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."
That explains a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
tends not to be overly inquisitive or empathetic
Well, if the bean counters consider the lack of those qualities to be what makes for a good callcenter worker then it's no wonder that the quality of support has gone down as fast as it has. Six or seven years ago when I called into support there was about a 50% chance of reaching someone who was smart and could solve my problem without relying on a script (which never solve my problem because if it can be found in available documentation I've already tried it before calling support), today there's maybe a 5% change if that.
Re:That explains a lot (Score:2, Insightful)
All of the intelligent empathetic ones quit because they're tired of the bullshit. If you prioritize actually helping the customers, you don't spend enough time trying to upsell them with useless extra features. Apparently customer service doesn't mean solving the customer's problem, it means extorting more money them.
Re:Tell me about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. This basically acclerates the process that's already started with H.R. drones. Getting hired is already about who can game the process the best and H.R. bozos try to use a strict set of rules to put people into boxes instead using simple human judgement. This just codifies it even further.
Japan doesn't have cheap labor (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a growing trend of hiring intelligent Japanese, Chinese and Indian workers at a fraction of cost to U.S. ones
You think labor rates are cheap in Japan? GDP per-capita in Japan is about 4X that of China and about 10X that of India. Japan has plenty of talent but it isn't particularly cheap or abundant talent. Japan, like the US, relies heavily on automation. Labor intensive industries left Japan years ago just like they did in the US.
The U.S. ranks 23rd among developed nations in the percentage of students with undergraduate degrees in science or engineering who are employed in related fields
Now figure out what that means. It's not at all clear what significance is in having a lower percentage of engineers at a portion of the population. The US is also the third largest country in terms of population so even if they produce a lower percentage of engineers than some other countries they still will produce larger absolute numbers than most of them. You seem to be implying that graduating a lower percentage of engineers/scientists will result in negative consequences. While that might be true you have to back it up with more than just vague implications.
Re:That explains a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That explains a lot (Score:2, Insightful)
My girlfriend works in the QA group for a bank's call center - that message about "this call may be monitored or recorded for quality purposes..." when you call in? Yeah, that's her group doing the monitoring and/or recording. Call center workers are often judged by numbers of calls handled per hour - if you get really tied up in the emotional distress of a caller ("overly empathetic"), your metric plummets. If you get overly interested in a particularly troublesome issue a customer is having ("overly inquisitive"), your metric plummets.
Call center workers are, ideally, a slightly less-automated knowledge base: you call, "here's my problem, or here's one of the 50 predetermined things I need to do," they are supposed to help you efficiently and move on to the next caller. If they hit a problem that is not covered by their scripts, they are *supposed* to escalate you to second or third-level support, where you will be put in touch with someone more knowledgeable and with a much higher level of expertise.
As far as average / apparent quality, I believe it's gone down for two (related) reasons:
1) The self-service options for many functions are "good enough" on company websites and mobile apps that you can often find the stuff you need by yourself without having to call.
2) When you DO need to call, it's often for REAL weird shit - "When I flip the light switch on the wall, my laptop's screen (not docked, not plugged in to anything in the room) turns off." But you still need to get through the first-level "can I get the last 4 of your SSN and your home phone to confirm who you are," calls first.
Bear in mind that as a Slashdot-posting presumed STEM-type, you're far more comfortable with online self-service tools than the bulk of the population. There's still quite a few people calling into these call centers with NO clue what a browser is, much less an SSL connection. And those people DO need to be serviced as well, and that's why the call center is staffed the way it is.
As far as the knowledge levels of the phone drones, it's a matter of expertise & time value to the company. If you're an engineer, would you want to field every call from a customer for the product you work on? Even the really bonehead ones whose solution is, "flip the power switch," or "plug the fucking thing in"? The point of first line call center drones is to filter out the make-work from the actual problems. This allows the engineers and other knowledgeable people to not be bothered with a bunch of trivial stuff, and the low-paid drones in the call center can spend their far-less-costly-to-the-company time filtering out the trivial issues and routing only the ACTUAL problems to the people who are experts.
Re:Player Piano (Score:5, Insightful)
That $5k is an average number for call center training. For professional positions, it's between 1 and 1.5x annual salary.
Sadly, your brother needs to adopt better parents, because that's how you get jobs. Do you think Mitt Romney, son of a Mexican immigrant who was a migrant farmer and never made more than a subsistence wage and never interacted outside of the migrant community would have had job offers in big firms or ready-made partnerships with well-connected businessmen? Of course not. Take your brother, add in a network of hundreds of friends and colleagues in various fields, have someone prominent in the community and in business vouch personally for his abilities, and I can almost guarantee him a job in under a month, and a 6 figure job in under 5 years - far less if it turns out your brother is both personable and responsible. Add in some ability (numbers, management skills, sales ability) - it doesn't even need to be technical in any way, and he'll be on his way to a very comfortable lifestyle.
Can you claw your way up from the bottom? Yes, but you have to be exceptionally lucky in finding a job with growth and a manager who sees ability and is not threatened by it. Or you have to just be downright good and start your own enterprise from the ground up. The latter generally requires the moral flexibility to spend a lot of time in the gray area of the law (skirt regulation as much as you can) and personal relationships (be a ruthless backstabbing sonofabitch).
Oh no, someone is using the scientific method (Score:5, Insightful)
As usual, most of the respondents either did not RTFA, or simply did not understand it because many of the respondents have got it exactly backwards.
Management did not just make up a set of characteristics they thought would be good (in this case hire local drone) and hire those after doing a drone-test. That's the way it had been done for the last few thousand years.
So here's what happened.
A company tests applicants for a very broad set of characteristics.
They track the performance of the hires.
They compare the success of the hires back to the characteristics found in the test.
They make a model of the successful hires and then use that model to select future hires.
Scientific model:
Construct hypotheses
Gather data
Conduct test
compare result to hypotheses
refine hypotheses
Anyone that is complaining about the algorithmic process and it's outcome has no idea how most people are typically hired.
For the most part, It still boils down to 1: being someone's buddy/relative and 2: looking like someone the HR boss would like to hang out with.
So I, for one, welcome our new algorithmic masters. ( having neither buddy nor looking like someone you would want to hang out with)
Also, this is very far from being new. I know of one upscale hotels started doing this a couple or three decades ago.
They gave all their employees a variety of tests and observed what characteristics were associated with the successful ones in the various positions.
Then, when people apply, they assign them to the position they'll be successful in. The end result is that successful floor-cleaners are happy and productive floor-cleaners, and people whose profile fits the front desk are happy and successful there. And it should be obvious that swapping those two people might create two very resentful employees. It really shows, too, if you ever stayed in a place like that how the good moods of the employees is almost Stepford-spooky.
Re:Reason is simple: U.S. Workers are stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Not sure how true, but if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I can't see Japanese not getting burnt out if they actually worked 2x as much.
Re:That explains a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
Suggestion: Stop assuming they're dumb, and just fucking work with them. You KNOW they're going to break it down step by step. So instead of shouting at them and making them scroll up to re-read your initial data dump, try this:
Agent: Hi [...] what's the problem? ...]
Me: I'm unable to connect to the internet.
Agent: Can you power off the modem and power it back on?
Me: I did that, and it made no difference.
Agent: Can you please connect your computer directly to the cable modem?
Me: I did that, and it made no difference.
[... continue on giving him all of the data you've accumulated in small doses.
When you slam somebody with a fucking book's worth of diagnostic issue, and immediately jump to "I NEED TO KNOW if the problem is X or Y," you're only going to frustrate them and yourself. They HAVE to follow the script. You need to get through the script as quickly as possible to get to someone who knows more about the problem than the level 1 guy - so WORK WITH the script. I never understand why people find this so frustrating - yes, they're asking you to do things you've already done - so simply say, "okay, I did that, no change." You don't need to argue with them, you don't need to try and hurry them along - work with them, and they'll be able to help you faster.
Sometimes getting the help you need is as easy as treating the person whose job it is to help you with a little respect - remember, you need something from them. Responding to them in a tone that says, "hey you dumb brown-skinned Indian motherfucker, speak english, and stop asking me stupid shit, because I'm a smart smart american," is just going to guarantee they'll do the minimum possible to help you. Respond to them in a tone that says, "Hey, I'm stuck, and you're the guy who's going to help me get unstuck, and I appreciate your help," might just help you get a solution (or at least get to Level 2 or 3 support) faster.
Re:That explains a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
So you made a suggestion to the people whose job it is to solve customer issues, you were obnoxious and vague... and you're upset that they didn't understand what you were getting at?
http://www.dlink.com/us/en/home-solutions/contact-d-link [dlink.com]
Fill in your name, email address, select "Marketing" or "Sales" - since you're asking for a *feature* in a future iteration of their product, and not *support* for the model you just purchased.
Type in something like: "I recently purchased a DLINK DIR-835 router. I was surprised to see that there are no link lights on the unit indicating which individual LAN connections are active. I think this is a poor design decision, because (insert a couple brief reasons / description of your rationale here). In future similar products, please consider including link lights, as they are tremendously helpful for troubleshooting purposes, as I described above. I have had generally good experience with your products, but consider this lack of link lights to be a definite negative point in my consideration of future purchases, and future recommendations of your products for friends and family."
If you have any relevant experience or credentials that might add some weight to your request, also include them.
Click "Submit".
Your suggestion will make its way to engineering, because Marketing and Sales are the people who need to entice you to buy their product. A reasonable, logical request for a missing feature (you know, one that doesn't call them idiots) that's sent to Sales & Marketing will go much farther than insults masquerading as feature requests sent to Support as a problem ticket.
Re:I work at Evolv (Score:2, Insightful)
No shit, he works for the company. And while you're spouting the standard crap about how codified tests can't possibly detect how awesome you are as an individual, his company has statistics that prove their system works, continually feed them back into their system to improve it, and are confident enough to have made it their core business model. Are you going to put your money where your mouth is, or just keep denying that humans as a group are fairly predictable?
In all fairness, algorithmic hiring will work best for jobs where you want someone who's good enough, and not necessarily the best. Call centre staff, grunt-level programmers, IT, that sort of thing. If getting the absolute best candidate from all applicants will make or break your company, trusting an algorithm (or heuristic) to do the job is a bad idea.
Oh, and the word is reeks.
Re:That explains a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell them you're very angry and you don't want to take it out on someone who is low on the totem pole, and that you'd rather be escalated to a manager/supervisor. Insist on it. That way, you make it sound like you are doing them a favor (by not yelling at them) and you aren't insulting their English.