Re: Writing tests

[John Gear <catalyst -at- PACIFIER -dot- COM>]

>Bottom line: If you enforce testing, you'll miss a lot of good people.

Alternate view of bottom line:  No matter how you hire, you're going to miss
a lot of good people--and you usually *won't know* for some time anyway.

Screening people out because of testing (or their refusal to undergo same)
seems likely to have a higher "hit" ratio than most other methods used.
Richard Bolles' perennial classic, "What Color is Your Parachute?" has a lot
of good wisdom on this.  It's not as if most hiring is done in anything
approximating an optimal situation.  Most hiring managers and virtually all
job-seekers satisfice (accept the first solution that seems to meet the
salient criteria) instead of optimize.  This is human nature and requires
more than a little discipline (and time, and interest, and energy, and
resources ...) to overcome.

But if tests make more sense to you than guessing which part of someone's
portfolio actually says something about them, then test.  It communicates
something important to the job seeker as well.  Some will use that
information to decide they couldn't be happy with you.  Some will like a
test better than the amateur psychoanalysis committed by most interviewers.

Most humans don't like being in situations where we could suffer rejection
anyway.  As a result, many people will argue vehemently against *any* method
you use other than offering them the job right out of the gate.  We tend to
transfer our anger onto the so-called "hiring process" because we don't want
to feel anger towards the person who might hire us.  At least not until they
don't.

But going into a hiring situation thinking that there's one and only one
perfect person for the position and that your job is to *find that person*
is to set yourself up for *lots* of needless stress and hassle.  Not to
mention the many fine candidates you'll demoralize on the way.  You're going
to miss good people no matter what system you use. Might as well use a
system that maximizes your chances of finding one of the many acceptable
candidates with the least wear and tear on you and with the minimum number
of casualties created.

John Gear (catalyst -at- pacifier -dot- com)
"Business succeeds rather better than the state in imposing restraints upon
individuals because its imperatives are disguised as choices"--Walter Hale
Hamilton