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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

Incidentally, I really-really like that they asked questions based on the person's resume.

That was typical before some students got handed a lot of dotcom boom money.

(And then somehow most interviews throughout the industry became based on what a CS student with no experience thought professional software development was about. Then it became about everyone playing to the bad metrics and rituals that had been institutionalized.)

You can ask questions based on a resume without them disclosing IP, nor the appearance of it.

That resume-based questions thwarted a cheater in this case was a bonus.

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At the company I work for, we are forbidden to ask questions based on resume, as it introduces biases. Reduction of bias means "ask same questions of every candidate".

Is that because

* they don't trust their interviewers to be professional and objective, or

* they're trying to have a EEOC CYA paper trail that says they make efforts to be unbiased, or

* DEI motivated (e.g., not everyone has the advantage of good past experience as a starting point for conversations), or

* some other HR theory?

A combination of all three.

The problem with modern hiring practices is that they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Hiring based on past experience is biased and often can lead to either subpar candidates (lemons) or overpaying. You're either left with the people who didn't succeed at their previous job (but are good talkers) or people who have a brand name college/company but aren't really exceptional. On the other hand, trying to completely ignore past experience means you're left asking questions completely unrelated to real world work.

I had a conversation with someone from a well known startup. He was complaining how in the last year he has noticed the trend of unqualified individuals passing HR screens and some even passed technical interviews (they are uncovered when they can’t even commit code). Their whole background is a lie. They would also send connection requests to people at the companies listed so recruiters don’t question it.

He proudly said they don’t ask questions based on resume, because they don’t care where you worked or where you went to school…as long as you know your stuff. In fact he only looks at the resume after the interview.

I wonder how long they will stick to this stubbornness.

That’s mental. Why have a resume in the first place then? Any info in the resume introduces “bias”. Well, actually, even wanting to hire the best candidate for a job is already a bias of its own.

So why not just have a lottery instead of a hiring process?

/s But only slightly.

From the candidate’s point of view, most companies’ hiring processes are indistinguishable from a lottery.

Are you doing technical interviews, or manager-conversation-type interviews? This makes sense for the former (whether someone was a Senior Whatever in Googlebook or wrote CRUD apps for a bank is irrelevant if you're just seeing whether they can find a bug in a library or whatever, but it may influence the interviewer's _perception_ of their performance, thus it is strictly better than the interview doesn't know), but seems quite impractical for the latter.

I got asked of those questions every time I got interviewed. Maybe it's just a FAANG thing that interviewers ignore the CV?

They read the CV but placing too much weight on it makes it difficult to compare candidates objectively.

The CV is a starting point for conversations. On topics other than whether the person happened to memorize whatever Leetcode question was rolled on the dice. And it can more closely approximate actual work.

Regarding cheating, and the widespread organized sharing of "which questions did this company ask, and what are the answers", the conversation isn't so vulnerable to that.

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