Re:Don’t “Hire by Keyword”
by whack on Monday July 25, 2016 @10:36AM
(#12158960)
I think the real lesson is that you should be hiring on the basis of ability, not keywords/checkboxes.
Admittedly, judging ability is very subjective and hard to do, but it's worth pointing out that judging someone's ability is fundamentally different from keyword matching.
With keywords, the only possible answer is a yes/no. Do you have Java experience? Yes/No. Do you have VP-Sales experience? Yes/No. Do you have 10 years of work experience? Yes/No.
Keywords provide no judgement on how good a performer someone is. They only tell you what that person has done in the past. Anyone can spend 5 years programming Java. But does that mean he's going to be a good Java programmer during his spell at your company? The keyword provides no way of answering that question.
Judging someone's ability on the other hand, even if it's imperfect, even if it's flawed, at least makes an effort to understand the person's potential capabilities. And that alone, makes it superior to keyword-based recruiting.
(or at least that's the argument the article seems to be making)
Admittedly, judging ability is very subjective and hard to do, but it's worth pointing out that judging someone's ability is fundamentally different from keyword matching.
With keywords, the only possible answer is a yes/no. Do you have Java experience? Yes/No. Do you have VP-Sales experience? Yes/No. Do you have 10 years of work experience? Yes/No.
Keywords provide no judgement on how good a performer someone is. They only tell you what that person has done in the past. Anyone can spend 5 years programming Java. But does that mean he's going to be a good Java programmer during his spell at your company? The keyword provides no way of answering that question.
Judging someone's ability on the other hand, even if it's imperfect, even if it's flawed, at least makes an effort to understand the person's potential capabilities. And that alone, makes it superior to keyword-based recruiting.
(or at least that's the argument the article seems to be making)