How to get best value employee? < myleow > 08/26/04 14:21
You have definitely have your share of idiotic employee, co-worker or supervisors. How can you hire someone that is worth the money that you are paying for them?
I don't think the current system that we all use in choosing a potential employee works that well. Current system meaning, reviewing resume. Espeacially nowadays companies hiring for entry-level position requires 2 to 5 years of experience. It is ludicrious to have such high requirement, but then employers want the most bang for their bucks.
A potential employee might have the ability but not the experience for the position, they might be the perfect candidate for the position but how are they going to produce 2 years of relavent experience out of thin air? Google hires Ability over Experience, their employee average age is 27 and only a very minor percentage is above age 40. Please don't start an Age Discrimination flame war.
Wouldn't a case study type hiring procedure be a more direct way of finding someone you really need? There is also Workplace Chemistry to consider and that you can't tell from resume or the interviews. Its how the person thinks.
A case study type hiring process i am suggesting is producing either an artificial or real scenerio that the potential candidate of the position would need to solve (best if its real problem), then post that instead of what the position superficially require as crendentials. Depending on the answers you get from the applicants, go from there. This would determine cadidates by ability. Since majority of the time the best result comes from the candidate with the most knowledge and experience on that subject matter, which is who is best to fit the position. On top of that through the case study, you can see if you like how this person solve a problem, work chemistry there.
The reward would be the position.
What do you think? This is what i am thinking of how to hiring people for key position. Ofcourse you don't expect factory assembly line workers to go through this process.
Regards
Mian
How to get best bang for buck employee??
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malcolmboston
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If you seek to hire someone for a specific field, get an expert to judge his abilities after a careful pre-selection. Experience, a very good reference, a very high result in an problem-solving test is a good indicator for pre-selection. Those are all established practises, but decision makers, i.e. managers, don't necessarily follow them because of real-life constraints, i.e. ignorance, lack of time, insecurity etc.
I believe the right question to aks is how to change that in managers. My personal answer is: you can't.
I believe the right question to aks is how to change that in managers. My personal answer is: you can't.
Is there a way to make it less time consuming?
I think the reason why Managers or H.R. staffs still prefer Resume type hiring process is because you can filter through it using a program without spending time to carefully examine the candidate.
But if there is a way to minimize the time taken and take some of the initial candidate consideration process away from these people into the hands of people with similar experience then it would be best.
Example...
If a position is open, the basic requirement is listed and then the Case Study is presented. Potential candidate submit their response and it is openly critized by the entire company or even public. Majority of the time only those people with similar interest or experience in that field would even bother reviewing the case study answers since it would be most boring if it require me a Programmer to review a case study about Material Science. Don't even know what they are talking about.
Then the top 10 highest rated candidates would end up securing an interview, that would cut the people down for interview tremendously. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, have someone that is experience in that field to do the interview. So many times stupid H.R. or non-field experience related personel does the interview and they screw things up.
Need to think of a way to do this nicely!
Regards
Mian
P.S. What are the procedure in place to run people through case studies?
P.S.S. Ofcourse the 10 Candidate can also start Interning and then after 6 months, the best candidate gets the job.
But if there is a way to minimize the time taken and take some of the initial candidate consideration process away from these people into the hands of people with similar experience then it would be best.
Example...
If a position is open, the basic requirement is listed and then the Case Study is presented. Potential candidate submit their response and it is openly critized by the entire company or even public. Majority of the time only those people with similar interest or experience in that field would even bother reviewing the case study answers since it would be most boring if it require me a Programmer to review a case study about Material Science. Don't even know what they are talking about.
Then the top 10 highest rated candidates would end up securing an interview, that would cut the people down for interview tremendously. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, have someone that is experience in that field to do the interview. So many times stupid H.R. or non-field experience related personel does the interview and they screw things up.
Need to think of a way to do this nicely!
Regards
Mian
P.S. What are the procedure in place to run people through case studies?
P.S.S. Ofcourse the 10 Candidate can also start Interning and then after 6 months, the best candidate gets the job.
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magicrobotmonkey
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I recently got hired at a small company in boston and they had something similar in place.
My first contact with them was a website with the job posting. It requested me to send my resume, an example of Object Oriented PHP code I've written and to fill out a short questionnaire. The questionnaire was a mix of experience questions (IE How long have you worked with php (not necesarily paid )), personal questions (Talk about a team you were on that you really enjoyed) and mixture questions (what was the worst programming problem you ever encountered).
They liked my email enough to interview me and at the interview I knew this was a good place to work. First we did all the standard interview stuff, talked about the position, went over my resume and questionnaire. Then came the first twist. They gave me a test. It was 5 questions, 3 PHP and 2 MySQL. I, of course, smoked it. It was pretty easy. Some of them were a little tricky but from all my time spent here, I did good and new it. So one of their developers (the one who wrote the test) comes back and goes over it with me. Nice work me.
Then comes twist number two. They bring in about 5 or 6 of their other developers and just start asking me random questions. Holy crap. After the test, though, I was brimming with confidence and managed to not pass out.
So, long store still long, I got the job. But we are here talking about interviewing so let me say that this was a good process. From the way their job posting was written I knew they knew how to look for programmers. That said, this is a small company - about 12 people with 8 of them developers. So their isn't really an HR department. I interviewed with one of the owners and some of the developers. I think thats what made this interview so good, no crappy managers in the way. It was painless for me and, if I do say so myself, they got the perfect guy for the job.
My first contact with them was a website with the job posting. It requested me to send my resume, an example of Object Oriented PHP code I've written and to fill out a short questionnaire. The questionnaire was a mix of experience questions (IE How long have you worked with php (not necesarily paid )), personal questions (Talk about a team you were on that you really enjoyed) and mixture questions (what was the worst programming problem you ever encountered).
They liked my email enough to interview me and at the interview I knew this was a good place to work. First we did all the standard interview stuff, talked about the position, went over my resume and questionnaire. Then came the first twist. They gave me a test. It was 5 questions, 3 PHP and 2 MySQL. I, of course, smoked it. It was pretty easy. Some of them were a little tricky but from all my time spent here, I did good and new it. So one of their developers (the one who wrote the test) comes back and goes over it with me. Nice work me.
Then comes twist number two. They bring in about 5 or 6 of their other developers and just start asking me random questions. Holy crap. After the test, though, I was brimming with confidence and managed to not pass out.
So, long store still long, I got the job. But we are here talking about interviewing so let me say that this was a good process. From the way their job posting was written I knew they knew how to look for programmers. That said, this is a small company - about 12 people with 8 of them developers. So their isn't really an HR department. I interviewed with one of the owners and some of the developers. I think thats what made this interview so good, no crappy managers in the way. It was painless for me and, if I do say so myself, they got the perfect guy for the job.
Good for you
Congrats on getting hired.
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d3ad1ysp0rk
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