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Headhunters Can't Tell Anything From Facebook Profiles
New submitter sfcat writes "Companies, headhunters and recruiters increasingly are using social media sites like Facebook to evaluate potential employees. Most of this is due to a 2012 paper from Northern Illinois Univ. that claimed that employee performance could be effectively evaluated from their social media profiles. Now a series of papers from other institutions reveal exactly the opposite result. 'Recruiter ratings of Facebook profiles correlate essentially zero with job performance,' write the researchers, led by Chad H. Van Iddekinge of FSU (abstract). Not only did the research show the ineffectiveness of using social media in evaluating potential employees, it also showed a measurable biases of the recruiters against minorities (African-American and Latino) and against men in general."
So a profession with no psychology background can't successfully evaluate peoples' personal statements and associations as a proxy for their professional competence? They're failing to do what even actual psychologists struggle with?
Wow. Who'd have seen that coming.
I could have told you the biases off the top of my head. The anti-minority, anti-male headhunter is nothing new. Most headhunters are female and white, though several headhunter companies I have done business with are minority run and almost exclusively monochromatic (i.e. all black, all hispanic). They all have biases in general against men, BUT this seesaws to the other side as they are hiring for increasingly technical or executive positions as they rather play the odds that the person is hired and they get their commission.
Headhunting and HR both crack me up from an ethical standpoint. They are generally paid a notch higher at each position for similar work than others in the company, precisely because they discuss / are aware of pay levels throughout the company. Second, they are the biggest hen houses of racism, sexism, and gossip. In my experience they also have the highest consistency of just one or two "<insert race> <insert backup race> male" twofer/threefers to not seem like there is a problem.
Disclosure: The MSP I used to work at hosts some recruiting / temporary worker management applications.
Problems with using social media aside, headhunters are fucking lazy morons. I've never personally had to deal with them, thankfully, but one of my friends, being a consultant, does often and they are universally wastes of flesh. They are not concerned with trying to find the best candidate for the job, carefully vetting resumes and checking experience. Rather they are interested in finding someone as fast as possible and mating them with a job so they can get their fee. They rarely have the faintest idea of what they are talking about in terms of technical requirements and so on.
So ya, I'm sure this doesn't help. Particularly since what people put on their social networking sites varies a ton. Some people have lots of work related things, some have none. Doesn't really translate to job performance, just to what they like to share or not share.
Sounds like more what they are doing, particularly based on the discrimination report, is finding people they think "look good" meaning largely white and particularly good looking female, and sending them on.
So what does it say about people who don't have a facebook profile? I'm guessing that we're scary dangerous people, who are terrorists and working to subvert the government. /sarc
Actually might not be far from the truth these days in the minds of some flappy headed nutbags.
Om, nomnomnom...
This article only reinforces the value of social media in evaluating future job performance in the human resources industry. I'll explain!
Since there is zero correlation, it is like reading tea leaves and a headhunter can reach any interpretation possible. Meanwhile, the zero correlation means any tea leaf reading cannot be falsified.
Arbitrary opinions and no valid way of measurement --- which makes the interpretations completely subject to whim! It is the perfect industry, possibly only surpassed by the "how to write a successful resume" sector of the economy!
With no right or wrong answers, what's not to LOVE!!!
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I have a profile on a business social network. I am a physicist (PHD) , and have worked a long time in science.
Everybody looking at my profile for longer than 20 seconds can figure that out.
I have a solid electronics/condensed matter/analog measurement background.
Everybody looking at my profile for longer than 40 seconds can figure that out.
But as it happens, i am a curious guy with diverse programming skills, which I have been using *from time to time*, but i know enough to talk to IT experts who really know what they are doing
Everybody looking at my profile for longer than 1 minute can figure that out.
So what i typically get/got is:
-we need a junior PHP programmer (yeah, sure - come on, admit you just searched for "PHP" and ignored the other skills, which you never heard about)
-do you like a job as *expert* for [Skill X, which was listed explicitely as "little experience"] (Oh, you like to sell anybody to you customer. At least you read my profile, but, thanks, no)
-in the interview (after beeing asked by the headhunter to apply): why do you apply here? (Yeah, because the company you hired to look for me "found" me - obviously they did not infrom you at all about the previous conversation.)
And what i see in the company i work for:
-I get a profile from our internal headhunters, whithout any infromation how that got onto my table.
-I should evaluate people for things of which i have no idea at all, but "it sounded similar" (to the HR intern)
-50% of hour HR seem to be interns. The HR has probably the highest rotation rate in the company; even the management has a felt half-life time of a year (sure, thats going to work out)
What on Earth are you talking about? If you unfairly bias your hiring choices toward hiring women, that means it's unfairly harder for a man to get the job, i.e. it puts men at a disadvantage.
I suppose a don't-hire-any-black-people policy wouldn't disadvantage anyone, either?
Christ, do I really have to spell it out?
Like anything else, social networking info is a possible source of useful info. As long as you understand the limitations.
I doubt that the average headhunter is good at evaluating much of anything, social networking or no. But that goes for the average {most professions} too ...
And this is modded funny? Controversial, agreed, but funny?
The dominating strain of feminism doesn't give a #$%# about equality and non-discrimination in general. It's one-way only, men be damned. Sure, there's a lot more discrimination against females in general, but in cases where it works the other way around you'd expect those who constantly babble about "equal rights" to side with discriminated men, at least verbally. Not a chance.
Example from my country: in a divorce as a man you have practically zero chance for the kids to stay with you, even if the mother is absolutely unfit to care for them. Worse, your visiting hours tend to be minimal. How many females will you find in the group fighting for fathers' rights? Guess. "We want equal rights" - yeah, sure...
Yeah, fuck this form of feminism.
Not minority enough for feminists. Men are biologically unnecessary. As soon as women can breed among themselves cheaply and easily, men will be finished.
I beg to differ sir. The human male IS a huge waste of resources in nature (like the male of nearly any species) precisely because they use food, water, and shelter without bearing replacement young for the species population.
The prevalence of species with males suggests their inclusion is a survival advantage, despite the draw on resources. Apparently, the genetic diversity we provide is just barely worth the trouble.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The NSA isn't extrapolating solely from an FB account. They've got all kinds of other records. That's kinda why privacy advocates are pissed at them. Moreover they don't respond to one of their guys thinking "hey that shit look suspicious," by sending asking for a warrant to arrest you, they do it by sending their info to the FBI/DoJ where somebody who can interpret Facebook profiles can decide what to do. In other words even if the NSA guy has no idea when Arab pro-Palestinean rhetoric should scare him, and when it's just something somebody says because they're venting about the total lack of a peace treaty, odds are somebody else in the system can.
OTOH these headhunters will see a pic of a dude with cheap alcohol, and instead of thinking "hey this guy is just like me when I was his age, I'll bet he parties as hard as he works" they'll think "this dude is a thug," and *poof* his chance of landing the job goes to zero. They don't send the account to some other guy. They don't even know whether this particular account belongs to the guy they're headhunting. Black names sound unique, but an awful lot of them are just different combinations of the same have-dozen or so syllables (Tre-, -von-, -dre, De-, and Del- are all very popular; I know a Delvonte) plus a little creative spelling; so you can't be sure. Just look at all the social media accounts for guys named Trayvon Martin from Florida.
Like all political terms "minority" and "majority" really depend on context. The terms may have mathematical roots, but they aren't used in strictly mathematical terms. With gender the math gets really tricky because the numbers start virtually equal, and women's small advantage is mostly due to our science knowing how to keep them around a couple more years.
In the context of feminism, women are a minority because a lot of the issues facing them are more similar to the issues facing minorities those facing majorities. The boss doesn't plan in terms of their issues unless they make sure to complain about their issues. For Orthodox Jews it would not be surprising if a almost entirely Christian HR department tried to to schedule them after sundown on Friday, or insist they nobody has to use vacation on Christmas, but Jews have to use a vacation day if they need time off to prepare the Passover Seder. The problem isn't that that the HR Department wants to be mean to their Orthodox Jews, it's just that unless there's a) an Orthodox Jew, or b) a Reform Jew or gentile in the decision-making process the decision-makers aren't going to consider their point-of-view. Moreover since Executives tend to promote people who are a lot like them, and Orthodox Jews make a point of being their own little group, it's very hard for an Orthodox Jew to get promoted past a certain level. They just can't bond with the Baptists who run the place the same way an Anglican could.
The same kind of thing happens to women a lot. In particular the silver-haired dudes who make insurance decisions never buy a policy that doesn't cover Viagra (which they all use), but generally don't bother to ask whether The Pill is covered (why would they need that? the wife hit 40 back in the Bush years, and doesn't admit which Bush). The bosses love a game that rewards arm strength, and practice (golf), which means the women have to practice a lot more then men to be competitive, which is not fun for them. Maternity leave is handled really weird in the US and nobody wants to change it except a few feminists that everyone else ignores, etc.
It all adds up to more women being qualified for Fortune 500 C-Level jobs then men (because they have more college education), but less then 10% of those jobs go to women.
It could easily switch around. Female dominance of higher ed is relatively recent, so a lot of those people with paper qualifications for a C-Level job don't have the work experience yet, which could easily mean that 10 years from now guys vanish from the upper echelons of corporate leadership as they can't bond with the new Millennial women who run things; but right now "women's issues" get treated as something you only pay attention to at election time, whereas as "men's issues" are just issues.
Sure, fuck this form of feminism... but where the hell is it dominating? I mean, outside of right wing talk show fantasy world? I have never run into an actual person who holds this belief.
The real world still does have a way to go to get to actual gender equality. That includes figuring out how to get there or what it even means. And it will need to go both ways. I would wager the majority of feminists would agree with that.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
We kill spiders.
Have gnu, will travel.
Maybe it's just Sturgeon's Law, but most recruiters couldn't get a clue in a clue sanctuary while doused in clue scent.
You could take a typical recruiter, drop them in the middle of Facebook HQ, and tell them to find some PHP experts, and they'd come back with a janitor, two administrators, and a high school kid who was visiting.
You could give them the resumes of the top people in the world, mixed with some from recent San Quentin parolees, and they'd do no better than chance at picking the good ones.
Facebook may or may not be a way to judge potential employees. But even if it were, most recruiters couldn't do it.
I have never run into an actual person who holds this belief.
I have, many, many times over. It's extremely frustrating.
These are individuals who believe that somebody assigned the male gender at birth has some kind of fundamentally male "stuff," and somebody assigned the female gender at birth has some kind of fundamentally female "stuff." Then they go on and extrapolate from there into snips, snails, puppy dog tails, sugar, spice, and everything nice. For example, these individuals often bristle at the "dead-beat dad," but the concept of a dead-beat mom hasn't even occurred to them. Our welfare system and family courts play into this. If you're a Mother, then you can count on the state providing for you: welfare, food stamps, subsidized housing, and garnishing the wages of the father. Nobody expects that you make $20-$30 per hour, say, to earn assistance. If you're a male who was tricked into impregnating a Mother, well, you better hope you make at least $30/hour, because anything less than that is being a "dead-beat."
Here's one way you can tease out the anti-male and womyn-born-womyn victimhood bias in our culture. Read the article "My Hair Is My Accomplishment." Then ask yourself these questions. Womyn-born-womyn can choose to wear their hair short or long, but why do they choose long? How do we view an assigned male who wears his or her hair long? Who forces womyn-born-womyn to put on uncomfortable heels in the morning? That article blames all assigned males, but think about those things critically.
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Heh, first time in my life someone referred to me as right wing! One more proof how simple right/left divides are useless in practice.
I have met feminists who freely express this view. We didn't talk much, of course - I'm male, so my opinion didn't matter to them. Yet, they are quite rare (although, like most extremists, very vocal).
The real problem I described is generally not visible in speech, publications, etc. It shows in actual actions. It is a (probably subconscious) bias in many active feminists, who tend to disregard any anti-male discrimination, ignore it, treat as an attack, a "first world problem" or just "not their problem". I think it requires quite a lot of self-consciousness to fight biases like this.
Mix this bias in normal, less active feminist masses with the typical hyperactivity of the small group of extremists (in this case hardcore anti-male feminists) and you get exactly this face of feminism. Take this to academia, have a more formal discussion in a mixed group and you'll find the extremists very lonely, with most actual feminists probably declaring support for true equal rights.
Declaration vs. action. Cold reason vs. subconscious.
Do you know this slight feeling of shame when something surprises you and you suddenly realize the only reason it was surprising was that you subconsciously applied some stereotype you consciously find unfair? That's what I'm talking about. Our brains simplify. In this case conscious belief in equal rights and prevalence of anti-female discrimination results in prevalence of pro-female actions, which train your subconscious brain. No wonder it ends up believing "female - good, male - bad".
*I* don't. I capture them alive and put them outside.
I took inspiration from the pharma industry; better to sell insulin than a cure for diabetes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Unless Jeffery is a transgender, that doesn't really serve as a valid counterpoint to "guess how many females you will find in the group fighting for fathers' rights".
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
This seems to be a common theme, but recruiters on LinkedIn, who have easy access to prefiltered data right from my own fingers, can't even manage to comprehend that.
My info: EE/CS, no interest in management, no interest in relocating from west coast.
Recruiter: Hey Sarusa, plz call me about this great ME (Mechanical Engineer) management opportunity in Madison, Wisconsin that just opened up.
I'm not making that one up. I wish I were. Ones that bad happen rarely, but weaker forms of that happen constantly.