Simulators Take the Humans Out of Hiring 143
Hugh Pickens writes "Ken Gaebler discusses a new way of hiring called 'employment simulations,' which are gaining popularity among high-tech firms that are seeking data from prospective employees that you can't get from sit-down interviews. In a typical employment simulation, candidates participate in online 'video games' that leverage simulation software to determine how well candidates perform in actual job situations. 'There are no questions about your former work experience and office habits. There's simply a computer game. If you win, you get the job. If you lose, game over.' As one example, call centers are very amenable to simulations because the work environment (a series of computer programs and databases) is relatively easy to replicate and the tasks that make up job performance are easy to measure (data entry speed and accuracy, customer service, multitasking, etc). Other employment simulation programs have been written for healthcare, insurance, retail sales, financial services, hospitality and travel, manufacturing and automotive, and telecom and utilities. But skeptics say employment simulators and other computer-based hiring models have some drawbacks. 'Like any technology, the effectiveness of employment simulations is limited to the quality of the software and its accessibility to users,' says Gaebler."
Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
But can the simulator tell me ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... that candidate x plays well with others?
Technical skills (as in the technical ability to perform the tasks of the position) are only half the equation, if that. Plenty of people that have the technical chops for a given position just aren't a good fit for the position because either they don't have people skills at all, or they don't fit in well with the corporate culture, or have some other impediment to being a valuable employee that won't show up in a simulation.
As an example, I helped interview a very technically skilled person a few years ago. She really had the technical chops. Nevertheless I recommended against hiring her because she kept cutting me off in mid-sentence during the interview. My boss (and her boss) disagreed with my assessment and the candidate was hired. Technically she did quite well. But the way that she ultimately left the company was filled with the sort of drama that we all could have done without.
If your job can be simulated (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But can the simulator tell me ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans and computers each have areas in which they excel, though neither is perfect in those areas. A good process should try and take into account the strengths of the judge for any given criteria. In the past we relied solely on human judgement because we had no other choice. Now we can put together a system that relies on both human and computer based judgement and exploit the areas in which they each excel.
Re:But can the simulator tell me ... (Score:4, Insightful)
To play devil's advocate:
If you're talking about a position that doesn't involve much dealing with people, the human side of things may be a matter of discrimination rather than just being nice. For instance, if somebody starts speaking in African-American Vernacular English or Spanglish as they get less guarded (because they're excited or comfortable with the interviewer), some people will hold that against them, even if they're being perfectly polite and respectful.
Re:But can the simulator tell me ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Like this has to be an either-or, my hiring experience has been that there's a lot of interviews and relatively little practical testing of skills. I guess the closest I came was a company that tested me for logic, math and reading comprehension but there were no tests on the subjects and tools I claimed to know, just interview questions. Most the hiring WTFs I read about are people that smooth talked their way through the interviews, like coders that couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. Most of the time you can find some way make good people with bad personalities productive, easier than the other way around. Of course in an ideal world we'd like just good people with good personalities, but reality is a compromise.
or... (Score:3, Insightful)
This might be better than having HR staff. Let's face it, HR people are failures -- at everything. Nobody ever, ever dreamed of working in HR as a kid. Nobody ever wants to do it. Hence the only people who do have no skills, no ambition, no creativity, not much in the way of brains, and have failed at something else. And thus have a chip on their shoulder with regards to absolutely everyone with any ability whatsoever.
This fact alone, explains why mediocrity exists in most corporations and government organizations. These clowns are the gatekeepers of everything else. This is why corporations lack the creativity and drive of smaller firms that have no HR.
Here's a crazy thought, mimic small firms. Have managers that actually manage, and use the technology that is available for admin and personnel management. Make decisions -- especially hiring decisions -- at the lowest possible common denominator level. Empower the lowest possible level of employees, make them involved in the quality of everything the firm does. Give them pride in their jobs. Build quality from the bottom up.
I guarantee that firing everyone in HR will increase productivity, profit and employee job satisfaction within 5 years. We simply do not need anyone working in HR in the modern age, they are a cancer at the heart of society.
Re:We could do that. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm ... google Hello world powerpc, click on the first link [ibm.com] and scroll a bit down until you find the assembly. Now you only have to find a powerpc assembler and linker, and you're done.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Having good references from previous jobs that you've been at for 5+ years in no way means that you can actually do the work. It could just be that you're a very good slacker who can bullshit their way out of doing work.
For every Dilbert, there's two Wallys.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you could always work for an employer who uses HR drones instead.
Welcome to my world! (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies are only now figuring out that desk monkeys actually have to *do* something? Performance based evaluation is the norm in skilled trades. I have to pass practical test to retain my welding certifications. I will be asked to do something fairly complex when I start a new job (which all have trial periods akin to extended interviews) just to see what I can handle. Hopefully this type of evaluation eventually gets applied to management.
Re:But can the simulator tell me ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is normal because "African-American Vernacular English" (so much politicaly correct terms in one expression make me dizzy) and Spanglish are, well, incorrect forms of english. It's not about being polite and respectful. It's just plain wrong grammar and orthograph.
No, it is not. They are a variant version of English, but not "incorrect". This is like claiming that British English is bad orthography, because they spell "honor" as "honour", and that it has bad grammar, because they treat collective nouns as plurals, "my bank are nice."
If you want to say that it's not the desired REGISTER of English, then you would have some traction there. However, they are valid and correct forms of English, that are nonetheless nonconformant with formal American English registers. The same way "ain't" is actually a word, and is perfectly grammatical.
Corporate HR is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
As a manager that has needed to hire technical employees AND also an unemployed technical worker desperately looking for a job, I have seen both sides of the hiring process - and I can say without question that it is completely broken. The recruiters have no idea what skills are needed or how to match a technical job description to a technical resume. HR believes that they need to use systems like Taleo, Kenexa, Brassring, etc to collect a huge amount of data from every candidate - and that data is not used by *anyone*. Why does the company need to know the phone number of the boss I had in 1991 *before* I have even gone through the first screening? It is a huge waste of time for the candidates and useless collection of data. Meanwhile, the thousands of 3rd party recruiters are copying and reposting job descriptions all over the internet, so that 1 job opening at 1 company results in hundreds of job posts at Dice, Indeed, Monster, etc. The hiring manager is often not allowed work with recruiters he knows can provide good candidates - he can only consider candidates provided by the "approved" recruiters that have an agreement in place with the HR department. The result of all this nonsense is that the HR department is buried in useless data from unqualified candidates, the hiring manager sees a tiny percentage of the total candidates, the vast majority of the resume the hiring manager does see are NOT a good fit, and your hours of work to craft a resume and complete the online application data entry ultimately goes absolutely nowhere.
The entire HR recruiting process is designed to be a filtering process. They are not looking for the best candidate, they are looking for a reason to NOT hire each candidate. If your resume makes it through all the filter screens, then they assume you must be the best candidate. This is a critical concept - it means that if you are looking for a job, your primary goal should be to NOT be excluded. You need to get past the key word match filters, past the simulators, past the technical tests, past the personality tests, past the phone screens and finally past the in-person interviews. If your resume is still in the stack, you will probably get the job offer - but at any step you could be stopped and excluded from the rest of the process. You MUST think about this on every job you apply for - know what step you at, and try to figure out how to survive the current step's screen.
There has to be a better way!!!
Re:But can the simulator tell me ... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is like claiming that British English is bad orthography
British English has the virtual of having a whole country (actually many countries) where it is widely used in business. Those other variants don't. Hence, they are not "valid and correct" for general business use.
They are indeed not a good choice for general business, however that doesn't make them invalid, or incorrect.
I could speak perfectly grammatical German, and have impeccable German spelling, but that wouldn't make it a good choice for doing business in the USA. In the same way AAVE is simply not a good choice. One might say it's an "incorrect choice" as well, but it doesn't make the language "grammatically and orthographically incorrect".