When the Hiring Boss Is an Algorithm 245
Hugh Pickens writes "Joseph Walker writes at the WSJ that although personality tests have a long history in hiring, sophisticated software has now made it possible to evaluate more candidates, amass more data and peer more deeply into applicants' personal lives and interests. This allows employers to predict specific outcomes, such as whether a prospective hire will quit too soon, file disability claims, or steal. For example after a half-year trial that cut attrition by a fifth, Xerox now leaves all hiring for its 48,700 call-center jobs to software. Xerox used to pay lots of attention to applicants who had done the job before. Then, an algorithm told the company that experience doesn't matter. It determined what does matter in a good call-center worker — one who won't quit before the company recoups its $5,000 investment in training. By putting applicants through a battery of tests and then tracking their job performance, Evolv has developed a model for the ideal call-center worker (PDF). The data recommend a person who lives near the job, has reliable transportation and uses one or more social networks, but not more than four. He or she tends not to be overly inquisitive or empathetic, but is creative. 'Some of the assumptions we had weren't valid,' says Connie Harvey, Xerox's chief operating officer of commercial services. However, data-based hiring can expose companies to legal risk. Practices that even unintentionally filter out older or minority applicants can be illegal under federal equal opportunity laws. If a hiring practice is challenged in court as discriminatory, a company must show the criteria it is using are proven to predict success in the job."
Re:Ideal call-centre employee? (Score:3, Funny)
They want robots they can put in carbonite at night and not pay.
That wouldn't be efficient at all, the hibernation sickness would have them wiped out for the first half of the shift at least!
Re:That explains a lot (Score:4, Funny)
You don't have your own language, which is why the other folks were getting more local support.
Nothing as bad as the USA though; at one point I asked nicely to be transfered to someone who spoke English when on the phone with Dell Server Support and the agent screamed at me that he was in Georgia(the state) and raised there. I would have rather been talking to an Indian.
Re:Reason is simple: U.S. Workers are stupid (Score:3, Funny)
That couldn't possibly be due to years of massive overproduction of American STEM graduates, now could it.
Of course not, there's a slashdot article every semester about how we need more people in STEM degrees, especially women.
Especially hot women.
Especially hot women with a fetish for nerdy men, and possibly a tendency for bisexuality.
Re:Submit a word cloud as your resume (Score:2, Funny)
The real trick is to make that "solid black line" dividing each section of your resume actually be a long, long string of buzzwords at font size 1, in an awkwardly blocky font, separated by punctuations so the printed form looks just like a solid black line.
Re:Japan doesn't have cheap labor (Score:3, Funny)
But the smartest 10% of the boulders in the Himalayas outnumber the population of China.
Don't even get me started on how many squid there are in just the top 5% who are most qualified to drive a fork-lift.
Re:Submit a word cloud as your resume (Score:4, Funny)