
Ask HN: How good are you at judging resumes? - leeny
Hey HN,<p>Can you guys please help me with an experiment I&#x27;m running?<p>You may have seen some of the data-themed blog posts about engineering hiring that I&#x27;ve written in the past (e.g. http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.alinelerner.com&#x2F;lessons-from-a-years-worth-of-hiring-data&#x2F; and https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.hired.com&#x2F;what-i-learned-from-reading-8000-recruiting-messages&#x2F;).<p>If you&#x27;ve liked them, please help me write the next one! For this one, things are a bit different because I&#x27;m actually running an experiment, rather than just mucking about with data after the fact.<p>If you&#x27;re actively involved in hiring engineers, it would be awesome if you could participate. In the experiment, you&#x27;ll be making value judgments (would&#x2F;would not interview) for 7 engineering resumes.<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;judgefest<p>Thank you! I&#x27;ll explain what this is all about and share the results after the experiment is over.<p>-Aline
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tptacek
We gave up on them entirely.

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Spoom
Could you provide some more insight on what you're using instead? Cover
letters? Github? What if the candidate has only worked on proprietary code?

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tptacek
No, we don't use cover letters. No, we don't look at Github. We used
standardized interviews and work-sample tests. We hire resume-blind. We're not
interested in the status indicators our candidates have collected. We want,
very specifically, to know how well a candidate handles the kinds of problems
they'll actually face working here.

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kasey_junk
My own experience backs this approach up. That said, I think you are
downplaying how brutally hard coming up with good work-sample tests are. I've
found that bad work-sample tests are as bad, if not worst, at pipeline biasing
than more traditional means.

I suspect it took you a very long time to come up with these tests, and if you
were hiring at a bigger scale you would see things like work-sample
sharing/coaching/plagiarizing that might poison the approach.

I also think that while you guys have done a phenomenal job at building a
novel hiring pipeline, you also have a natural advantage in hiring in that
your field has a natural cachet amongst many tech. folks. That same advantage
might not apply to insurance companies/banks/etc.

I guess what I'm getting at, is that I think your hiring practices have
evolved to a great spot for your uses, I'm a little worried about how well
they scale.

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tptacek
My responses to those concerns are a better coffee conversation than message
board conversation. :)

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kasey_junk
I'm still waiting for an invite to join your hiring gamification startup ;)

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zubairq
Try nemcv.com, they make the formatting easy, you just enter the content. A
nice looking resume and photo are important

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tptacek
I was talking to a friend about this recently and he informs me that photos
are standard practice in Europe and Asia. I find that ridiculous. What could a
photo possibly do except to bias the hiring process?

I would stop interviewing immediately at any firm that demanded a photo.

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Spoom
I would imagine that an HR department in the US would be reticent to even look
at a resume that included a photo to avoid the appearance of discrimination.

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dragonwriter
You don't know it includes a photo until you've looked at it, and refusing to
look at it _further_ invokes the appearance of discrimination.

It would make more sense to have the photo removed or obscured before anyone
doing _substantive_ review of the resume got a hold of it, though that may be
difficult if the term "HR department" is an exaggeration and its really just
one person (unless the HR department isn't actually responsible for
substantive review, just tracking, and the working manager over the position
does substantive review, which arguably _ought_ to be the case for all kinds
of other reasons -- in that case, a one-person HR "department" isn't really a
problem, as all they have to do is receive, track, and make sure that things
like that are dealt with before the real reviewer gets the resume.)

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zubairq
Actually the advice NemCV gives is totally opposite to almost everyone. Having
a clear photo is important to show someone as being a professional, which is
why NemCV is the only service with a 100% success rate for finding people jobs

