paid salary at the nearest
approximation of a committed level can be acquired after a temp/contract-to-
hire period which is paid hourly based on hours worked, without guaranteed
hours and at a total rate that, even of full time hours are available, is less
than post-hire salary+benefits.

~~~
wombatpm
Yes, but the rest of your life is a step function. I don't get to gradually
pay my health insurance or mortgage.

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Thriptic
I don't think what you're saying is 100% true. When I was looking for a gf I
asked my friends if they knew someone who I might like. I also tried online
dating. Online dating ended up working eventually after a lot of trial and
error but it would have but a lot easier if a friend could have given me an
introduction to a validated person. Would a person a friend introduced be the
optimal person for me? Maybe not, but it's someone I likely could have been
with quickly who would probably have been at least pretty good. Online dating
meanwhile is an awful slog even if it sometimes produces a better person at
the end. The exact same thing applies with hiring, except the stakes are
higher. I can date someone for a month or two, decide I don't like them, and
move on. You can't do that with hiring.

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wiseleo
My friends don’t know my dating criteria. Jobs can be well defined, but
personal preferences are more difficult to express. Nuances matter.

The real problem is not with online dating but with fake accounts. I used to
write well crafted letters that resulted in interesting dates. Now, I have no
easy way of verifying I am not writing to a bot.

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andreilys
I think most people would prefer having a "referral" for dates (I know I would
at least).

The cost of bad behavior is much higher if there's a third party involved
(i.e. you're not just burning with me but also the person who introduced us).

Online dating on the other hand can be a cess pool of poor manners, since
there's no social penalty for ghosting your date or misbehaving.

The reason that online dating has been on the rise is because it's easy,
convenient, and turns potential suitors into a commodity.

~~~
wolco
I never wanted a referral dating. You are limited by your circle if you only
go by friends of friends and usually missing out on some very interesting
people / good looking people.

~~~
blaser-waffle
So you're saying your friends are ugly losers?

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ravenstine
Whow whoa, hold on. Since when is Tinder a "blind date"? If anything, it's the
_exact opposite_ of a blind date.

~~~
tempsy
I guess by blind I mean you did not know the person before and you have no
known mutual connection to him or her.

~~~
ravenstine
A blind date doesn't have anything to do with whether the connection is
mutual. A blind date is where you go on a date with someone you've never met,
let alone seen. In Tinder, you not only get to see what the person looks like
but you chat with them before the in-person date. There's nothing "blind"
about it. In fact, blind dates barely exist in the internet age. The closest
thing to a blind date today actually would be through a mutual connection.
(e.g. your friend Steve convinces Tyler's sister to go on a date with you
because he thinks you'll both get along, even though neither of you have met
or seen each other)

Either I'm delusional or a relic of a different era.

~~~
nwallin
In this particular case, I'm pretty sure it's the children who are wrong.

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werber
This is messed up but I feel like I get jobs and dates based on being white
and non threatening, I’m not particularly great professionally or personally
in my opinion

~~~
brailsafe
lol you may be right. Most of the time people are looking for some modicum of
inoffensiveness rather than some super high bar

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werber
Yeah, I’ve seen people who are better developers than me up for the same jobs
turned away, like I feel like I’m all I’m good for Is completely unrelated to
my job and at this point I’m just like a friendly corporate ghost, or it’s all
imposter syndrome on my part, it all seems pointless. I just want to watch the
world not burn

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soheil
This might cause flamewar, but I think job referrals work because there is
clear monetary incentive, whereas, in the case of dating there is no such
thing or its equivalent in terms of relationships for the referrer.

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TamDenholm
Because online dating is based on looks (initially at least) and jobs
candidates are hired based on skill and personality. Looks are easy to judge
in a few seconds, skills and personality are not.

~~~
ken
Dating is roughly symmetric, but employment is not. Jobs are not just an
employer picking an employee, but also an employee picking an employer. The
current process saves time for one side, but wastes it for the other.

One of my dream side projects which never came to life is a job board where
employers post (only) photos of what your workspace would look like. It's
almost impossible to find out _what I 'm going to be looking at 8+ hours a
day_, even though that's one of the most important aspects of a job to me.

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distantaidenn
This is a biased assessment. In some cultures, mutual connection is still the
goto for meeting and subsequently dating new people.

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mapmeld
Companies are slow-moving. They legally can - but structurally cannot - decide
one day that they're not that into you and move to a new state. If they bring
in a bad employee, they have to first build up proof that they messed up,
explain any mistakes to their customers, and ease other employees' concerns.
If you've seen someone hired and fired from a white-collar job, the manager
goes a lot of work trying to keep them on.

You might be tempted to compare this to relationships and divorce, but now
you're making a totally different comparison. Going on a blind date,
introducing them to your family, and marrying someone without any third-party
verification are totally different things!

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wsetchell
I think it might actually be the opposite.

Anecdata:

\- <50% of the people who joined my team recently were referrals.

\- >50% of my friends in "serious" relationships met offline.

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allo37
I'm not sure what your experience has been, but in my experience friends set
each other up with dates all the time. Tinder even tells you if you have
mutual friends with someone.

Maybe because people are too busy with social media to have actual friends
nowadays? :3

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encoderer
Follow the money. The other way of finding candidates — paying professional
sourcers who do it for a living — costs an enormous amount of money, often 25%
of the first year salary.

Paying your employees $5k or even $25k (in sfba) is a lot cheaper.

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paul7986
It's all about looks and even more so these days!

Side rant...why on okcupid do I get 40 likes ..send messages to ten or 15 of
them and no response. Online dating sucks! Many of those likes are probably
fake created by OkCupid.

~~~
non-entity
Idk about OkCupid, but I really beleive on Tinder that about 1/3 of the
profiles I see are just people plugging their social media to go followers and
/ or seek instant attention validation. I doesnt personally bother me, but it
might explain in part about the matches / messages rate

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formercoder
Supply and demand. Good jobs get thousands of applicants, attractive people
get swamped with messages. The more balanced the two sides, the better an
online marketplace will be.

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not_a_moth
For jobs there's a competitive selection process, so referrals from people who
passed the competitive screening are likely to be in a top percentile.

With friend networks, most people don't have a competitive selection process -
you're friends because you went to school together, lived in same area, etc..
The referral for dating isn't as likely to be in a top percentile, so it makes
sense to go and cast a wider net.

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omosubi
I think they're both for the reason that the less effort required the better.
The faster you can hire someone that can do a job reasonably well the better
off the company will be. Likewise in dating, you'll likely be much more
successful if you don't have to put as much effort into finding dates/hookups.

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brailsafe
I really don't think either situation is as binary as you make it. My latest
company hired me through a recruiter and my current long term gf I met in
lerson first. Have also had a shorter term thing over Tinder, which also went
well. Either way, success is an organic thing after the first steps.

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lobo_tuerto
Maybe they are not so different.

Triplebyte is like Tinder, but for jobs/hiring no?

You fill up a profile, you can browse companies and indicate when one is a
potential match for you (It's the same for companies, I guess).

If there is a match then you can contact each other.

 _shrug_

~~~
blaser-waffle
If I don't have a dating life, no SO, no BF/GF, my life still goes on. I can
still eat a nice pizza, go to the movies, etc. I can do this for several weeks
or months.

If I don't have a job I don't get pizza, or movies, and could possibly get
evicted. Sure, there are emergency funds to weather downturns, and FIRE is an
option for some, but most people MUST have some sort of job in order to, like,
eat.

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dangerboysteve
This is my take:

-It would limit your possible mates based on your circle of friends.

-Some people want to keep their dating life quiet as involving others can sometimes stress out the situation.

-If things don't work out there is less risk of gossip within your group.

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masonic

      blind dating via dating apps like Tinder
    

Tinder is the opposite of blind dating. Blind dating means that you've never
seen your date's image beforehand.

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jklein11
The cost of a bad date is low. The cost of a bad hire is high.

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_JC_Denton
A few obvious differences 1\. Companies don’t hire based on how hot you are
2\. Companies can’t ghost you at a moments notice once they have committed

~~~
dragonwriter
> Companies don’t hire based on how hot you are

Well, not ideally, except for certain very specific jobs, but it absolutely
does happen even outside of the cases where it ideally would.

> Companies can’t ghost you at a moments notice once they have committed

Established, reputable companies usually have trouble doing that; for others
it's actually not unheard of, though it's hard to do it selectively to one
employee and not others if you have on-premises staff.

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probinso
People don't value emotional cost proportional to the damage it can cause;
they usually do for money

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m463
I believe dating via referral is possible, it is more expensive.

It needs cultural support (parents) or more money to pay for a matchmaker.

~~~
dragonwriter
Dating via referral is common even without matchmakers, payments, or parental
involvement. Dating-related peer introductions are a pretty common thing.

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cameronfraser
online blind dating is not normal, if you can see pictures of the person and
interact with them before the date I don't really see what is blind about it

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sriku
The equivalent of online dating in hiring is contracting?

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Spooky23
People are more personally isolated and priorities for relationships have
changed.

You don’t necessarily want to hook up with a friend of a friend.

~~~
tempsy
I think for me it's more the phenomenon that the "success rate" for online
dating is so high.

Clearly it's possible to meet people who you have no existing connection with
and end up finding your most intimate lifelong relationship with that person.

I guess if it's possible, and potentially even preferred, then it seems
strange that most companies are so allergic to finding new hires "blind" in
the same way.

~~~
maximente
you are conflating a lot of things here.

0\. online dating isn't blind dating. physical attraction (important in most
romantic relationships) is readily apparent generally.

1\. AFAICT (non expert) blind date "success rate" varies immensely depending
on whose PoV you assume. even those who get lots of matches may want long
term, but only find short term options (or vice versa)

2\. you probably don't want to start pulling people out of a hat to do dental
procedures. credentialing is important to many people for certain professions.
these things take years and years of training and skill building. most
romantic things don't take the same sort of specialized training.

