1 link tagged with all of: bias + references + recruitment + hiring + prediction
Click any tag below to further narrow down your results
Links
The author argues that standard hiring practices—especially heavy reference checking—don't actually predict future performance better than we think they do. After 50+ hires, he's learned that we mistake subjective judgment and past narratives for objective truth, while ignoring how much a person's performance depends on their environment and manager.
- Multiple references from the same company or network often reflect a shared narrative rather than independent information, and references themselves are biased participants, not neutral observers.
- Past experience is a poor predictor for roles involving rapidly changing technologies and requirements; someone's ability to learn and adapt matters more than years in adjacent roles.
- Most hiring advice is anecdotal autobiography—individual companies rarely hire enough people in similar roles to prove statistically which methods actually work, yet we treat personal success as universal methodology.
- We evaluate candidates heavily but rarely assess whether the company, manager, or system will actually enable good performance, treating professional capability as an individual trait rather than a system outcome.