The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

#$#%@^ policies

I just had a buddy who clearly has world-class data analysis skills turned down from a position because he lacks 2 years of domain experience in the industry.

Except it's the company I work for, and I don't have 2 years domain experience, and I was offered the position ...

thoughts on how to get around this?

Matt H.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Did you put in a good word for him? Vouching for an potential hire usually can turn a frown upside down.

m
Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Sometime managers ask if you do know somebody you can reccomend yada yada...when they get recommendations they turn them down, because they are biased and checks for education and/or work experience they have themselves.

I've stopped recommending people. I did reccomend a few, but they were turned down. Waste of time for them.

Managers tend to favour a certain type of people and hire that type of people only. I havent found a way to bypass this office politcs game. I guess I suck at it.

Not this time
Tuesday, February 24, 2004

"they turn them down, because they are biased"

That's often the case. I've known managers who would only hire if the candidate went to the same university they went to, only men, only women, only minorities, no minorities, etc, etc. The policy just gives them an excuse to turn down otherwise qualified applicants.

Been There, Seen That
Tuesday, February 24, 2004

There's a million reasons to be turned down for a job - sometimes the recruiter picks a neutral one that won't get him in trouble; domain experience is an easy choice.

Remember the 3 rules:
* Can he do the job.
* Will he do the job.
* Can he get along.

Bathmophobic skier
Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Remember the 3 rules:

* Is he or she likely to question my instructions?
* Is he or she likely to be right, and thus make me look stupid?
* Is there any chance management might consider him or her for my job?

CEO On The Take
Tuesday, February 24, 2004

All these recruit-a-friend policies don't work so well at highly selective companies.

At my last job they were desperate enough to hire that they offered a $5000 bonus to any employee who referred a successful hire. This was a good deal for them since they were probably paying recruiters an average of $30,000 for the same thing. And management had probably read somewhere (Delta Airlines Inflight Magazine?) that "the best source of new recruits is word-of-mouth referral by current employees."

The trouble is that if the company is highly selective, which they were, there's a pretty good chance that they will turn down qualified candidates. That's just life -- 10 false negatives are a better deal than one false positive -- see the Guerilla Guide to Interviewing for some of the reasons.

The end result was that employees ran out to get their friends to apply, then their friends didn't get jobs, then the friendship was strained.

So I learned not to recommend my friends for these jobs. Friendship was worth more than a low probability of making a few thousand bucks.

Joel Spolsky
Fog Creek Software
Tuesday, February 24, 2004

I think rather than saying never refer / recommend a friend I would restrict myself to making the recommendation only if 1) I know the friend is qualified for the job and 2) I know the person taking recommendation personally and know her to operate free of political influence in hiring decisions.

Oh and I guess the most important one is make sure the person asking for the recommendation thinks highly of me--otherwise we're obviously talking about a backfire for the friend if he does get called an interview!

MacSqueeb
Tuesday, February 24, 2004