Did anyone else catch the irony in Friedman talking about employers that "increasingly don’t care how those skills were acquired: home schooling, an online university, a massive open online course, or Yale," then writing an article entirely about two Yale graduates who went to work at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs post-graduation?<p>Last time I checked, McKinsey isn't recruiting at University of Phoenix. Going to Yale doesn't hurt in getting into YCombinator either. Nowadays, YC's name recongnition functions as a credential as well. Dig a little deeper than the title, and this op-ed only reinforces the reality that credentials and connections matter a lot more than raw skill.
<i>>The way HireArt works, explained Sharef (who was my daughter’s college roommate), is that clients — from big companies like Cisco, Safeway and Airbnb, to small family firms — come with a job description and then HireArt designs online written and video tests relevant for that job. Then they cull through the results and offer up the most promising applicants to the company, which chooses among them.</i><p>So hireart is tackling the problem from the demand side for employees by improving the signal to noise ratio of applicants, so to speak.<p>This is only a partial solution, since at least a significant part of the problem is the skill mismatch of the more "ordinary Joes" (for lack of a better word) and the skills that are asked of them by their prospective employers.<p>I don't think there will be a one size fits all solution for the variety of employment related issues we face today. We'll probably see many "winners" in the market that offer very distinct sets of benefits to both job seekers and employers.<p>That makes me think that my friend's startup [1] which does focus on the more basic tier of the supply side of the job market problem, training ordinary people to gain the specific skills that specific employers want.<p>We can't have enough hypotheses tested in this market, so I genuinely wish the best for all the current and future players in this market.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.learnup.me/about" rel="nofollow">http://www.learnup.me/about</a>
><i>The company receives about 500 applicants per job opening.</i><p>This succinctly demonstrates everything that is wrong with the entry-level labor market, especially in fields dominated by overabundant cohorts like political science and english majors. There are a deluge of incompetent graduates competing for a negligible number of jobs. They are either forced into menial shift jobs for years or, if they're fortunate, will have the privilege working 70 hours per week in an unpaid internship before taking a jobs marginally above the poverty line.
Friedman is such a shameless hack.<p>Using his column as an ad for his daughter's college roommate's business? Honestly? Ugh.<p>Nothing against the HireArt folks who may be great people, and maybe they are offering a useful service. I even understand why they couldn't tell Friedman not to do this for them. I doubt anyone could turn down the free exposure.<p>But it's just tacky, and it doesn't help that Friedman is a hack to begin with.
It seems a bit lazy of Friedman to interview his daughter's roommate. Why not include other sources? At least he mentioned the relationship.<p>I don't begrudge Sharef for using the connection. It's another reminder of how important networking is.
This is a bandage to the problem, perhaps even a good bandage, but not a cure.<p>The issue is so much deeper than this.<p>On the "physical labor" side of the economy, the college system, in its current form, will not efficiently fill America's production lines with workers. It will not create more craftsmen. It certainly does not cure the average American college graduate of the mentality that they are above being a gardener in their own backyard.<p>On the knowledge side of the economy, MOOC can potentially add enormous value. The distribution of credentials (aka a degree from an elite university) is being decoupled from the educating of the knowledge workforce. Rather than a couple thousand or tens of thousands of people having access to the highest levels of education, it is now accessible to anyone with an internet connection.<p>P.S. I take issue with anyone who is 28 years old being considered a "veteran" at her job, let alone at McKinsey. Perhaps I think too old-school.
So the Detroit woman who taught herself Excel and outscored Stanford and Harvard grads, and is held out as validation of Friedman's thesis - she's only referred to as a "top applicant". Did she get the job? And if not, what was the background of the person who did?<p>Otherwise, my only take-away from this article is that in a column ostensibly about meritocracy, Tom Friedman managed to turn 3/4 of his column inches into a PR piece for a company run by his daughter's Yale buddies.<p>Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality...
I took a hireart interview recently, really excited for a chance to show off my skills. However, the responses asked for were basic interview questions like, "Describe yourself" and other personality questions. Which is fine, but I thought it had more potential.<p>One caveat is that it was time consuming and cost the company doing it nothing. I really hope such time consuming tasks do not become the first line of defense against job seekers, but are only used on already vetted resumes.
I'm injured. Right arm can lift much more than 5 lbs above horizontal. On Voc rehab, yet disability says it's not one.<p>Been without a job for 2 years. Before that, fired from wal-mart because I got injured (faulty equipment) and had to go to hospital.<p>What the hell do I do? I look and apply for jobs. I'm in school for drafting. Every sign and indication says if you're without a job for 6 months, you're screwed.<p>Do I just start and lie about my credentials? If they catch me, all they can do is just fire me... I'm already up shits creek.
having been on both sides of the hiring equation, my sense is that the current system is broken by design.<p>For myself, I've read positions at a company that are a perfect fit, only to see things like (paraphrasing) "5-10 years of prior experience at a digital media company required". To get that, there are a small handful of companies one could have ever worked for. why wouldn't the hiring manager just call the 5 people you know who are a fit? right - because HR says we have to post the job.<p>From the hiring side - it is important to understanding managerial objectives in hiring, which frequently diverge from company interests beyond a certain size and maturity. Job security and minimizing headaches come to the forefront. The most understandable is training - even a smart pup needs time to learn. the remaining motives are questionable, and hard to surface.<p>No doubt there's room for a company like HireArt, but when i read the description of what the company expects to solve, my first thought is that rather than fix a broken-by-design hiring market, it will mostly relieve the guilt of HR employees who know hiring is intentionally broken.
HireArt's approach is an interesting one, but culling through 500 video interviews by hand is time intensive for the reviewer and the 499 candidates who don't get the job.<p>We're working on these problems at Mighty Spring (<a href="https://www.mightyspring.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.mightyspring.com</a>), with a focus on talent whose time is more highly in demand.<p>Our approach is to reverse this process: you have an anonymous profile that companies view. If a company sees your profile and they're interested, they can request an interview. You receive these requests via email and can choose to accept or decline. The anonymity means you can both freely decline interviews and use the site while employed with no repercussions.<p>The goal is to provide a similar service to working with a really great recruiter, but without the hassle.<p>As most of the readership here is in our target audience, we'd love any feedback and welcome questions. We'll expedite invites to HN signups - also feel free to email me: lumen@companydomain
The correct term is advertorial. It is when the editori staff does an advertisement disguised as an article. It works wonders, more so when it comes from the NYT. This company is now front and center. Well done to your marketers. You will get a lot of flack here, but this is one more way to jump start growth. Good luck.
I think a big factor in this discongruety between education and the job market is the fact that students cannot write off student loan debt in a bankruptsy. It alleviates the banks from their due diligence of making sure their loan will create a return on investment. There is virtually no risk on their side. They can be certain. That no matter what you do or where you go you will have to pay them and the longer it takes is just more interest for them to collect. You can be certain that if student loans required the bank to take a risk there would be a lot more engineers coming out of colleges in america and a lot less degrees in ancient Greek philosophy. The banks would require people to choose majors that will pay enough.
>So what does she advise? Sharef pointed to one applicant, a Detroit woman who had worked as a cashier at Borders. She realized that that had no future, so she taught herself Excel. “We gave her a very rigorous test, and she outscored people who had gone to Stanford and Harvard. She ended up as a top applicant for a job that, on paper, she was completely unqualified for.”<p>I don't know if I'm too cynical but the first thing that came to my mind after reading that was if her pay is gonna be the same of someone who went to Stanford or Harvard.
This is a very interesting approach to solving an old age problem: how do you match the right people to the right employers?<p>The solution for most people used to be stacking credential and hoping the competition wouldn't have the same level of credentials as you.<p>What type of jobs are available on HireArt? How do you decide on what metrics and skills are useful for that particular post? How many test have you devised?
This read to me like think tank backfill. Friedman has definitely got his own angle on things.
I think reading _Linchpin_ would be more useful advice,
“The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.<p>Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.<p>The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.<p>Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.<p>I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.<p>The job is not the work.”
― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
There certainly are multiple ways to attack this problem, but when the vast majority of jobs now are never advertised it makes me wonder how many people will find jobs with this kind of service.