Slashdot Mirror
Simulators Take the Humans Out of Hiring
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."
Why would I want to have an employer with that kind of approach and attitude to managing employees?
... 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.
it can (and likely will / should) be replaced with the simulator.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Firms have been taking humans out of the interview process for years. You can't seriously tell me that HR staff are human.
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.
Hmmm ... google Hello world powerpc, click on the first link 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.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
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!!!