There is absolutely <i>zero</i> reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person.<p>HR people are valuable in a company. But their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers, and to take care of all the stuff like W-2 forms and whatnot nobody wants to deal with, not make decisions about who to hire.<p>It seems weird to me that so many tech companies have adopted this particular Big Corp characteristic, because it's certainly not a universal phenomenon. A tech company is not Wal-Mart. Its hiring process should not be structured like Wal-Mart. People are the lifeblood of a technical company. Tech companies should not therefore look to Big Corps who just hire large amounts of unskilled labor. They should look, instead, at how hiring is done at a consulting company or an investment bank, companies that are also reliant on skilled people as their most important asset. At those places, from your screening interview forward, you are only evaluated by someone on the business side of things. It might be a junior analyst or a senior managing director,[1] but it's someone who does the work that makes the business money. HR's job is to get good candidates in front of those people.<p>At least in my experience, start-ups and very small tech companies do this right, out of necessity. Where I used to work, interviews would involve talking with a few line engineers, then the VP of Engineering, then briefly the CEO (who was a technical person). I think as companies get bigger, they feel like they need to adopt the Big Corp model. But this start-up model of hiring scales just fine to companies of 500-1,000 technical people if you're willing to create a culture where everyone, especially the top technical leadership, is personally invested in hiring and devotes a reasonable amount of time to evaluating people.<p>[1] Anecdote: I once had a screening interview conducted by the managing partner of the D.C. office of a major law firm. He flew out to Chicago for a day every year to talk to prospective entry-level candidates.
I used to work for a company that writes and administers these tests. This company broke the cardinal rule.<p>#1 - Only give personality tests in their native language.<p>This is <i>unacceptable</i>, a personality test is NOT a language aptitude test.<p>Personality tests will have questions like this:<p><pre><code> True or False I am happy when others are taking advantage of me.
</code></pre>
Non-native speakers may not appreciate that "taking advantage" is a negative term and might read it as "I am happy when others are taking advantage of my abilities". Hell I WORKED for the company and had to double-triple take some of the questions.<p>Some of these personality tests are even written for English / UK-English because of the nuances involved.
Oh god, I am shocked and horrified to hear that these sorts of tests may now be making their way into the tech industry.<p>I've never encountered one of these personally, but my then-girlfriend who was a recent nursing school graduate looking for her first job ran into them and failed the first few of them. After reading about them online I'm convinced the only way for you to "pass" these tests is to be slightly psychopathic or to simply know the very flawed theory behind the tests and train yourself to take them in which case they of course test nothing but how good you are at adapting to flawed tests.<p>The specific test she kept running into was the "Unicru" one:<p><a href="http://melbel.hubpages.com/hub/Unicru" rel="nofollow">http://melbel.hubpages.com/hub/Unicru</a><p>I highly recommend anyone running into this problem with HR in their tech companies do what they can to FIRE HR. This kind of bullshit needs to be nipped in the bud if it threatens to take hold in our industry.
Thought experiment: For those running companies and hiring people. Would you take the time to occasionally run your interview processes over your <i>existing</i> employees? I'm not talking about involving them, I mean actually putting them through it.<p>It would be one way to sanity-check that the process is selecting for the things you want from those coming from <i>outside</i>. As a company grows, the non-technical systems and policies also need to adapt but without feedback things might get weird (like the OP's example). If an existing high-performer does badly with your interviews/tests at some point then you really, <i>really</i> need to fix something.
> The problem here is that we didn't have the final say.<p>Yup ...<p>There is going to be a real big shift in the next twenty years. We look at things like Developer Anarchy and say "what let the programmers run the company?" - but that's the wrong idea. It's let those with software literacy run the company - just as 500 years ago those who were literate took over running companies<p>For a while we shall see parallel organisations within one company - the illiterate traditional management model, and a more productive, clearly vital org that consists of all those who "get it" - whatever their job title<p>I wasted too many years trying to join the well renumerated traditional side - and regret the half attention I found I could pay to programming. But I have seen the light<p>Stop working for companies that are not dedicated to software literacy. Schumpter will be round soon enough to have a word with them.
I very much dislike the idea that you can't give special treatment to individual candidates. The job of a recruiter is to find the best candidate for the job, not to treat all candidates equally. Now obviously we can't go around discriminating against candidates based on attributes not relevant to their ability to perform (ie gender, race, religion etc), but that doesn't mean we can't make use of any extra information we might be able to garner about a person.<p>If a particular candidate, who happens to fail part of the interview, still seems like a good choice, by all means look for additional means of evaluation.<p>I once had an interview, where I spoke with a few people very positively for about 3 hours, it was going great. There was no sign of a technical test, so I had assumed by this point that they either didn't do them, or they'd be in a second round of interviews. Then they realised they'd <i>forgotten</i> to give me the technical test, which they then gave me and I screwed up for whatever reasons. Upon learning that I'd aced every part of the interview except the programming test, I mentioned they had an employee who'd worked with me on previous projects and could vouch for my coding ability. But they said they couldn't use that information because it would be unfair to other candidates.<p>This was a long time ago, and I didn't really lose much by not getting the job, but it always felt like the approach they took was wrong.
Wow. The articles about completely idiotic hiring procedures never cease--because the reality of companies using idiotic hiring procedures never ceases--and each new submission is actively discussed here on Hacker News. How to hire good workers is already a solved problem, but most hiring managers don't do even minimal research to find out what best practice is.<p>I'm told that this Hacker News community disfavors repeated posting of FAQ posts as comments, but this is a Frequently Asked Question (what's really the best way to hire good workers) and over the last year or two here on Hacker News I've put together a post with a lot of references to the best research. A recent posting of that here on HN<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923</a><p>could help companies cure their idiotic hiring procedures. Read the FAQ if you haven't read it before. (Please let me know what you think of it, as I have been doing more research so that I can refine the FAQ and post it on my personal website.) There is no good reason for companies to do anything less than the best when setting up hiring procedures. Protect yourself by knowing what effective hiring procedures look like and how to find companies that use them.
"The psychometric test was supposed to produce a "true" reflection of how someone saw themselves, and I was told it couldn't change over time - i.e. whatever it determined was fixed, immutable and infallable."<p>20 years ago I took the Meyers-Briggs test multiple times (well, once a year for 3 years). My numbers changed <i>a little bit</i> each time - I was fairly strong I and N, but very weak 'T' and 'J', to the point where sometimes they were 'F' and/or 'P'. I took a similar test again a few weeks ago and 'I' and 'N' were strong, the others were still weak.<p>I had a couple people tell me though that "it never changes". Which is ridiculous because it's obviously <i>not</i> true, and depends totally on how you interpret the questions, and that's based on how you're feeling when you take it. I don't think people administering tests or interpreting the results always understand what they're actually looking at (which probably makes me a stronger J).
These psychometric tests are often unscientific and bull sh*tty. If I interviewed with someone who gave me one, I would be highly tempted abort the interview early; this is not a company I would want to work for.<p>This is in the UK; a found a lot of weirdness goes on there that wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else. Its the anti-authority types who are most likely to think out of the box, and are actually praised for by many American companies (at least vocally, implicitly they might not like them so much, of course).
I don't get it -- was this at an operating company hiring people, or at the author's recruiting company (which seems to be a depressingly common way to hire people in Europe)?<p>If a recruiting <i>company</i> is so incompetent as to require personality profiling, and worse, enforce it so rigidly, it would explain why Europe lags so far behind the US in tech startups, despite having at least as many (if not substantially more) brilliant developers per capita.<p>If it's an operating company, then it maybe explains why European companies use recruiting agencies so much. Still seems like a huge tax on companies -- having decent internal HR would go a long way.
The outcome might feel wrong, but I think it might be actually better for the guy.<p>If he got hired, but would have his pay stuck because HR and higher management would not understand his value(e.g. not boasting his accomplishments everywhere, prioritizing business relevant issues over internal political issues etc), he would end up rage quitting and "wasting" years he could have spent at some more open company.
Not to be nitpicky, but rather to help: You are using 'me' and 'I' backwards. It's really distracting and made it difficult to get through the beginning of the post to the actual story.<p>The rules are simple: Take Carl out of the sentence. Would you say "Me made myself available"? No. Then why "Carl and me made ourselves available"?<p>Would you say "score extra points with I"? No. Then why "score extra points with Carl and I"?<p>If you are in the subject of the sentence, then use I: "Carl and I went to the movies."<p>If you are in the predicate, or are the object of an action, use me: "The students handed their completed tests to Carl and me."
It's really not my attention to offend/troll, but I found it amusing that whilst reading the blog post I found myself thinking "The grammar of this article is so bad, I wonder if the author's first language is English"... just as I hit the same question in the text. :)<p>To add something constructive to the discussion:<p>I've hired tens of developers over the years. Recruiting is by far the most black art I've ever suffered in the IT industry. I've terminated interviews with the most technically-adept people because their attitude was so risible there was no way they could be part of the company; I've begged interviewees who would barely speak to open up because I had a hunch they were brilliant (I was right); and I've hired promising and smart junior staff over proven yet jaded senior staff.<p>Trying to encompass the delightful diversity which is presented to an interviewer in a few rules is usually folly to appease the suits. You will miss great hires that way.<p>Does that matter? Well, it depends. I spoke to or interviewed one person for every 20 resumes, and hired one in every 20 interviewees. So, miss one through a bunch of dumb rules and think about the 400 resumes you will have to wade through......<p>The bottom line is that people are diverse and weird- especially engineers!- and a good interviewer with a developed spidey sense will do better for the company by ignoring daft rules regarding recruitment.<p>TL:DR<p>Recruiting is really hard and difficult to define. You will lose good hires by implementing made-up rules.
So the company you work for is filled with engineers and the best hiring practice they could come up with is to give the final call on staff hiring to a humanities \ social "sciences" graduates...<p>Maybe you should consider Google's old screening logic test. While being completely ridiculous and ineffectual in finding intelligent engineers, they still do a decent job at deterring the anti=authoritarians quite effectively while saving you money and time on HR.<p>Personally, I like the old maniac hiring. You take a complete loon and put him in-charge of the process. Have him do tarot card readings, crystal energy vibes tests, skull measurements... But instruct him to pass any person who keeps his mouth shut during all of this.<p>100% team player guaranteed!
I can see how the candidate conversation with his family was, afterwards.<p>- Did they hire you?
- No, mom, I bombed the psycho exam.
- But the developers, the liked you?
- Oh, yeah, the technical team was ecstatic with me. They even told me that I was their favorite candidate.
-So what happened? Did they change their mind?
- Oh no, mom. The HR person disagreed with them, so they accepted the judgment of the HR person and dropped me.
- And the developers, your supposed team, stayed silent through all this?
- Well, they asked HR if I could do the psycho exam once more. And that was that.
- Son, you don’t want to work in a place where they keep quiet and silent on things that matter to them. You are better off anywhere else.
I was hired as a senior manager into a well known company that used psychometric testing to filter job candidates. To start off with I was happy to go along with it when hiring into my own team - after all the filter had resulted in them recruiting me and I was pretty sure I was a "good hire" - a post testing bias you might think.<p>You would be right. It took me a while but I began to notice that a high percentage of key hires in other areas of the business were notably failing to make the sort of contributions expected of them. They must all have done "well" on the psychometric test of course but was it possible that this was over influencing the selection process and eliminating better candidates - of course we could just have been attracting the wrong applicants.<p>My recruiting was able to balance any psychometric testing bias by only short listing people we thought were likely up to the job technically and who would fit in with the team. Other areas probably did not have the luxury of having the capacity to "test" that someone could probably do the job as well as pass the more dubious psychometric test.<p>After I left that company I was pretty sure that I would avoid businesses that used psychometric testing - in the same way as I would refuse to interview for any business that used something like graphology - more obviously bogus science?
You may have lost out, but he won big time - any company that lets it's decisions be made in that way is probably a bad company to work for.<p>Metric obsession when applied to people is not good, because unlike your conversion rate, people can't be defined by metrics.
On the topic of technical tests, the company I work for has a good approach. They'll set the technical test for you to do at home (the same one for everyone), then you submit it and they review it. Based on that, you have a phone interview in which you have to talk through what you did and why you did it, being asked questions about certain bits and your choices. They also talk through some other bits to try and gauge your knowledge. If you pass that stage, you then go on to a face to face interview.<p>Might not catch everyone who tries to cheat, but will help.
The main problem is companies are too afraid of firing people - a "good fit" from an HR perspective is someone they won't have to fire later.<p>They are "risk averse" insofar as they would rather hire a safe and comfortable person who meets their personality metrics rather than take a chance on someone outside of that who is technically sharper.
There was an article a few days ago entitled "Bullshit Jobs" regarding how we fill the economy with sinecures (albeit soul-crushing, depressing sinecures) perhaps in some futile attempt to give everyone a job to do (regardless of ability or attitude).<p>I think a real problem arises when people don't realise that their job is a bullshit job, or worse - they start drinking the kool-aid. I'm sure most homeopaths believe strongly in the methods they use and feel they are doing good. Maybe most of the time that's harmless and can be humoured. But on the odd occasion when they believe so strongly that they reject scientific treatments to the patient's detriment, it is actively harmful.<p>Here an HR rep who was given psychometric tests to play with forgot that he was just playing and fucked over a competent job applicant, as well as his own company.
The key to all this is HR refuses to identify the test or what it measures or allow anyone outside HR to examine it or question its empirical validity.<p>This test is probably not even graded and it's unlikely that it is accepted in psychology, or even heard of.<p>What is happening is the new hire was the wrong race, so he got "1%". Because he questioned the system, the author then was forced to retake the test and told he failed based on some mysterious new "antiauthoritarian" aspect of this single-dimensioned 0-100 metric not because the test showed that, but because HR is using the test as a prop to make sure the wrong races, looks, and attitudes don't show up on the payroll.<p>A discrimination lawsuit subpoenaing HR's test and information about its validity and scoring will be extremely instructive in ferreting out what is really going on here.
Ok, I'll play the Grammar Nazi Troll (On topic, since native level English was relevant in the story :-) )<p>Interesting article, but you make a bad impression when you write with high school level grammar.<p>"Me" is a sentence object; "I" is the subject. You did it three times, which is more than just a slip.
I once failed a test because I wasn't good at abstract thinking. And they decided to be a good developer, you had to be a good abstract thinker. At that time, the test was already more than 10 years old.<p>I didn't get the job, although I had several references that I was one of the best and also most social and motivated developers they had ever worked with.<p>One of the references also stated that I was really good at thinking 'out of the box', finding a solution while everyone was blindly staring at the problem. That is abstract thinking, no?<p>I'm CEO now... And it might be me, but I've worked with some abstract thinkers and whatever they cook up hasn't resulted in anything concrete yet. (except for a huge consultancy bill on occasion)
I don't understand why HR should have a role in decision making to hire candidates. I'd find them useful in: 1) providing guidance; 2) ensure that all hiring is done legally and ethically; and that's about it. It is the hiring manager's responsibility to make sure his team delivers, so it should also be the hiring manager's decision on who is hired.
This comment will probably get lost in the noise on this thread, but this one line says it all:<p>"The psychometric test was supposed to produce a "true" reflection of how someone saw themselves, and I was told it couldn't change over time - i.e. whatever it determined was fixed, immutable and infallible."<p>Any HR person that believes humans are immutable, fixed objects should be fired on the spot. Humans beings are adaptable organisms capable of far more than we can ever imagine. Any person who has the power to hire and fire other people who fails to understand this is not qualified for the job they have been asked to do.
My supervisor recently asked that my compensation be increased; so I got a weird phone call from the HR person where she just wanted me to know that she and the senior management knew I had been arrested a long time ago. But she conceded that she did not tell my supervisor; because well I was found not guilty in court. wtf.
Where do you work that psychometric tests are required of candidates? It's the first I've heard of something like this (outside of various gov't/military jobs).
I've taken several kinds of psychometric tests, but have never seen one that produces a single result, whose unit is %. What kind of psychometric test could that possibly be?
This:<p><i>"Often what would happen is the first ten minutes or so would be socially awkward for the candidates since they would soon realise that they're technically all working against each other, but they also had to work together."</i><p>is quite as bad as this:<p>"As a young man, in the late 1920s or early 1930s, the narrator lived in the South. Because he is a gifted public speaker, he is invited to give a speech to a group of important white men in his town. The men reward him with a briefcase containing a scholarship to a prestigious black college, but only after humiliating him by forcing him to fight in a “battle royal” in which he is pitted against other young black men, all blindfolded, in a boxing ring." [1]<p>But it's getting "up there". The complex technical interview and the "do stuff for us for free" thing is bad enough but "start cooperating with your opponents in a 'there no right answers but we'll be failing you for some answers' situation is pretty despicable just to start.<p>Part of me hope they wind only with only really bad candidates, serves them right for putting on such a circus.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Man#Plot_summary" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Man#Plot_summary</a>
The HR guy once called me into his office to ask why I was leaving. To which I said "excuse me?", and then he turned around his monitor which showed my LinkedIn profile.<p>Turns out I had stuffed up a few of the dates for a former job and it looked like I working for another company!<p>I was curious as to what he thought I was doing all day in the office. Even more curious - why the hell was he tracking me on LinkedIn? I suppose I shouldn't have been that surprised.
This reminds me of an article I read a while ago. In essence it warned of hiring people that think the same as everyone else on your team, as you will get stuck with the same opinion almost every time.
It advocated hiring different thinking employees to achieve a broader view to any given problem.<p>These psychometric tests seem to go against that advice by only selecting people with very similar personalities and thought patterns, thus stinting the company.
1. Writing a blog post about this - good<p>2. Naming and shaming the company - better<p>3. Quitting your job and letting them know about it - even better
Most of the top comments are restating a common belief among technical workers: HR managers (or all of HR) is worthless, especially when they try to be more than paper-pushers. Lumping all HR people into a single category is foolish and unfair.<p>I admit that most HR managers are just paper pushers who are simply not knowledgeable enough to make hiring decisions. And shame on the manager who allowed such a useless position and department to persist. If these people are not qualified to help make hiring decisions, why would you even trust them to find and filter candidates?<p>I've worked places where the HR personnel understand the business, know the team, and were aware of heaps of research on hiring and keeping people happy. Their feedback on hiring processes was extremely valuable, and they made contributions to the culture and environment. They were the first to attack "corporate bullshit" as it sprung up. In short, they knew how to build and foster a productive, creative environment better than anyone, and we listened. That, in my opinion, is what HR should do.
Sometimes, the vocal majority on hn is highly skeptical, going above and beyond the call of "duty" to point out unsupported conclusions, anecdotal evidence, etc. Other times, they grab their pitchforks and attack the enemy (government, management, corporations, patent law) without so much as a glance at the data.<p>1. Are you certain that <i>all</i> technically qualified candidates will fit in with every company? Do you have data that supports this opinion?<p>2. Assuming there are some "poor fits", are you certain that the HR department and its tests are unable to accurately detect poor fits? Do you know what the sensitivity and specificity of the tests are?<p>3. Given that there will be some false positives (incorrectly labeled as "poor fit"), are you certain that losing these false positives harms the company <i>more</i> than hiring the true positives would (because you don't detect them)? Do you have data that supports this opinion, for various objective measures of harm or success?<p>Consider that these programs may be data-driven, which your anecdote is not, and therefore a) this person might <i>actually</i> be a technically qualified yet poor fit for the company and you just can't tell and b) this person could be an acceptable false positive, and that judging a program due to a specific instance is vacuous. My gut reaction is that, probably, the best hiring program allows several people and departments with various expertise should each have veto power.<p>Finally, hackers are traditionally anti-authoritarian, and that is both good <i>and</i> bad. Failure to realize that, and to admit that authority may have some value that even <i>you</i>, brilliant computer programmer, can't personally vouch for, is one of the aspects of our community that I would love to see change.
HR should never have the final say in a hire or no hire. I interviewed with a company recently which originally said they wanted me but later took the offer away. I was interviewed by 3 engineers and realized after talking to them that they were all very smart and that I would love working for the company. Apparently they all 3 liked me and I was told they wanted me after I talk to HR and filled out an application. Turns out I had about a 2.9 gpa and they wanted at least a 3.0 so my offer was never official. I still want to work for the company and I might in a few years when my gpa isn't even looked at because I'm sure the engineers will like me again...
This has nothing to do with HR, but everything to do with the power HR was given by the directors, or what ever. Good, well positioned HR staff are invaluable.<p>I wonder how many times technical staff have had hiring lumped on them, and got it horribly wrong?
People really need to start realizing not everyone is specializing in communication/social-interaction or business writing. And that does NOT make them horrible candidates for being more professional in other aspects of their work. These tests the HR departments keep making are not helping and detering very skilled and productive people who should have otherwise been hired.<p>And this is coming from someone who is from US and natively speaks English. Social awkwardness is in a sense showing intelligence, however it is hard to convey speech articulate for some people. Some people are much more wrapped in the news of now and what is going on the world than others. And people all have different ways of jumbling facts in their head and through speech, so it's not exactly fair to say one person is smarter based on them using cleaner and more syntactic language.<p>But generally companies do need to hire people that they can at least get along with. That I can understand, because if you can't stand a person who is there by your side for 6 hours or more then you can't really work with them.<p>Companies that are looking to hire people based off of speech and writing are looking at it as a communication issue. This could be good or it could be much worse. They need to realize the trade-off between communication and talent being there.
When I was still at the university, our statistics class was used as a sample for a company creating such tests.<p>We had to fill out a test and hand a second form to someone who knew us well enough to judge our social behaviour.<p>The goal of this was to validate that the test.<p>When asked what would happen if the test was not valid, the company representative answered:<p>"There are 2 ways to handle such a proiblem: we can change the test or we can try again with another sample group. We prefer to change the sample group."
Ugh. I had to take tests like that when I was interviewing right out of college. The whole experience rubbed me the wrong way. I ended up telling them I smoked (they were 100% smoke free and you could be fired for testing positive for nicotine) just to get them to leave me alone as smoking immediately knocked you out of the running.<p>Not surprisingly, my company has hired several people from them and absolutely no one has a good thing to say about working there.
Recruiter here. I cannot imagine working in an organization where this is reasonable. The idea that I would EVER tell an engineering team that they can't have the candidate they love is just mind boggling. This is exactly the type of HR people that the industry needs to be rid of. We should be helping teams get the people they want, not hurt it. If this was my role in a company I would resign immediately.
While this is pretty shitty, and overall I completely agree that personality tests should not decide a hiring decision, I certainly don't think that we should lose sight of one thing:<p>It is 100% legitimate to not hire someone because they don't fit in with your team. They might be really smart and ace your interviews, but if they simply don't fit in then they don't fit in. This advice is given countless times in basically every single "how to give interviews" post I've read, and they come up on HN quite often. Remember the one a few days ago about how Stripe (?) uses "the Sunday test" on candidates? I thought that was pretty brilliant.<p>So, while the company in this story did something most of us agree is bad, they at least had good intentions. I'm not defending them, just reiterating that it's valid to reject someone based on how they fit in with your team. Just try to not do that by using a test...<p>[edit] also, the "fits in with team" decision should <i>obviously</i> be made by the team itself and not by HR. But I'm definitely not in the "abolish HR" camp, lol.
I participated in a similar test not a long time ago. Along with personality test it self, It was basically asking same questions again and again and testing if I am being honest/consistent.<p>They told me in my next interview I was one of the most consistent people that took test. I got a 95%, whatever that means. In reality I just noticed the pattern and gave my answers with that information
Yeah, I have some background in psychometrics. I looked into getting work in these HR psychomestric firms at some point. I discounted it out of hand as I did not want to be involved in such a dodgy enterprise. Corporate psychologists give me th heebeejeebies (wearing one of my hats I'm now a corporate sociologist, which is a much more sensible gig).
It's well known that if you want to get a sales job you must first pass a Unicru test. The way to pass a Unicru test is to answer "strongly agree" to statements your boss would want to hear, and "strongly disagree" to statements he would not. One or two wrong answers get you demoted from "green" to "yellow" on the Unicru. Significantly more than that gets you "red" (no hire). Oh, and "agree" is a wrong answer to a question which should be answered "strongly agree".<p>The personality type the Unicru test selects for is bizarre and paradoxical; I doubt any living human could have these characteristics without wearing a cap (from <i>The Tripods</i>). You have to be a self-starter but have no mind of your own; you have to take initiative but only on things of which the company approves.<p>Nice to see this practice trickling into tech. I'd say "welcome to fucking America" except apparently this is in the UK.
I've taken these tests - they're terrible. You're told not to try to game them, and this is just trying to get a feel for who you are...but there's often clearly a "right" answer.<p>And even when there isn't, there is to the person reading it - if your "type" rejects their values, you must be broken somehow.
I'm astonished that this sort of thing still goes on. Who is <i>not</i> aware that this kind of psychological testing has been shown to be utterly subjective, unscientific and sometimes destructive?<p>And who isn't aware that psychologists have recently been forced to abandon the Asperger Syndrome diagnosis, after an epidemic of phony diagnoses of people who are often very successful in spite of the diagnosis, people like Bill Gates, Nicola Tesla and Albert Einstein?<p>The big picture is that society is in the midst of a re-assessment of the role and meaning of psychology, and the future doesn't look very bright for psychiatrists and psychologists. More here: <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201305/the-nimh-withdraws-support-dsm-5" rel="nofollow">http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201305/the-...</a>
I'll throw my hat in the ring on this one. Just applied to a job and got a response saying:<p>"Thank you for your interest in the <i></i><i></i>! Your resume appears to have many of the relevant skills we are looking for in our open <i></i>* position. Please tell us more information about yourself and attach your resume. We look forward to scheduling an interview."<p>I reply back and this is what I get:<p>"...We have had an impressive response to our ad for our open <i></i><i></i><i></i> position. At this time, candidates with backgrounds closer matching our job description are being considered."<p>So, got approved by one HR rep, then rejected by the next. It really frustrates me knowing that I have the qualifications and yet, for whatever "undisclosed" reason, I can't even just get an interview. The world of getting hired....<p>Edit - blanked out company name so that is why it reads odd.
"Also, there were some candidates who managed to get 95% and above - but would then just be absolutely awful during the interview - we would later discover that they were paying someone to complete the technical test on their behalf."<p>I wondered about this when I see test scores inconsistent with actual ability. The truth does come out.<p>In general tests (or interviews) for new hires should be tougher than for existing employees. You want each new hire to bring something new to the table.<p>The OP suggests that you can't beat interviews. I believe that even better is seeing someone in action (which they did) and getting references from someone you trust. This is why employee referral programs are so good.<p>Once HR gets into the mix of "Fairness to the candidates" as opposed to "Fairness to the company" it gets a little strange.
Some people are hell-bent to kill a deal in order to demonstrate their worth. This happens sometimes with lawyers, and these 'ambitious' deal-killing lawyers are toxic to work with. I hadn't considered it before, but this may be common elsewhere too, such as HRA departments.
I was horrified by the Milgram experiment (psychological test to test obedience to authority) that the author cites: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment</a><p>And (but not related to the article) I was amazed to find out that Milgram is the same researcher who created the first "six degrees of separation" experiments, that lead to the creation of the first global-scale social networks: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_world_experiment" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_world_experiment</a>
At my last job, we decided to do a little recruitment test. My co-worker set up a php file (and a mirror python file to let the candidates choose), with a blank in a function and a bunch of unit tests for the function. We needed someone to try and debug the test, so I volunteered.
Seeing that the team manager was about to take a development literacy test, the whole development team got up and rounded around my screen. It was the most stressful 20 min of my career, I prefer having the website down, at least everybody is focused on work and rooting for success.
(I passed the test and I we ironed the last wrinkles doing so)
HR - particularly recruiting - at most (big) companies is a colossal joke. They´re typically lazy - limited in their understanding of the business and very quick to make decisions that they refuse to change due to the insecurity of knowing that they might actually be superfluous if it wasn´t for all that paperwork that someone had to take care of. They set some random parameters and don´t actually have an understanding of who would really fit the job. At the end of the day - they dont have to work with those people, nor do they understand the current team dynamic - so how can one expect otherwise!?
I had kind of the opposite happen at my last 9-5 job. They were considering using this type of test for potential candidates. The managers got together and came up with the metrics they felt would make the best team members. To get a baseline they gave the test to all current employees in the department. The test was a combination personality and IQ test. The test was determined to be a failure and wasn't used, one of the primary reasons was I scored highest/closest to the benchmarks that the managers had set forth before we took the tests. I quit that job and am a lot happier.
At one company, they gave a personality test in two sessions. The test gave everyone a color, green, yellow, blue or red, that determined if you were better in sales, management, tech, or whatever. Techs were supposed to be green. Well, the first group took the test, and we were able to figure out how to game the test so that the score would come out exactly centered. Everyone in the second batch of tester scored exactly in the center. Boy was the HR manager pissed! He was fuming! It was so hilarious. They too used those kinds of tests to determine whether people would be promoted or fired.
Some tests may be acceptable as early filters, if you have a lot of candidates for one vacancy. But opinion of a reliable employee after personal contact should overpower any test IMHO. It's just crazy how HR blocked the candidate. Also, if they knew he couldn't be with the company, why they even let him into the competition? Strange rules.
And that bit about "special treatment" was kinda stupid, he already had disadvantage cause of bad English.
By they way, in order to get 1% on any test I think you have to know all the right answers and respond conversely.
I have no issue with testing as part of a recruitment process but it should be a single input into the overall decision and certainly shouldn't be able to override other more significant factors.<p>In this instance a reasonable compromise would seem to be to have the HR manager state what the specific issues they felt might exist were and call the candidate back to talk through them and see if they could be substantiated. If someone was that bad a fit then I doubt very much it would be hard to surface supporting evidence in a face to face discussion.
We run a psychometric test on every candidate that walks through the front door. The ones that get hired get their test results in a sit down with HR and the option to share the test results with their colleagues. I don't get to see them unless the hire shares them with me. The purpose of the test and its results is to start the new hire down a road of self-discovery and awareness (if they so choose) that we can leverage into ongoing development and improvement together (again, if they so choose). Its worked brilliantly so far.
If anyone wants to see HR done right, you should read about People Operations at Google:<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/01/google_people_operations_the_secrets_of_the_world_s_most_scientific_human.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/01/...</a><p>I know it's a bit demanding to ask what are usually a bunch of unskilled supporting staffers to become proficient in analytics, but you can't expect to solve a problem without putting in some work.
It's been a long while since I had to get involved in any HR related business practises, but I've got a vague feeling not hiring a candidate on the basis of a psychometric test might actually fall within hiring discrimination, if it's a case that the test is unsuitable for the candidate. Which in this case, as a non-native speaker, it seems very much like the test wouldn't be a fair fight. They simply cannot complete the testing in the same way a native speaker would.
"she later told me that I was anti-authoritarian and more likely to do what I thought was right rather than what I had been instructed to do. I am still baffled to this day about how that is an undesirable attribute"<p>Pretty much sums up everthing that is wrong with Corporate America, American government and American society in a nutshell. Your betters (aka "leaders") want solders, not moral people. This is social Darwinism in action, and it's not going to lead to a good place.
Is there something I'm not getting here about UK Law? I've never run into something like this in the US, and wonder actually if it would be legal (especially taking into account the language barriers, as that'd be discrimination). I would surely hope that anyone offered such a test could opt out. It sounded like these guys were high up in the company, if not the founders, so why didn't they fix the problem themselves?
I think this story is a great example of sometimes being rejected on an interview can be a fantastic outcome. With the impressive score of 1% this guy was clearly either going to be miserable in the kind of company that thinks this sort of test is of paramount importance to the hiring process, or deliberately chose answers that made sure he wouldn't end up in such a company. Bravo.
Wait, I see the problem! You've sorted by:<p><pre><code> [hr_score, tech_score]
</code></pre>
when you meant to sort by:<p><pre><code> [tech_score, hr_score]</code></pre>
I'm a recent hire in a big company ( for brazilian standards, 600+ people). And my boss told me the the HR recommended the other candidate. But my boss already knew me, and actually, he called me direct to the recruitment process. So, our company value the opinion of the manager, it knows that the best managers know which people are best for their spots.
I love this. I not only illustrates the concept of the false negative (which is presumably as likely as the false positive)- it also showcases that disciplines and best practices, even policies hr, finance, sales ops and yes, even product are not absolute. every case is unique and can be quantum- not binary right or wrong, but every infinity in between
I had lots of questions after reading this. So why was the test given, if it wasn't used to disqualify people? And who came up with this test idea in the first place anyway? Why was it important?<p>In general, it's a mistake to substitute technical knowledge for ability to perform. You might be a freaking genius, but one that nobody can get along with. So how well this guy did during his technical evaluation is besides the point. Don't hire people that can't construct normalized data models. End of story.<p>A much more interesting part of the technical evaluation exercise was seeing how people worked in ad hoc teams. Is being mostly quiet, having difficultly with the language, and prompting other people to ask questions a good thing? Probably not. Is it bad enough to disqualify somebody? Probably not.<p>The dirty secret about hiring is that there are no right answers. There is no magic thing that once you have it, you automatically are perfect for a job. It's technical chops, it's personality, it's social skills, it's communication skills, and so on.<p>The best part in the comments looks like more of the membership theory: only hire people that you want on a team, and ignore everything else. Probably works great for small teams. I wonder how that would scale, though.<p>So I didn't get a lot from this. Wish there was more in it.
I think the bigger injustice is that these sorts of tests are a sham. It is a bogus product oversold to HR managers for insane prices and no evidence of benefit. As far as I am concerned, if a prospective employer were to put one of these tests in front of me, I would lose interest in working for said company.
HR are parasites, you have to keep them on a short leash or they infect the operations of a company. Under no circumstances give them any decision power whatsoever -- they're there to do the tax forms, stamp the cheques, arrange the resumes, and make sure the fridge is stocked.
If you fill out a personality test and hand it to someone who is not your doctor in some capacity you have no idea what are you doing. There's a hell of a lot one can read from the quite a few personality tests and it's can backfire you in quite spectacular ways later.
I think most of the problems come from how much money companies spend on HR people's salaries. You can't really expect a good job done when you pay very little for it. It's not that they don't do their best, but they simply can't be better than that.
<i>she later told me that I was anti-authoritarian and more likely to do what I thought was right rather than what I had been instructed to do. I am still baffled to this day about how that is an undesirable attribute</i><p>Ugh.... I have some bad news about the world you live in.
Personality is so difficult to measure, so it is even more ridiculous that HR has not only come up with an ideal spectrum of personalities that would 'fit' the company, but also adjusted it such that candidates can be scored on %.
Someone else posted it, but it's here:<p>Company in question: Kaonix - <a href="http://www.kaonix.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kaonix.com/</a><p>Can we please blackball this company into oblivion from ever hiring any smart, capable, or talented developers?
I love companies like this! With tests and bureaucracy they are able to give me a clear signal that I shouldn't work for them, as my work will be mired in paperwork, false metrics and needless hoops to jump through.
Just read it. Utterly disgusted. If I had more than a few months savings in the bank I probably would have just quit. A company that lets exactly THAT kind of HR person make any decision, has succumbed to the PHBs.
I don't think this is a company I would continue to work for if I was in your shoes. At some point the strong suggestions from technical advisers and common sense should out weigh their one size fits all test.
I disdain idiotic psych "tests". The mentality of "here's a few questions and now I know how you think or what kind of person you are" is, frankly, insulting.
Is the HR manager's name Catbert?<p><a href="http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-11-13/" rel="nofollow">http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-11-13/</a>
too many in authority want the glory of title, they do not want to be responsible, hence they tend not to do. Hence, when they run across people who can think, can do, get it done, they create systems where adherence is more important that work.<p>Those on the other end fail these wonderful HR tests because they all too often have to around the title hounds to keep the business they work in up and running.
Sheesh I was hoping for a happy ending.<p>Now I'm depressed for the morning.<p>I hope he ended up working for their competition and cost them money.
I can only speak for tech companies, but my experience is that once a company becomes large enough to hire HR people and middle management, that's a sign that money is being wasted paying for unproductive types rather than creating and improving sold products and services.<p>Hiring HR people because "that's what a serious, large company does" and having a certain amount of mid-tier bosses because "we [the top] need better control over what's happening down at the bottom" (read: "we need detailed control of people that have been self-sufficient and productive on their own for several years"), is an excellent time to start looking for other work.
It's actually a natural selection. If the metrics are bad, the company get's a competitive disadvantage and should be on the way to bankruptcy in the long run. If the metrics actually are quite good, producing only few false negatives and few of the opposite, then there's no problem.
Honestly, even technical tests have their limits. Personally, my memory is digital, meaning that I'm rubbish in "sit down and remember 100000 facts about tech" tests, but if you give me time to research a project and put together a solution, it comes out gold. Technical tests do not mirror your working routine, because you have time to discuss, ask advice, and scan Stackoverflow. Poor kid.
Interesting article.<p>RE: Nuremberg Defence.<p>Do you really think it would have been smart for the Germans to hire people who wouldn't have followed their orders?<p>But in a profession environment, yep I'd agree you don't want all people who just follow orders, quite different to work environments where you want people to act more like machines aka call centres, sweat shops, army etc.