sure, there’s a big difference there… in relative terms. the first one has 0.0001% correlation with success in the job whereas the later has 0.001% correlation. So yeah, you have a question that is an order of magnitude more effective but you’re still effectively guessing.
This interview discussion is kind of useless as it is varies greatly depending on the position you’re hiring for. The claims being made are so expansive that it sounds like most are just assuming that their personal experience applies to all job interviews everywhere.
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Yes and no. There is available research on the topic, we don’t have to extrapolate exclusively from our personal experiences.
This is a really good point. And it’s mostly true, but not never. There are definitely cases where you become aware (without any real effort) of how one of your rejects did. The funny thing is that when this happens, and the candidate you didn’t hire turns out to be someone you should have, the people who didn’t hire that person will stick to their guns and claim they made the right decision despite all evidence to the contrary.
On the other hand, sometimes the environment makes the person. Maybe if Joe took your job his career would have suffered but because he went to the company across the street, he thrived became better than he otherwise would have been.
I mean, we can’t even rate the past performance of people we actually work with. How can we possibly think we can rate the future performance of people we just met?
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A lot depends on the job.
In contact centres we interview and hire hundreds of people a year. The job has very measurable KPIs, and you get a result (they succeeded or failed and left) in 2 or 3 months.
So your feedback mechanism, at least for false positives is very good.
I believe the evidence is that behaviour based interviews have the highest correlation with job performance. Although still fairly poor. I think its something like 0.35 for behaviour interviews. 0.15 for unstructured interviews.
Questions like
Tell me about a time where you identified and addressed a problem in a process.
Tell me about a time where you had to resolve an interpersonal conflict at work.
The idea being that past behaviour is the best prediction for future behaviour.
Also. If anyone is into business books. “Work Rules” by the guy who ran HR at Google is amazing. It’s what you get if you give smart people lots of money, time and data and ask them to answer the same questions we are talking about.
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Alright so I think I fucked up. The company wanted me to sign their offer letter, which I’ve never done before, before they would do the background check and send me the drug test form. So I signed it thinking it was just me agreeing that this was the offer I would accept, but looking back at it, it looks like its just the straight up employment agreement.
First why would they have me sign that before I did the drug test and background check? Shouldn’t it come after?
The offer letter says " they would like me to start September 27th " but obviously I’m waiting to talk to my work after I pass the background and drug test.
Hell I didn’t even do their application until after I signed the offer letter, doesn’t that all seem backwards?
Do you have any reason to think you’d fail the checks? If not, this may not be the most favorable setup for you, but it doesn’t actually seem to be all that risky.
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No I definitely won’t fail.
I mean I like my current job so if they cancel it I’m fine staying.
My plan is to do the drug test tomorrow and tell them to please inform me when everything checks out so I can put in my two weeks, does that sound good?
Yes, I agree with this. It’s perfectly reasonable.
Ok I told them Im waiting to do two weeks until everything clears.
They want me to fill out the last 5 years of employment history on the application and 3 references. Doesn’t that seem super weird to do that after I gave them my resume and they offered me the job and gave me an offer letter?
Like you already gave me the job why do you want history and references
IME, asking for references has been the last step before getting an offer - basically the final check that I’m not psycho before an offer is forthcoming. So while it does seem a bit odd to me to ask for it after offer letter and getting your signature, it’s not unusual to have it be late in the process.
A resume is a resume, and not a formal application, so they may just want an “official” record of work history. I would assume somewhere on the app is a “this information I’m providing is true” type acknowledgement?
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They will punch your job history into the background search. Same with the residential address history.
I don’t think anyone checks references anymore. This probably is a legacy process step they just haven’t cleaned up.
Oh shit lol. I skipped all of that because they already offered me that job and I was doing it at work and thought it was dumb.
I read they can’t even contact your references anymore
Interesting. I’ve definitely had references checked/called on a couple of occasions in the last 5 years.
My job with WA state definitely checked my references.
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I started a new job last December and they checked all my references, even making multiple calls to contact one
Who should I use as my references? I got a ton at work. My old supervisor and two managers sound good?
If you’ve been pursuing this opportunity without current employer’s knowledge, and you don’t feel it’s a “done deal” yet, then it would seem awkward/inadvisable to use anybody from current employer. If there’s a manager or peers from a previous employers, I’d use them. Or if you deal with folks external to the company, a customer or client.