Many companies have their culture decline as they hire more, and have to spend an incredible amount of resources simply to prevent this (which is far from getting better as more people join). (E.g. big tech companies can probably have >=5 candidates spend >=10 hours in interviews for a a single position. And that’s not counting the probably >=50 candidates for that position spending >=1h.)
Is the super-elaborate hiring game really necessary, though? I’ve worked at Amazon and Microsoft. I’ve also worked at other firms which had much looser hiring practices. In my experience, the elaborate hiring game that these tech companies play are more about signalling to candidates, “We are a Very Serious Technology Company who use Only The Latest Modern Hiring Practices™.” It’s quite possible to me that these hiring practices could be considerably streamlined without actually affecting the quality of the candidates that got through. But, if they did that, then the hiring process would lose some of its signalling value, and the company wouldn’t be seen as a Super Prestigious Institution™ which accepts Only The Best™.
tl;dr: In my view FAAMNG hiring process works in the same way as the Harvard application process. It’s as much about advertising and signalling to candidates that the company is an elite institution as it is about actually hiring elite candidates.
From a slightly different slant, where I work the executives decided, maybe 5 years ago, that they would start hiring only from the 10 schools and only the top candidates from those schools. When we get a new CEO during one of the company “townhall” meetings that subject came up.
The new CEO noted a discussion in the board room related to that. The bottom line was that for the most part none of the top people had degrees from such schools. One might add that the company had grown to it’s dominant market position with a workforce that did not reflect such a profile either.
It would seem the approach was scrapped.
I think the underlying approaches are actually the same—the desire for a “simple” (at least in the sense of clearly defined process or heuristic) solution to a rather difficult problem. How does one recognize just how [one] will add great value to future activities that are by nature not really driven by any one individual’s abilities or direct contribution?
Is the super-elaborate hiring game really necessary, though? I’ve worked at Amazon and Microsoft. I’ve also worked at other firms which had much looser hiring practices. In my experience, the elaborate hiring game that these tech companies play are more about signalling to candidates, “We are a Very Serious Technology Company who use Only The Latest Modern Hiring Practices™.” It’s quite possible to me that these hiring practices could be considerably streamlined without actually affecting the quality of the candidates that got through. But, if they did that, then the hiring process would lose some of its signalling value, and the company wouldn’t be seen as a Super Prestigious Institution™ which accepts Only The Best™.
tl;dr: In my view FAAMNG hiring process works in the same way as the Harvard application process. It’s as much about advertising and signalling to candidates that the company is an elite institution as it is about actually hiring elite candidates.
From a slightly different slant, where I work the executives decided, maybe 5 years ago, that they would start hiring only from the 10 schools and only the top candidates from those schools. When we get a new CEO during one of the company “townhall” meetings that subject came up.
The new CEO noted a discussion in the board room related to that. The bottom line was that for the most part none of the top people had degrees from such schools. One might add that the company had grown to it’s dominant market position with a workforce that did not reflect such a profile either.
It would seem the approach was scrapped.
I think the underlying approaches are actually the same—the desire for a “simple” (at least in the sense of clearly defined process or heuristic) solution to a rather difficult problem. How does one recognize just how [one] will add great value to future activities that are by nature not really driven by any one individual’s abilities or direct contribution?