interesting. you can see how people in that business sector have a lot of $/career riding on this stuff in the short term.
A lot of stupid decisions will continue to be made, those make sense in the context of the person or company making them, not the broader or longer term picture. Why?
Imagine a company at the bottom end of Maslow’s pyramid of need. If it’s survival mode, it doesn’t care for broader issues or the long term…. I’m not a fan of seeing companies as people, but sometimes the analogy helps clarify things such as behaviour.
Asked to picture a computer programmer, most of us describe the archetypal computer geek, a brilliant but socially-awkward male. We imagine him as a largely noctural creature, passing sleepless nights writing computer code. According to workplace researchers, this stereotype of the lone male computer whiz is self-perpetuating, and it keeps the computer field overwhelming male. Not only do hiring managers tend to favor male applicants, but women are less likely to pursue careers a field where feel they won’t fit in.
[…] Another thing that has no bearing on your success? College Grade Point Average. “G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless,” says Bock. “Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything.”
So what does work for Google interviews? “What works well are structured behavioral interviews, where you have a consistent rubric for how you assess people,” Bock says. This includes asking a candidate to describe a real-life situation in which they solved a difficult analytical problem. This has the added benefit of showing the interviewer what the candidate considers to be a difficult analytical problem “rather than having each interviewer just make stuff up.”
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