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)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Funny)
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, Funny)
What I can't help wondering is how soon some start-up will offer to help you literally "game the system?"
Actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
"write a program that does this" (Score:2)
CORRECT. This is how it's done. (Score:3)
It seems like most of the things they're talking a
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Find those kids who love to do this. Science fairs attract them like football fans to a game.
Do them a big favor and snag them before some corporate bureaucracy burns them out with mindless office politics.
They will work their a** off for you, and love doing it.
But, like any other tool, they can be damaged by using them the wrong way. Stifle them, subject them to office politics, micromanage them, and they will most likely become bitter and sour, not of much use to anyone anymore.
Some
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We had this system. It was called "the manager hires you for two weeks on a trial basis". It doesn't really seem to exist anymore except in smaller businesses that still have good business sense and some kind of respect for their employees.
No matter how fantastic someone's degree or resume may be, the best way to tell if they can do a job is to actually give them a shot at doing the job.
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Agreed. If you're not testing coders for basic competence, you're just foolishly rolling the dice. When I was helping my company staff up development, I asked applicants to do little 15-minute (or less) methods inspired by FizzBuzz [codinghorror.com]. Despite killing the phone screening and dazzling upper management, many applicants went pale and struggled to produce anything when asked to do simple coding tasks in the de facto IDE (pseudo-code was acceptable too). One dude was great on the phone and socially gifted, but
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There are companies who are filling IT positions with people who don't already have 3-5 years experience doing the job? Where?please tell me!
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For every Dilbert, there's two Wallys.
It's a Wally World. The moose at the door should have told you.
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Self employed (Score:1)
Only because you've made your country so inhospitable to self-employment. Quite why you'd want to stifle new enterprise like that, I'm not sure, but there it is.
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Why would I want to have an employer with that kind of approach and attitude to managing employees?
Don't worry, before too long these simulators will be used to measure the ability of robots to fill the job instead of humans. Then we'll really be able to "take the human out of hiring".
Conspiracy theory: (Score:4, Funny)
How do you know these simulations aren't being used to train A.I. replacements today!
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Well, isn't that exactly what these simulations are already doing replacing HR (human resources) staff with computers.
Simulation testing does off course make sense in measuring 'part' of what makes a good employee. Trust an reliability are also off value, well, they used to be.
I mean can you ever really trust honest employees with integrity to lie to and cheat your customers for maximum profits. Nasty of greed driven catch 22 there, if they will lie and cheat for you, they will also lie and cheat from
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Do you want fries with that?
Do you want fries with that?
Do you want fries with that?
Do you want fries with that?
Do you want fries with that?
How many fucking times do I have to say that, sir?
Until you die, son. Now do it again.
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Because you need to eat? And all employers are doing the same?
Maybe your question was geared towards: should we, as a society, allow that kind of thing? Isn't it more important to ensure general population happiness than allowing this latest Kafkaesque fad that probably does little except annoying people? Then it would be a very good question.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you could always work for an employer who uses HR drones instead.
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"We've got a bug in our production line software, you have 3 hours to write and deploy the fix."
two hours later...
"Thank you, we'll interview you again when we have another bug."
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I pressed the wrong button and hit the secretary with the clipboard instead of giving it to her :-(
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.
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Yeah as if THAT can't be faked at a human powered interview. This is better, because no one "important" takes the blame for being conned during the interview process.
There is the "median" problem that the median skilled person gets stuck in the median job position and its management's job to make it work, so they failed in your anecdote, eh... Everyone likes to think they're the top 1% of whatever skills they have, be it programming languages or BSing (soft skills). 100% of personnel trying to find the t
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.
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No wonder that Aspergers seems more and more like a illness...
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: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.
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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.
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".
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Proper British English is not universal in Great Britain, there's tons of slang and vernacular around. Some even refuse proper English for fear of violating their class roots or some such nonsense. But you're not going to be a BBC presenter without knowing how to speak it properly on command.
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AAVE and Spanglish are mutually incomprehensible with each other and with standard American English. Whether you call them dialects or merely incorrect forms of standard American English, they're not a good choice for communication in most large American companies. If you can't speak a language/dialect closer to standard American English, that's a minus.
(Note that AAVE is usually considered a dialect, but Spanglish is not)
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AAVE and Spanglish are mutually incomprehensible with each other and with standard American English. Whether you call them dialects or merely incorrect forms of standard American English, they're not a good choice for communication in most large American companies. If you can't speak a language/dialect closer to standard American English, that's a minus.
(Note that AAVE is usually considered a dialect, but Spanglish is not)
Indeed, they are not suitable for business and such, which is why programs have been started trying to teach Standard American English to speakers of AAVE, and Spanglish. There is a definite privilege and wider opportunities if you speak SAE, and not AAVE or Spanglish alone.
I wasn't really attempting to establish that AAVE and Spanglish don't have disadvantages, but rather solely attacking the argument that they are "orthographically and grammatically incorrect".
Re:But can the simulator tell me ... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm impressed. I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or have actually have political correctness rammed up your arse that far.
It's called knowing fucking linguistics. The science simply does not support the prejudices of people who want to say that AAVE is just sloppy or incorrect English.
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Everything you said is true, except...
Actually, it's all about culture.
Linguistics is more than just the study of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. There is also a lot of study in how languages are used by cultures, and how it intertwines itself with culture.
So, yes, everything you said is dead fucking on, but I learned about that information from linguistics classes, and linguistics studies, so while it might be "all about culture", it's also linguistics.
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Oh, then it's political correctness.
It's no more PC than saying that it's racist to suggest that people with African ancestors have an increased chance of sickle cell anemia.
Meaning, it may align with "PC usage", but it's backed up by scientific fact. So, the protest against PC by the people who demand that the Truth is brutally honest, and we shouldn't sugar coat things, falls apart. And the rebel-against-PC response should be to such people, "suck it up, AAVE (previously known as Black English Vernacular) is a perfectly valid register and/o
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.
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Meanwhile, I've been dinged on performance reviews because of a tendency to snap at people who ask the same question several times.
Not working well with others is one thing, but going so far as to become violent and actually bite or nip at them is another. If you were a dog I'd call the local shelter to have you put to sleep. Civilized people don't attempt to eat each other for any reason. And biting someone for being stupid is particularly perverse and insensitive.
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You don't seem like a troll, so I'll just post a few definitions:
snap at someone
to speak sharply or angrily to someone.
3
a : to retort to or interrupt curtly and irritably
b : to utter curtly or abruptly
3 [transitive, intransitive] to speak or say something in an impatient, usually angry, voice
"Don't just stand there," she snapped.
Yes, the figurative meaning is based on the literal meaning when animals try to bite someone, but unless you are talking about children raised by wolves it's not meant literally wit
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Perhaps you should also wonder why anybody would want to fit into the corporate culture. When a man takes a corporate job, it's solely because he needs the money; if he had a choice, he would no doubt go elsewhere. Congratulations to all those big companies, who have succeeded in creating an environment nobody wants, where people nobody likes design products nobody buys.
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I think it depends a lot on the type of job. Hiring an airline pilot based on their skill at flying a (realistic) aircraft simulator is not a bad idea. Hiring a sales person based on their interaction with a computer program is probably completely wrong.
While computerized testing has all sorts of problems, so does standard HR hiring. I think the extent to which you can use tests depends completely on the type of position you are hiring.
Effectiveness depends on quality? (Score:2)
Air Traffic Control (Score:1)
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this is how I got my last job (Score:5, Funny)
defending the frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan armada.
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Did your recruiter look like Troy McClure?
We could do that. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Here's a blank PC, a Fedora DVD. and an internet connection. Write me a 'hello world' powerpc
linux executable. I'll be back in an hour to see how much progress you've made. Extra credit if
it runs on that eval board in the box over there"
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Fortunately for me, I'm an expert at porting "hello world" across multiple platforms.
Ask me to code anything else, and you're probably SOL.
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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.
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b) cat > hello.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
use strict;
print "Hello World\n";
ctrl-d
chmod 750 hello.pl
Both should work on most unix platforms.
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We actually did something like that when we interviewed Unix sysadmins a couple months ago, except instead of writing a program they had to install and configure a certain package correctly on a virtual machine.
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that's a hell of a test for flipping burgers
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An hour?
Could this be.. (Score:1)
If your job can be simulated (Score:4, Insightful)
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They already use this, not kidding. When you send in a CV electronically no human sees it until a buzzword-matching program has already checked it for buzzword compliance.
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A video game simulation is a controlled environment (HR can create a set of scenarios to be te
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.
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Eh. Companies need people to do taxes. Companies need people to fill legal forms and do low-level accounting. Companies need people to do background checks once a potential employee has passed muster. Companies need people to do payroll. Small companies, especially, can't afford to have lawyer or an accountant (or have the time for the CEO to) do everything. That's where I see HR people fitting.
I absolutely agree with you that at the first level of hiring they shouldn't get involved.
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I can't agree with this. While the above description might fit a lot of people in the corporate world, it applies to many other people working in corporate jobs. I've worked a few places with some truly dedicated HR people that took pride in doing their jobs well and did. I would never have considered them stupid or having failed at everything else. Some people want a low stress 9-5 job for whatever reason...I can't imagine why. In fact, in my last big name tech company, I considered the people working
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If HR is limited to things like managing benefits packages, publishing internally generated job descriptions to job sites, pushing applicants back to the departments without gatekeeping, handling workplace complaints, and being a clearinghouse for interdepartmental transfer, then HR contributes usefully to its company. If, on the other hand, it becomes a job-defending gatekeeper that prescreens applicants, spends all its spare time coming up with workplace behaviour rules, and setting arb
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Amen brother! Back in the day HR was largely a job role for exec and director's girlfriends/wives/mistresses/daughters so that they could find them some kind of gainful employment regardless of their job skills. I have yet to find a competent and non-bitter HR person in any company I've dealt with.
I've lost hope in large corporations. They work so hard to create internal structure rather than product that they get too top-heavy. Once you get big enough there are so many people handling the internal structur
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Source (translated): http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.manpower.se%2FMPNet3%2FContent.asp%3FNodeRef%3D58911%26Ref%3DSWEDEN_NORDIC%26LangID%3Dse&act=url [google.se]
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wow. I think everyone has been angry at someone in HR at some point or two in their lives. But if we eliminate HR completely, who will make sure we get paid?
Yikes! (Score:2)
Another way to keep people that think outside of the box off the payroll.
this will need to stay away from the pre screening (Score:2)
this will need to stay away from the pre screening pit fills as the last thing that you need is keyword jamming on both sides or tests that are to wide or ones that test stuff that is not even needed for the job / skills that may only be needed one time a year or stuff that is like if you can do x and y we don't need you to do z.
Or say it's better to have someone that is good at X and y but not z vs some one who is good at just z or poor to fair at all.
IBM Aptitude Tests (Score:1)
When I started in computing in 1964, there were no Computer Science degrees, no certificates. IBM would select their programming staff by aptitude tests. All that was important was the established high correlation between the test and subsequent success in IBM. Since then, I have seen people with various certification who are good at passing certificate tests, but hopeless at real world issues.
The positive side is that simulations are probably a good way of creating a threshold, however they do not supplant
Will the tests have be safe from discrimination? (Score:2)
Will the tests have be safe from discrimination / be able to be modded for reasonable accommodations?
Will they be like the personality tests that some time have poor questions? and are Personality tests poor predictors of job performance http://www.institutobios.org/perstests.pdf [institutobios.org]
I don't see the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
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If this is applied in a fairly straightforward way, I think it could make sense, like a test of typing skills for a secretary job in the old days.
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Good for EEOC? (Score:3)
Given the demonstrable bias towards hiring people for reasons completely unrelated to ability (e.g. "attractiveness"), I would think that potential employees must favor this sort of thing as well.
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In addition such tests also discriminate against stupid and mentally retarded applicants. How could that be considered 'fair'?
Sounds like a damned good idea to me! (Score:1)
I have always hated interviews because all you are doing in most is trying to make instant friend-like connections with the interviewer, who more often than not will judge the interviewees on things that have no effect on competency to perform a given job description. Many of them even create little lists of "deal breaker" mistakes that have not a damn thing to do with how effective someone will be on the job...like were their shoes shined as well as they could be? Was their tie annoying? Were they wearing
Unless (Score:2)
Your name is Ender Wiggin.
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.
Crowdsourcing! (Score:2)
You say "employment simulation?" I say "crowdsourcing!" What's a better simulation than the real thing?
In fact, let's get rid of the whole "we might hire them" thing entirely (but don't remove that text from the website).
Finally ... (Score:2)
... some real progress in the improvement of the usual IT HR.
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... some real progress in the improvement of the usual IT HR.
Progress is the root of all evil. General Bullmoose
--
Frankie and Johnny at K-Mart
anecdotal experience with terrible tests (Score:3)
I seem to recall that some of these tests are strange or written badly, to my expense. I remember taking such tests to assess my knowledge of, for instance, MS Office, but the software specifically required that I accomplish a task in one way and one way only. If I knew a perfectly valid way of accomplishing the task, but it wasn't the (presumably more common) way that the software wanted I got the question wrong. (Worse yet, they did this in a simulated MS Office environment...the only way to get the question right was to choose all the correct menus the first time. If the correct answer was to do something with File:Properties but I went for the Edit menu first, it was wrong immediately.)
In 2008 or so I was at a temp agency and they tested my abilities to do PC break/fix work. They asked the question which IRQ # is associated with COM1. I was furious to know that I was being graded on my knowledge of things that I hadn't had to worry about in at least 10 years.
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(Worse yet, they did this in a simulated MS Office environment...the only way to get the question right was to choose all the correct menus the first time. If the correct answer was to do something with File:Properties but I went for the Edit menu first, it was wrong immediately.)
Sounds sort of like an MCXX exam, except in those you either get a practical section (where you can click a wrong menu, but IIRC you lose points if you do it too many times) or you get a paper test where you need to have the exact GUI path to whatever you need to do memorized, down to the exact names of the menu items. Needless to say, if you have shitty memory like I do you're SOL.
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You have tickled a few of my neurons that haven't had anything to do since 1994.
Really, what kind of company would want to test someone on such things?
* a computer museum
* a BIOS engineering firm
* a company too cheap to upgrade to Windows95 - even now (if it ain't broke...)
* a company too ignorant to develop or pay for or otherwise obtain a way to test candidates on contemporary computing knowledge
Unless you're a BIOS engineer or it's a very well funded and lively musuem, just say no.
Exploitable (Score:2)
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!!!
The sound of rejoicing ... (Score:3)
Kobayashi Maru (Score:2)
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Haha this was my first thought XD
Let's face it... (Score:2)
For a lot of jobs, this is all the consideration it's worth. Call centers, clerks at most chain stores, someone moving pieces of paper around an office, you just need a literate piece of meat in a chair. You don't need an outside the box thinker or a cunning strategist, or even anyone with training in any special field. You need a warm body who can follow a flow chart and count. A game can figure that out better and faster than a human being.
Not your job of course. You were hand picked from the billions of
So, game the simulation... (Score:2)
and your'e hired! Well, it's a kind on intelligence test, I guess - for cheating. You'll filter out all but the best cheaters. Yup, that's the kind of company I/i want to work for
Dell and other call centers... (Score:1)
Dell is well known for having done this for several years. I did a call simulation and testing routine when interviewing with them about 7 years ago. The Microsoft brain teasers were legendary when they became common knowledge 12 or so years ago. Both are methods of accomplishing a variety of different hiring criteria.
First, every company hiring for some form of technical position has a legitimate business need for assessing both a potential employee's current intellect and their learning curve, but test
Showing one's skill is better than talking it up. (Score:1)
I, for one, would relish the opportunity to simply PROVE that I can do the job, rather than trying to schmooze the interviewers into liking me more. In my experience, those who are great at schmoozing interviewers are also the sorts of people that I hate having as co-workers: the ladder-climbing, butt-kissing, co-worker abusing, sorts who are more interested in making those in charge like them (for promotions, raises, etc.) than actually doing a good job. Of course, if they can take credit for other people'
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You mean like SATs? No say it ain't so...
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Well, just wait until they find out to break complex problems into pieces small enough to be solved during such interview sessions. Then they can just interview so many programmers that they ultimately have the code without paying anyone for it.
Oh, you say breaking down the problems still requires employees? Well, the employment test could also be: "Given this problem, how would you break it down into smaller pieces to be assigned to different programmers?"