I like the idea of starting a conversation instead of the usual resume and interview approach, but the example job listing (here: http://brookeallen.com/pages/archives/982) came off as creepy to me, somehow.
Maybe it was the overly familiar tone from a stranger, or the slightly self-centered focus on the prospective employer's own personality, or the paternalistic tone of the listing, down to the closing line: "deal?"
I would personally not be comfortable answering an ad like that. I prefer my professional relationships to at least begin with a more professional tone. Phrases like "I will not hire anyone until we both understand and care about each other" remind me of bosses I've had when I was younger that seemed to want to treat me more like a son or nephew than an employee, and it always made me kind of uncomfortable.
I can imagine for a woman, this might set off even more alarm bells than it does for me as a man.
Hire skilled, talented people. Looking for "good-hearted" people with "giving personalities" sounds to me like I'm going to have to hug you at the end of the day or something.
> I prefer my professional relationships to at least
> begin with a more professional tone.
Interestingly, if you dig into what he means by "good" I think that he's also looking for more professionalism. His point:
> "Nice people care if you like them; good people care
> about you."
Reminds me of this saying:
"I'm not your friend, I'm your doctor."
For example, if I were overweight, I would expect my doctor to tell me to loose weight, every time I went for a visit. I would not expect him to stop raising the issue because I was sensitive about my weight, and it upset me to talk about it. My doctor must advocate for my own best interests, even if it makes him uncomfortable to do so.
I think anything too different from the standard manner of hiring is going to come off creepy to some extent. Much of the way we hire people is probably a deeply ingrained cultural ritual, and large deviations from that script would be disorienting.
Not to say that cultural rituals are a bad thing. Manners and etiquette keep the machinery of society well lubricated and running smoothly, so I'm not a fan of tossing them out and starting anew, tabula rasa.
At the same time, it wouldn't surprise me if the way America does hiring could be improved. In particular, my experience of hiring in tech has been that it's pretty tough to do much better than having 60%-70% of your hires work out. But not only do companies have a tough time with hiring, there's this weird phenomenon where large swathes of seemingly qualified people also have a hard time getting hired. So I'm all for innovation in hiring to the extent that it can fix these problems.
But are these problems really addressable by changes in hiring? It seems like that would be pretty low hanging fruit, so I would expect businesses to have figured this out already. The fact that they haven't makes me wonder if there are other systemic explanations for the problems we're seeing.
For instance, in tech, relatively little filtering is done up front by education and credentialing institutions. Sure, it helps to have a degree from MIT, but there are substantial numbers of successful high-performers in this field without a college education. By contrast, only around 40% of the people who apply to medical school get in, but my understanding is that >99% of all physician and surgeon hires work out. So perhaps tech businesses would experience a similar rate of successful hires if there was something like the medical school filter in the tech world.
As for the tech workers who have trouble getting hired, there are numerous possible explanations. One could be the Dunning-Kruger effect, where low-competence workers are unable to recognize their own skills gaps. Vivek Wadhwa has previously argued that ageism is to blame here, and that tech is really an up-or-out industry. Norm Matloff makes the case -- and granted it's quite controversial and potentially inflammatory -- that abuses of the H1B visa system are too blame.
Clear as mud.
Still, although I don't think the solution lies in this particular hiring innovation -- which wasn't for tech, I'll grant, but the spirit of the preceeding applies to the larger US economy, struggling as it is -- the solution can only emerge from many different actors trying many different things. In that regard, the guy gets my respect. I'm reminded of something Linus Torvalds once said:
"I'm deadly serious: we humans have never been able to replicate something more complicated than what we ourselves are, yet natural selection did it without even thinking. Don't underestimate the power of survival of the fittest. And don't ever make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit. Quite frankly, Sun is doomed. And it has nothing to do with their engineering practices or their coding style."
I don't blame you. I thought the picture just sealed the creepy touch. But then again, one can argue that creepiness is a social construct, and that it itself is a barrier against making the conversation approach of interviewing for jobs seem unnatural, when really they shouldn't be. If more of us decided to be more "professionally personable" in the way that Brooke is, then perhaps this social construct of creepiness would change.
If he is, it's only because he's managed to take that load of crap job posting and somehow turn it into an article advertising the fact on Quartz.
A bigger false dichotomy I have never seen in my life. Good vs nice, with some kind of implication that nice people cannot have integrity? It's the worst kind of these posts — just enough truth sprinkled in with the bullshit to make you think he's onto something.
He didn't really create a false dichotomy. Of course there's a big overlap between nice people (without quotation marks) and "good" people (his take). In the OP he created two models of people, which he labelled "good" and "nice". The characteristics of "nice" are, to the outside observer, socially apt and likeable. "Good" people fall into this category too, and so do people that lack the "good" qualities. To simplify things he simply talked about a "nice" person that was nice in your sense but lacked the qualities of being "good". Obviously they share characteristics, but the point was that he has developed a way of hiring, which I personally thought quite interesting (that it worked/works), of figuring out whether a nice person was also "good" or was he/she just "nice".
Admittedly it's a weird, awkward, maybe even creepy job posting, but that doesn't mean it's just bullshit. His methods will probably fail in a larger workplace context but he never claimed that they would the contrary anyway.
No, he's got some decent concepts, but the way he uses them comes off as inauthentic. He really doesn't have the full picture of human relationships here. Though it may very well work for him—and more power to him if it does—what these kind persons have pointed out is that it is not generalizable advice, since it alienates a good portion of people from making contact in the first place. I tend to agree.
However, he makes some excellent points about keeping the hiring process honest and genuine, and I think you could use that advice generally and apply it to your own personality with ease.
Do keep in mind the job listing is for a personal assistant. I'd assume the author would be working with whomever he'd hire on a more intimate level relative to most other professional relationships.
That said, I do agree that his attitude toward employment certainly isn't for everyone. Luckily, though, it seems to self-select the people who are comfortable with it.
well, he's hiring a PA not a "rockstar programmer" or a startup manager, so it's good that he is filtering out the types of people with "bold personalities, disdain for authority and desire to revolutionize everything" - if you find it creepy (and I do too, btw!), it only means that he did his job of filtering out some of the worst people for the job!
...overall, great HR tips, even the indirect ones :)
This is Brooke. I understand your points. I thought about whether I should include a picture or not because I'm not that photogenic.
I'll often advertise the same position under multiple job titles. In this case, for example, I did a straight-up ad for position under Administrative Assistants and I got dull candidates.
The best candidates came from this ad placed under Writers and Editors.
Anything I do that is unusual gets its share of skeptics, which is fine. I am more interested in the people who wonder if I am a fraud or not, but are not afraid to find out.
One of my best hires for a position of Compliance Officer Trainee also came from an ad in Writers and Editors. She had an undergrad in Psych and a Masters in Tibetan Buddhism. It had never occurred to her that there would be a Wall Street job that cared about her ethics training. She answered because she didn't think I was legit, but was curious to find out.
I also hate the hugs - it is creepy, and I also don't like the cheek kissing, etc. But that's just me.
An environment where everyone has to care about each other sounds cultish to me. I prefer to be hired on the basis of my ability to make a company money, not my ability to open myself up and gush about how much I care about strangers.
I was all ready to get up into high dudgeon about hiring people who are capable but can't get along with others - but that's not what this article is about at all.
The author wants to hire people of integrity, not yes-men, and makes a particular point of hiring people who complement his skills. He also touches on several other points that might be undervalued in today's hiring climate.
Definitely some great stuff. I've read a few of his other articles as a result and wow! I'm totally impressed.
The securities industry gets a pretty bad rep. This guy has been a prop trader and hedge fund manager and has integrity in spades; believe it or not but I'm my experience that's a common trait with most of these guys.
I think his article is smoothly written to recruit noobs.
For example, I've been around for awhile, and when I hear the employer wants "giving personality" I'd like to think that means I mentor people and do some volunteer work. Been there, done that, think its cool. However experience has shown that really means "doesn't complain about unpaid overtime and excessive oncall and is a complete doormat".
Ditto stuff like "I give honesty and require it in return." I'd like to think thats true, often it is, but then again often it just means I want a yes man but can't say it so I'll talk about the opposite instead in compensation.
Some stuff is just creepy. "I won’t get between you and your dreams." My personal life outside of work is none of your business unless coincidentally we happen to overlap, in which case thats cool, although perhaps professionally awkward. Creepy!
Some stuff I have never experienced in industry or even heard of. "If you don’t have a requisite skill right now". You've got to be kidding.
Based on extensive observation, corporate communication about what's important is usually a strong indication of what's absent other than a slogan, not what's actually important. We believe in a work-life balance means their only contribution toward a work-life balance is talking about having one, actual implementation is strictly work oriented. Or "we're a professional organization" means drunken frat boy antics. If their contribution to honesty is exclusively bragging about how they like honesty, look out...
Interesting hiring practice idea, key point is the nice vs. good. The rest is just sorting out how he figures it out.
I actually do not agree with hiring a brilliant jerk unless you know what you are doing when you agree to work together. You can often select for both good and nice, they do not have to be mutually exclusive.
I’m not sure you understood what he meant by “good.”
> The opposite of good is bad. The opposite of nice is unlikeable.
That’s still a little vague. “Good” can mean “skilled” (as I think you interpreted it), but he actually means “honest and ethical.” For instance: “Deborah was … clearly qualified …, but she called … and said, ’I have to drop out. I’m pregnant. The plan was that I wouldn’t tell you I was pregnant and work for six months, go on leave, and decide later if I’d come back. But now I realize I cannot do that to you, and I cannot do that to the other people who might deserve the job more than me. Then it hit me that I cannot do that to anyone because I’m about to be a mom and I have to think about what kind of role model I want to be for my child.’ … Good people like [Deborah] are hard to find.”
There's some deep philosophy in the article. I wish everyone who was in charge of hiring took this sort of care to place people. So refreshing to see that integrity and honesty are still valuable assets.
An interesting approach, and it's refreshing to see an employer wanting to be honest and open during the recruitment process, but it feels like this advice has a limited audience. It's fine if you are hiring for a large established hedge fund where you can afford attractive salaries but how many people are in this situation?
A lot of hiring happens in response to a crisis like having to replace an existing employee or having too much work for too few people. In these situations it's not feasible to invite every candidate round for pizza and a chat about ethics and then find all of them work. It's more about deciding what to compromise on. For most companies it's going to be more about things that are quickly testable: skill, experience, ability. 'Goodness' as the article describes is much more difficult to elicit in a candidate. Like any personality trait it's something that doesn't tend to manifest until much further down the line when the new hire has settled into the role.
Allen doesn't really provide any details on how you would discover the 'goodness' of a candidate prior to hiring. Other than laying down the ground rules of what he expects there's no mention of how he estimates this quality in a candidate. According to his success stories the candidates simply self select but this can't be a reliable method. What about people who use their niceness to masquerade as 'good' people?
It's good advice to be open and honest with potential employees but I don't really see what most recruiters can take away from this. Talented, experienced individuals can be difficult enough to find without having to look for some vague idea of how 'good' they are too.
I think a 10 person organisation would probably still be at the stage where they have a lot more to worry about in potential candidates and probably don't have access to enough capital / cachet to be able to attract the ideal person.
There's so many assumptions in your statement(s) that it's hard to really take them seriously. I don't know where you get the idea that "A successful company making lots of money" and "Companies with more than 10 employees" always intersect.
This article is incredibly refreshing, and I think people in the position to hire new employees should definitely read this. I wish more people had such integrity.
I posted this story to HN. I just wish there was a little more honesty in the world, mostly because there is no real dialogue going on in most interviews. I know his ideas are new (and some say creepy), but we need to swing the pendulum the other way.
Honestly would increase the speed of productivity for everybody.
You may want to consider reading "Winning", by Jack Welch. If that little bit made you reconsider your job, his chapter on job fit would probably be right up your alley.
Thanks for that. On the People / Opportunity / Options / Ownership / Work Content dimensions, I'm a 2/5... so yeah, maybe time to put some serious thought into that.
Classic case of projection. The guy works in hedge fund management where success and 'goodness' is so easily observable (buy low sell high). His observations make sense ... for his industry. For other industries and roles, for example sales, niceness has its benefits.
This is what I also ghough in the first place. But now I think beeing good is very important inside of the team. Relation with the outside has different constrains and may thus require different qualities.
I agree that hiring good-hearted people makes for a better employment -- and who would argue against good-heartedness?
But he self-servingly equates your willingness to do more recruiting for him, with "goodness." Being good comes in all flavors, and some of them don't include the desire to work for free, as a recruiter, while your employment offer is on the table.
That is true, most of the time someone who is "good" (by the authors definition) will also be "nice". But there are many times where being "good", requires explaining to someone that their performance is below expectations, or that their behaviour is not acceptable. This is not "nice" as the author defined it.
(Though based on the common definition of nice, you can certainly be nice about how you would make such an explanation!)
Usually, employers rapidly scan the resume of each job
applicant looking for relevant education, skills, and
work experience. They select 10 candidates for telephone
calls, invite three in for interviews,
and hire the one they like the best.
Not sure in which industry this is the case, in our industry, i.e. IT/Startups/Hackers, and here in Tel Aviv area, the last line is more likely to be: "And then the Employee tells: 'I will let you know within a week or so, whether or not I'd like to continue with the process.."
In those words, more or less. The fact is, that early screening process, brings in the better people, and given there is an extremely high demand for the "know-how", they know it, and stand for their benefits pretty well.
If the job was for a fixed period (like maternity leave) and he was planning to come back afterwards, and he was the right person for the job, then sure. I've hired like that before.
People need time out in their lives for all kinds of reasons. If you're playing the long-game when hiring, which you often are (or should be), then you need to take that into account.
In the right circumstances I would as well. I meant to simply point out the general idea that substituting man for woman will imply if it's sexist or not. In the article it also does not mention whether or not she was ever planning to go back to work.
> Nice people care if you like them; .... Nice people stretch the truth;
It is a strange definition of nice.. if nice means hypocritical, and good means honest then I agree that good people are probably better.
In general I am a bit bothered by this very absolute vocabulary that we ear everywhere in the tech world. We ear about very talented people, awesome teams, beautiful designs. For me all this is just advertising and shouldn't be given too much attention. The reality is a lot more complex.
I was more interested in the site itself. As you scrolled to a new article, it changed the URL. Then if you visited that URL in a new tab, it was the new top of the page.
This sounds nice, but the truth is I'm usually good and sometimes nice. Sometimes I can't even tell for sure. Are you certain you aren't oversimplifying? Don't you really want people who define good the same way as you do? For example, some people think a good email must have lots of introductory information and something like Xs and Os at the end. May they arrive at work early and endure many long meetings.
"Nice people will allow you to hire them even if they know they are not among your best candidates; a good person won’t let you hire them unless that is what is best for you."
Uhhhhh... Isn't that exactly the kind of person who values the external more than the internal that will go along with an evil plan?
I think that the fundamental problem is that we're used to a certain low-level dishonesty in job prospecting. Even if you don't agree with it-- even if you'd rather people see how you really are so you don't end up in inappropriate roles-- you're expected to make nice and play along.
Job applicants have to overstate their willingness to subordinate. Very rare is a talented person who wants to be a subordinate. Protege to an obvious superior (by which I mean person of superior skill)? Sure, but that's different because there's an obvious symbiosis. Subordinate order-follower? No, no one wants that.
On the flip side, hiring managers often overstate the autonomy and future prospects associated with the role.
Companies overstate their need for "passion". Passionate people never see themselves as subordinates. Proteges, possibly. Not subordinates. Never happens, never will.
If you want people who are good at subordinating, you need to go to the other end of the passion spectrum and find people who are happy just to have a job. But no one wants to hire those because, even though they're often good at well-defined tasks, they're taken to be kind of a bummer.
I feel like when people go too far to the good-not-nice extreme, you end up with dialogues like this (obviously, more subtly)...
Hiring manager: all of the "vision" questions and tough technical brainteasers are a false lead. In reality, we're looking to add excess capacity to which we can delegate undesirable work. Also, the reason why we're overhiring is because it makes managers happy to have overqualified subordinates so they can say things like, "I have four Ivy Leaguers working for me".
Candidate: I don't really see myself as a subordinate, and unless management takes a direct interest in my career and I get the best projects available, I'm going to start serving my own career interests in a matter of about 6 months.
No one would hire anyone if people were that honest.
I hesitate to call it "dishonesty" because its like dating. Nobody lays all their cards on the table while trying to get a date. Everyone paints the idealized picture of themselves, tailored to the other person's expectations. Its mutual, concensual deception. You don't disclose, and they don't want to hear, that you're a fastidious basket case who will freak the moment the other person moves something in your apartment.
"I think that the fundamental problem is that we're used to a certain low-level dishonesty in job prospecting."
Exactly right. I think this guys is a little over the top, but good for him. We need a change to the system. There are excellent employees out there who do not interview well.
Maybe it was the overly familiar tone from a stranger, or the slightly self-centered focus on the prospective employer's own personality, or the paternalistic tone of the listing, down to the closing line: "deal?"
I would personally not be comfortable answering an ad like that. I prefer my professional relationships to at least begin with a more professional tone. Phrases like "I will not hire anyone until we both understand and care about each other" remind me of bosses I've had when I was younger that seemed to want to treat me more like a son or nephew than an employee, and it always made me kind of uncomfortable. I can imagine for a woman, this might set off even more alarm bells than it does for me as a man.
Hire skilled, talented people. Looking for "good-hearted" people with "giving personalities" sounds to me like I'm going to have to hug you at the end of the day or something.