ASSESSMENT

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326 items in ASSESSMENT

Applying for jobs has always been a high anxiety, low trust exchange but today’s market conditions seem to be exacerbating the crisis, with social media awash with job seekers posting updates on their horrible experience. Taking advantage of the zeitgeist, this job search coach repeats a well worn experiment - sending a ridiculous CV which nevertheless succeeds in securing dozens of interviews in a demonstration that recruiters aren’t reading the document (which is true, we scan it) but pattern matching for key signals which communicate capability. Fun, stupid, cynical, worthwhile…maybe all of the above. H/T to brainfooder Robert Nunn for the share
Issue #392 published 14 Apr 2024
Lots of things to think about here: the undeniable (yet always denied) role physical appearance plays in assessment, the obvious gendered nature of this case and the specific role makeup as a signifier of effort or commitment on behalf of the candidate. Have a watch of this TikTok from the candidate herself and let me know what you think of the question she asks at the end. NB: added twist to this story is that the candidate was going for a VP of HR role, and quite possibly a member of this community
Issue #391 published 7 Apr 2024
Fascinating meta study comparing the most popular personality assessments for their predictive accuracy for life outcomes. Big news is: the Big Five seems much more accurate than the others. As we move toward Skill Based Hiring paradigm, we will inevitably need to revisit how we assess job candidates and I can’t see how personality testing of some sort doesn’t make a comeback. Very interesting - and indeed very detailed - investigation of some of the leading contender.
Issue #387 published 10 Mar 2024
SBH has received market wide consensus - seemingly without much debate - and it looks like we’re going to charge fully ahead with it. In which case, this How-to from Talent Tech Labs is one of the first to actually give you a practical playbook on how to get it done. Download it here. Btw: Rhetoric or Reality, we are going to be talking about SBH in Brainfood Live later this month. Register here
Issue #387 published 10 Mar 2024
Great to hear brainfooder Richard Collins lead the conversation on the risk to conventional recruiting practices posed by AI-enabled candidates. Here he is in conversation with Matt Alder on the topic, watch also Founders Focus Ep41 with Richard here. The conversation continues - I’m with Arctic Shores later this month discussing practical steps on how TA can future-fit their assessment to the AI-enabled job candidate. Join us here.
Issue #384 published 22 Feb 2024
Are we all on board with Skill Based Hiring? I think we’re pretty much close to consensus in industry, with only people like me playing the role of marginalised skeptic 🤣. But whilst we are conceptually onboard, we have major challenges in operationalising SBH, and may just end up redacting experience from CV’s and call it done. This report from Burning Glass outlines the challenge with greater maturity than I can muster, so I encourage you download it here.
Issue #384 published 22 Feb 2024
Size Matters
ASSESSMENT
Short post with some interesting yet expected trends analysis; the higher the body fat percentage, the lower the chance of candidates succeeding in the US Navy Seals Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALS test. Got me thinking about at what point correlation is strong enough for assessment filters to be applied a priori, similar to how astronaut trainees get weeded out long before ever going into space. Could we ever do such things in the corporate world? Should we? H/T to brainfooder Simon McSorley for the share in the online community
Issue #383 published 11 Feb 2024
Skills Based Hiring will obviously become a thing, and even though I have my doubts about its post GenAI relevance, it’s definitely still a progressive move to reduce reliance of academic qualifications for jobs which clearly don’t need them. WEF with a highly readable overview, particularly good is the expanded ‘LightHouse’ section which covers dozens of case studies of employers who have moved toward SBH approach. H/T to brainfooder Richard Bradley for the share in the online community.
Issue #382 published 4 Feb 2024
Perfectly timed post by Interviewing.io, the platform which coaches tech candidates on how to get past tech interviews. How well do candidates perform when using ChatGPT? Most interesting finding is not that AI-enabled candidates performed significantly better, but human reviewers were not able to accurately distinguish between those who did or did not use AI. Must read.
Issue #382 published 4 Feb 2024
If 2024 is going to be year of the AI-enabled job candidate, its pretty clear that employers are going to have to come with you plan on how to handle it. We have three choices - deter, detect or (re) design how we assess candidates. Well done on Arctic Shores on leading the way with this - this practical guide is an excellent complement to the research on candidate use of GenAI late last year. Download hereNB: hosting a webinar on this later this month - sign up here
Issue #382 published 4 Feb 2024
Honoured to be part of the this series by our friends Arctic Shores, where CEO Robert Newry takes the lead in conversations about the future of Talent Acquisition. We’re talking about AI and the challenge AI-enabled candidates presents to the existing recruitment pipeline. Have a watch and let me know what you think.
Issue #380 published 21 Jan 2024
The best content comes when ideas from one discipline crosses over to another. Here we have statistics crossing over to psychology, with an explanation as to why it is difficult to change deeply held beliefs - we are likely to ignore contradictory evidence as noise, because of the cognitive expense of revising our priors.
Issue #380 published 21 Jan 2024
An under reported characteristic of the big tech layoffs over the past 18 months has been disproportionate impact on workers on employer dependent visas. Of the 250,000 redundancies, as many as 80,000 have been workers in this category, many of whom have been unable to secure employment in time before deportation back to home country. Turns out, many home country employers become suspicious of the silicon valley returnees, believing them to be reluctant candidates who would be flight risk due to being used to better terms and higher prestige from previous employers. An interesting story, from a lot of angles.
Issue #379 published 14 Jan 2024
If you think you’re too experienced a recruiter to get any value from an interview cheat sheet, then theres a chance that you might need it more than you realise 🤣. Love this one pager from Adriano Herdman, who is making a great habit of putting together his know-how in these business model canvass-like documents. Especially the donut chart on time distribution on interview. H/T to brainfooder Darren Bush for the share.
Issue #379 published 14 Jan 2024
If 2024 is going to be the year of the AI enabled job applicant, then we need to have a clear understanding at company level on what is OK to use. That is the message behind brainfooder John Vlastelica CTA here…and who can disagree? What is critically important is to have some sort of policy, so that recruiters and hiring managers are not making local decisions on what constitutes cheating. Additional reading / viewing: Brainfood Live on this late last year and research on AI-enabled candidates by Arctic Shores here
Issue #379 published 14 Jan 2024
Does anyone do any work trials here? Its obviously the best way to understand whether a candidate is going to be a good employee or not, especially if the work has high degree of collaboration intensity. Linear here explain their why and also their how on it. Advantages are obvious with some equally important drawbacks - scale, not possible for in-work candidates etc. However, we could learn a lot from this approach, especially as it shows the inadequacy of many elements of our current hiring funnel.
Issue #375 published 17 Dec 2023
TikTok is another platform which is not to everyone’s flavour yet again it is full of banging content relevant to our work. This is a condensation of an interview with Matteo Franceschetti, who describes the top 5 interview questions he asks every candidate. Always great to hear directly from non-specialists who nevertheless has great hiring experience. Not PC again, but not entirely unworthy for all that - have a watch, let me know what you think.
Issue #372 published 26 Nov 2023
X is not everyone’s flavour either but undeniably there is a some quality content being shared there. This long form tweet is a 5 point framework for assessing ‘high agency’ job candidates. They are all unusual (weird teenage hobbies, energy distortion field, golden question, you can never guess their opinions, immigrant mentality) non-PC but brainfood-y for sure, and possibly adaptable for more formal use in recruiting.
Issue #372 published 26 Nov 2023
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong came in for opprobrium with his anti-woke ‘mission focused company’ post a couple years ago, but he nevertheless demonstrates deep commitment to the idea of increasing the ‘talent density’ of his business. This 5 point plan includes the extension of cognitive testing to the hiring process, amongst more prosaic changes such as CEO approval for all hires. Not everyone’s flavour but it will be for more than a few. H/T to brainfooder Pedro Oliveira for the share.
Issue #372 published 26 Nov 2023
Adam Grant in conversation fellow success doyen Malcom Gladwell. Why do we venerate innate characteristics rather than circumstances and context? Take a while to get going as you have to get past the matey repartee at the beginning but really gets going from the mid way point, especially on the epidemic of perfectionism, the problems with affirmative action and how self doubt leads to lower performance. Have a listen here. H/T to Bas van de Haterd for the share.
Issue #369 published 5 Nov 2023

“GitHub is no different. It’s a market of attention because there are mechanisms by which people acquire notoriety and influence and reputation through how popular or how widely used their software is.”

Tech recruiters will know all about GitHub stars, public signals of support by software developers on another developers open source project. This sort of community endorsement translates into opportunity, and exploitation inevitably follows. Fascinating story on the black market for GitHub stars.PS: made me think actually, if LinkedIn endorsements ever had any credibility, might there have been a black market for those?
Issue #369 published 5 Nov 2023
Interesting research on personality types, with uncomfortable conclusions which carry implications for us in recruitment. What if certain personality types did correlate to success in certain contexts? If we accept that it might, then the unavoidable conclusion would be we should explicitly hire for it, but because accusations of bias carry significant penalty, we tend to do implicitly instead. Easiest thing to do of course is the deny the validity of the research.
Issue #369 published 5 Nov 2023
Google Meet finally roll out ‘touch up’ tech in their video app, including smoothening of the skin and whitening of the teeth. I’m sure a lot of us will toggle this to ‘on’ and make ourselves look better for others on camera, especially as we know that how your video appears to others can shape others first impression. But I remain disquieted by this direction of travel - is it a good thing that we look good all the time? What happens when reality inevitably disappoints? Might become a D&I issue; it is already an assessment issue.
Issue #367 published 22 Oct 2023
Do you think University grades are inflating? Rhetorical question of course, but this report is a good chance to see to how fast they are going up, in which subjects and in which countries. This report might be fuel to the fire to the cultural right wing I am afraid, but as we have created a system which rewards Universities for ‘successfully’ graduating students, the criticism is deserved no matter from which quarter it comes. From a recruiting side, the case against degrees continues to build..H/T to brainfooder Wolfgang Brickwedde for the share.
Issue #366 published 15 Oct 2023
The answer is ‘the flip interview’ - a role reversal where the interviewee becomes the interviewer. An intriguing and radical technique to assess a candidates ability to seek the right questions rather than the right answers. Includes a useful framework on how to conduct this style of anti-interview - if you’ve tried this in practice, get in touch, I’d love to know your thoughts.
Issue #364 published 1 Oct 2023
I Speak German Now
ASSESSMENT
Incredible things routinely happening on AI. Three examples last week of Ethan Mollick speaking German (when he can’t), an ultra realistic AI influencer selling make up products and an AI generated simulacra generated by simple text input. A recent poll I launched only last Friday seemed to think that video interview was pretty insulated from AI, but from the evidence here, that confidence is misplaced. We have big challenges ahead in hardening our assessments to be ‘AI proof’. Talking about this with Arctic Shores (who are sharing research from 2000 student job seekers on their use of GAI for job search) next month - register here
Issue #363 published 24 Sep 2023
Business podcast, but introduces the idea of the ‘skill stacking’, on how some skills become exponentially more valuable once you add more skills to your set. If you find yourself stuck in a specialism - sourcing, marketing, management - this segment of this podcast is well worth paying attention to; some hiring angles too - do new talents also stack with existing team? Brainfood for sure. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share
Issue #361 published 10 Sep 2023
So I am going to learn the wrong lesson here and say that it probably makes sense to delay automated rejections so as not to arouse the suspicions of job applicants, as that seems to be the mistake which cost this employer $300,000+ in damages. Of course the better lesson is to understand the implications of using AI & Automation, which fundamentally wants to restore a human recruiter to be the one doing the rejecting. How this is going to help with de-biasing might now be beside the point.
Issue #361 published 10 Sep 2023
The NFL kicks off this week and each needs to make decisions on who keep on roster and who to name as starters in the first team. The decision by the Houston Texans of starting first round pick CJ Stroud over the currently more capable veteran Davis Mills, got me thinking about the nature of hiring and promotion and the fact there is a time element that we don’t often consider. Do we do hire or promote based on ‘best person for the job right now’ or do we do it for the longer term benefit of the team / organisation? And does the sidelined veteran have a discriminating claim to make - after all, how do we decide someone has more or less potential?. We talked about this in the group but I think we need to talk about it here too.
Issue #360 published 3 Sep 2023
The answer is ‘yes’ because he is the only obvious choice to take on the No9 role Lewandoski vacated over a year ago, but why not back up intuition with ScoutGPT, a new data analytics tool increasingly used by football clubs to analyse actual performance data on the pitch? Professional sports is the obvious example where the Moneyball strategy might work best, but how far might we be away from doing similar performance analytics in the workplace? For some types of work, it might already be here…
Issue #359 published 27 Aug 2023
I share a lot of academic research in Brainfood but we do indeed have to maintain skepticism even for the most credible. Superb explainer of academic fraud at the highest level. The problem? Nobody checks. Perhaps here is where AI can help with what is most likely a practical problem of capacity and personal problem of motivation.
Issue #356 published 6 Aug 2023
This is a scorecard for US Army personnel in WWII. The credit score would determine whether the soldier would be able to conclude his service and go home, or be redeployed to the Pacific to fight the IJA. Having kids, helped.
Issue #356 published 6 Aug 2023
Great to see more of us finding our voices on the Internet. Brainfooder Oana Ioardachescu is one of those, who has a great podcast focusing on equal opportunity and eliminating bias in hiring. Here she is with another brainfooder Michael Blakley, on how interview intelligence can be the critical tool to reduce bias in assessment.
Issue #355 published 30 Jul 2023
This type of stunt does three things; generate site traffic to your careers page, underline our values first employer brand and operate an actual filter against applicants who now have the opportunity to self select out. I remember Toggl doing something similar on their career pages once - more companies should do it - it’s fun, great for EB and you might even get some decent candidates through it.
Issue #355 published 30 Jul 2023
One of the problems with ‘fake catching’ tech is racial / ethnicity / cultural bias. Will the Intel tech work equally well against deepfakes of different skin tones? Here is another example of fake catching tech going wrong - turns out that anti-GPT detectors penalise non-native English writers. All this stuff is really just one lawsuit away from being banned, its a non-starter folks.
Issue #349 published 18 Jun 2023
Verifying the humanity of job applicants might become a core function of the role human recruiters can perform in the era of generative AI. That’s not to say the technological innovations like Intel’s ‘FakeCatcher’ won’t bubble up now and again - I just doubt whether it can ever scale to the point of practical use. Still, using high resolution imagery to detect blood circulation through a human face is an interesting application of the technology. H/T to brainfooder Jim Berrisford for the share.
Issue #349 published 18 Jun 2023
Have you encountered a fake LinkedIn commentator? I must confess that I have not but given that the barriers to entry are entirely practical rather than technical, we should soon start seeing many more of them once those practical challenges of creating and growing of fake accounts becomes resolved through AI. LinkedIn are going to have to roll out true verified ID soon rather than later.
Issue #347 published 4 Jun 2023
AI innovation is spinning so fast that we recruiters might be dis-intermediated then re-intermediated without ever realising it. This demonstration of a real time question and answer transcriber invalidates any interview conducted over Zoom, which means that we’re going to have to do in-person interviews again. Who else is going to do that, but us? It’s going to mean end of remote though…
Issue #347 published 4 Jun 2023

CEOs play an increasingly important role in modern organizations, yet the nature of their activity and the mechanisms through which they may be able to affect firm performance often escape rigorous empirical investigation.

…so great to see at least an attempt at a corrective in this piece of research by NBER. Would should see more of it, as CEO as a role comes under threat of AI CEO’s who should outperform them. Accessible read.
Issue #342 published 30 Apr 2023
PEW Research with a survey of US workers on what role AI should play in hiring and performance assessment. No surprises here - workers are anxious about ‘AI management’ and I suspect would broadly welcome the legislative path being made by New York City Council . H/T to brainfooder Martyn Redstone for the share in the online community
Issue #342 published 30 Apr 2023
Cheetah
ASSESSMENT

Cheetah is an AI-powered macOS app designed to assist users during remote software engineering interviews by providing real-time, discreet coaching and live coding platform integration.

Another day, another example of how AI is destroying the viability of commonly used assessment techniques. Full steam ahead back to in-person interviewing, which is going to be mean, full steam ahead to RTO
Issue #339 published 9 Apr 2023
MP’s for Hire
ASSESSMENT
Politicians on the grift in UK style democracy pretty much par for the course these days, as this honey trap from Led by Donkeys amply demonstrates. These are job interviews though, and I was struck by the performance of these MP’s in these zoom calls - surprisingly poor A/V game, average communication skills and unconvincing negotiations on rate. Any community members offering interviewing training services might have a market here.
Issue #338 published 2 Apr 2023
Here’s a ray of hope for us human recruiters; GAI will increase the importance of in person interviews because they can be controlled for AI enhancements. We already know that any asynchronous assessment can no longer be trusted, but similar challenges are coming now for synchronous assessments also, as these two job seeker hacks demonstrate - Real Time Charisma as a Service and The Interview Breaker, both of which are able to translate speech-to-text and predict / recommend the best response. Love that these devs build this game changing stuff initially for laughs 🤣 but here we are. H/T to brainfooders Pedro Oliveira, David D’Souza and Matt Best for the shares
Issue #338 published 2 Apr 2023
Another fascinating legal case, this time with implications for all recruitment technology companies involved with processing job applications. The case here is based on multiple instances of employers rejecting a candidate, who discovered that many of them were using Workday as an ATS, leading to his claim that there was bias baked into the software. This is the inevitable end game of the popular yet erroneous narrative that ATS’s screen out candidates. Thanks to brainfooder Adam Gordon for the share in the online community
Issue #335 published 12 Mar 2023
Rather turgid talk delivered at Davos, but the premise is fascinating - would we be better managers if we knew what employees were thinking / feeling? The answer is of course ‘yes’ - that is the definition of EQ - but the question as to whether we should use tooling to help us get better at it is discomforting for reasons we can’t explain. Is this madness or just the reticence that comes with innovation?
Issue #331 published 12 Feb 2023
Brainfooder Jan Tegze has a unique talent for viewing a common topic from an oblique angle, always yielding super interesting posts as a result. His latest writing here is actually a report on some experimentation he has been conducting on the recruiters new BFF, ChatGPT. We’re probably going to be tasked by our employers with weeding out AI Generated info, so being able to spot it in the first place is going to be a skill recruiters are to going to need to learn.
Issue #330 published 5 Feb 2023
Is 2022 the year when credentialism finally goes into irreversible retreat? A consensus seems to be building around the need to hire for skills (attitude, traits, pick-your-favourite-criteria) rather than degrees, and consequently the shift to new ways of assessing candidates will follow. Decent report from TestGorilla on the state of skills based hiring, which just about manages not be an advertorial for services.
Issue #324 published 25 Dec 2022
Can confirm my dear old grandma has this bias 🤣, but it may be more common amongst us than we would like to believe. Huge implications on many aspects of recruiting - asynch video interviews, zoom calls, in-person interviews. Can we do something about it, or is this futile effort against human nature? Fascinating conundrum. H/T brainfooder Michael Blakely for the share
Issue #322 published 11 Dec 2022
Usual caveats apply on this piece of speculation but included in brainfood for two reason: firstly, the automated screening of candidates is the logical endgame of the objective we in recruitment & HR have been aiming for - the fusion of employee performance + candidate assessment data. And secondly, because if any company was going to do it, it would be Amazon. Have a read of the reddit thread here and the Vox article here. We cannot complain about the future, when we are busy architecting it. H/T to brainfooder Wim Dammans for the share in the fb group
Issue #320 published 27 Nov 2022
Fantastic conversation with brainfooder Bas van de Haterd in conversation with Kelly Robinson and Michael Dawson, about bringing in recruitment techniques from elite sports to the corporate world. Main issue is the role of specialist vs generalists and should we be more forgiving of weaknesses in favour of outstanding singular strengths? Have a listen folks
Issue #317 published 17 Nov 2022
I've said it before and I’ll say it again - some of the best thinking about recruitment comes from non-specialists who have nonetheless done a lot of recruiting. This simple framework reminds interviewers on how to get the balance right between pitch and assessment, moving your interviews from good to great - have a read.
Issue #317 published 17 Nov 2022
Candidate fraud is becoming a mainstream conversation and it’s great to see LinkedIn taking measures to help recruiters ID fake and malignant accounts. Interesting that using AI countermeasures against AI generated profile photos is more efficient than doing ID verification.
Reminder Ep2 of Candidate Fraud webinar series with FloCareer happening Nov 7th, 2.30pm - see the behind-the-scenes on how candidate fraud is detected.
Issue #316 published 17 Nov 2022
It has become fashionable to disclaim short tenure as a problem, but there is reason to investigate further when short tenure becomes a consistent pattern. Fair treatment of the issues in this well balanced post.
Issue #316 published 17 Nov 2022
Candidate fraud is becoming a mainstream conversation and it’s great to see LinkedIn taking measures to help recruiters ID fake and malignant accounts. Interesting that using AI countermeasures against AI generated profile photos is more efficient than doing ID verification.
Reminder Ep2 of Candidate Fraud webinar series with FloCareer happening Nov 7th, 2.30pm - see the behind-the-scenes on how candidate fraud is detected.
Issue #None published 30 Oct 2022
It has become fashionable to disclaim short tenure as a problem, but there is reason to investigate further when short tenure becomes a consistent pattern. Fair treatment of the issues in this well balanced post.
Issue #None published 30 Oct 2022
Systemic flaws will always be exploited by those with the incentive to do so. Turns out IMDB have a weak spot, perhaps especially on non-English film productions, and through this entry point enterprising young chancers can build credibility through daisy-chaining social proof. A non-recruiting story, but when you think about, how are most ID verifications conducted, if not through similar cross referencing? Somebody is going to invoke a Web3 solution any minute now…
PS: Ep2 of our series on Candidate Fraud via Remote is up - register here
Issue #315 published 23 Oct 2022
The analysis also showed that when a boy and a girl were similarly competent at a subject, the girl would typically receive a higher grade.
The reflexive hostility to technology assisted assessment often discounts how biased human assessors are and might inherently be. Important research from Italy, which finds that the ‘gender grade gap’ may well come from human error, with profound implications for society, and not insignificant ones for us in recruiting. Human assessors are not a great benchmark to measure AI assessment tech.
Issue #315 published 23 Oct 2022
Starting to become a mainstream conversation (join us, in fact, if you do want to talk about it here, on Monday), fraud at interview and hire is something we are all likely to encounter at some point. Great conversation on HN on it here, and now actually some hard evidence of the prevalence of fraud when Equifax fired several of its own employees after finding out from their own product - The Work Number - that they had been holding down second jobs. Systemic vulnerability will always be exploited. H/T to brainfooder Ivan Harrison for the share
Issue #314 published 16 Oct 2022
Excoriating report which condemns AI powered assessment tech as no more than a modern form of phrenology. The proof was successful attempts to game a purpose built AI assessment tool (have a go yourself here), as well as decent philosophical challenge on the current requirement to use historical training data, which replicates how human bias emerges. It’s a bit of hit job on AI which does not convincingly provide proofs, but does outline the legitimate challenges assessment tech vendors have in building tooling sophisticated enough to handle these cases. Worth a read. H/T to brainfooder Andrew Gadomski for the share in the fb group.
Issue #314 published 16 Oct 2022
I’m waiting for the moment when I’m going to be deepfaked. In fact, we should get a deepkfake guest onto Brainfood Live one of these days and see how far we can get with it 🤣. Jokes aside though, the more we see, the more we might be able to spot them, and asking people to turn their head sideways on camera is apparently the Voight-Kampff test of the day.
Issue #313 published 9 Oct 2022
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been in an internet rabbit hole of candidate fraud. New ways to trick employers is emerging as shift to remote presents new opportunities. Heard of the bait and switch interview? It’s a metajob for somebody. H/T to brainfooder Warren Sukernek for the share.
btw: I’m with FloCareer CEO Mehul Bhatt later this month with a special webinar - How to Detect Candidate Fraud in Remote Interview. I’d say this is a must attend.
Issue #313 published 9 Oct 2022
Love this blog, primarily because it is always breaking the rules which we in recruiting / HR have to abide by 🤣. File this under: ‘unusable advice’ and yet it is impossible to think that the author might just be onto something….
Issue #312 published 2 Oct 2022
Incredible story from a software engineer who discovered someone was paying other engineers to pretend to him in order to convert job interviews, for which the original trickster would then presumably deliver the work. It’s complicated example of candidate fraud with unclear motivation (they guy just didn’t like interviews?), but a phenomena brought into sharper focus by the remote work revolution. Btw I’m are doing a special on hiring fraud with our buddies FloCareer next month - How To Detect Candidate Fraud in Remote Interviews - recommend everyone to join here
H/T to brainfooder Martyn Redstone for the share in the fb group
Issue #312 published 2 Oct 2022
Fascinating conversation on a topic most of us know little about - how the scientific peer review process works. Turns out, peer reviewers are unpaid volunteers who conduct reviews on behalf of commercial publishers, incentivised primarily by career building caché of saying that you’ve reviewed for XYZ credible publisher. It’s clearly a flawed system. Must listen folks, as we increasingly lean on ‘the science’ to validate our claims.
Issue #311 published 25 Sep 2022
Neurons that fire together, wire together
Catchy phrase indeed to describe the phenomenon on Hebbian learning, where experience shapes our perception of reality. And ‘experience’ btw, is itself an act of creative perception, because fantasy can count in the brain as if real. Fascinating, accessible essay on how to brain works, with profound implications on how we as recruiters make assessment decisions.
Issue #311 published 25 Sep 2022
Sometimes you find gold in the most narrow recruitment niches. This is brilliant writing from my friend Ferenc Huszar on a specific problem he has himself encountered as both a writer and requester of academic references. It’s all about the culture of communication folks…..
Issue #311 published 25 Sep 2022
Interesting retrospective from Metaview CEO and brainfooder Siadhal Magos, breaking down how he interviews engineers for impact. The analytics software provides rock solid foundation for understanding the interview style, and therefore the production of this mini-how-to.
Issue #311 published 25 Sep 2022
Spooks have long used cyphers to surface up potential recruits. Australian Signals Directorate channels its roots to the GCHQ with a commemorative coin which includes a code to break, very much leaning into the departments EB. H/T to brainfooder Colin McNicol for the share in the fb group
Issue #310 published 18 Sep 2022
Tyler Cowen is one of the most popular public intellectuals of the day, and he’s been on the podcast tours after publishing a book on talent. Takes too long to get to the talent bit so, skip to 50min mark and start there - Have a listen.
Issue #309 published 11 Sep 2022
Given that most of us have lied on our CV’s a least a little bit, should we be liable to return wages earned through this subterfuge? An interesting case in the UK, where a doctor was docked wages earned, after having retrospectively found to have lied about the qualifications. Might be a good Brainfood Live to do…H/T brainfooder Colin McNicol for the share in the fb group
Issue #309 published 11 Sep 2022
Top Recruiter
ASSESSMENT
Did you know that there was once a reality TV show involving some of the most well known recruiters on the planet? The entire thing was a scam which left dozens of people many thousands out of pocket. Incredible 5 part investigative story on one of the most infamous moments in industry history. We should not be amazed that very smart people fell for it - have a read. H/T to brainfooder Bill Boorman for the share in the fb group
Issue #309 published 11 Sep 2022
Fascinating twitter thread of a piece of research which tried to measure how good programmers were by tracking their eye movements and monitoring their brainwaves. The finding that experience (years of) did not correlate to programming efficacy is only one of the thing we have to think about here, including should we actually wire people up when assessing them? And if not, why not? Thread here (accessible), pre print here (slightly less so). H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share
Issue #308 published 4 Sep 2022
Vendors are producing some high value content lately; this guide to interview training is not only beautifully designed, but also contains some real insight on how to upgrade your organisations ‘interview capacity’. I was delighted to find myself in it, though crikey do I need a new profile picture
Issue #308 published 4 Sep 2022
You can’t do a bad podcast if you put brainfooders Madeline Laurano, John Sumser and Jeanne Achille together in conversation. Wide ranging conversation, which covers recruitment tech, assessment, candidate psychology, future of work and the state of the economy. Needs more than 30 minutes...
Issue #306 published 21 Aug 2022
Super interesting essay on why skills - and presumably, job performance - seem to decay over time. No solutions here but important questions to ask, such as should we continually test for skills in order to measure decrepitude? And if the pattern is actually there, what should we do about it? Uncomfortable brainfood.
Issue #306 published 21 Aug 2022
Tyler Cowen has become one of the leading public intellectuals of the day, pontificating on all topics from war, globalisation, culture and technology. Here he is talking about talent though, so well worth a listen, especially when he talks about deviating away from the rules…
Issue #305 published 14 Aug 2022
Perhaps the only way to not go gently into that good night, is to actively practice thinking. This cool website might be a great study aid - help you get better at thinking by introducing frameworks for analysis and problem solving. We use a lot of these anyway, but probably less fluent at them than we could be. Get raging at the dying of the light folks.
Issue #305 published 14 Aug 2022
The older you get the less likely you are to learn new stuff. We intuitively know this stereotype to be true, especially as our own lived experience (this is now biography) accelerates into ‘past it’ phase. An interesting study as to why our motivation to learn declines over time, with implications on how we age diversify our workforce. Should we test for learning ability, if there are biological markers of it? Ethnical conundrum right here folks.
Issue #305 published 14 Aug 2022
Bad interviews occur when we forget the ‘purpose behind the ritual’. Just one of many finely phrased insights in this outstanding, cliché-free post on the art and science of interviewing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - the best recruiting content most often comes from non-specialists who have had cause to reflect on their direct experience. Must read.
Issue #305 published 14 Aug 2022
It’s impossible to fix the car when you’re racing on the road, so any slow down is an opportunity to pit stop and repair, rework and replace some of the poorer performing parts of the engine. Excellent call to action from First Round, which makes several practical to-do’s in the hiring process which can help de-bias the assessment and be better positioned to diversify the workforce when the upturn inevitably returns. H/T to brainfooder Todd Raphael for the share
Issue #304 published 7 Aug 2022
How important is a CEO’s lifestyle to their performance in the job? And…at what point does this scrutiny segue into discrimination? Fascinating conversation on a correlation between personal behaviour and professional outcome, with serious implications on how we make assessments. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share
Issue #303 published 31 Jul 2022
Dr. John Taylor treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results, perhaps causing the death of both composers. Did it impact the course of Western music?
Incredible story of medical malpractice which may have prematurely ended the lives of both Johan Sebastian Bach and George Handel. Why in brainfood? Because credentialism remains one of the main blights in how we assess candidates, it’s a bad habit that has been with us for a long time and the continued indulgence of which may lead to historically significant ramifications. It’s also a great read 😉.
Issue #303 published 31 Jul 2022
That the development of our brains is influenced by our social environment is not a question of debate -we can now actually see the difference our neuroanatomy. Got me thinking if we can see if, would it be ethical to assess for it? And if not, why not - it really would have an impact on job performance. Furthermore, can we take this information and use it for stuff like personal development? Accessible, philosophical post, kind of meta brainfood.
Issue #303 published 31 Jul 2022
Stay Saasy is one of the most insightful blogs covering business operations and company culture - and it is very well written. This post got me thinking, especially on the idea that ‘writing is thinking’ and therefore good writing skills may be a strong signal for quality management. Should we assess for this then when hiring for managers? Food for thought for sure.
Issue #303 published 31 Jul 2022
Chad and Cheese are back with a great conversation on assessment with Caitlin MacGregor, which dives into history, sociology and foundational tenets of assessments - it’s fundamentally an assessment for an individual who we assess in isolation from others, when we are social and will eventually work with others. Great listen.
Issue #302 published 24 Jul 2022
Do you struggle to remember people’s faces? You may have prosopagnosia, or face blindness and it affects more people than you think, including Brad Pitt, who you sense is glad to have been diagnosed after spending too much time being accused of conceit. And interesting phenomena, I wonder how many recruiters have this and whether it impacts our job in some way…
Issue #302 published 24 Jul 2022
The directional of causality is unproven here, but the findings ring true - high performing companies have HR at C-level advisory. Interestingly, recruiting not correlated, though this may be because of specialisation (high performing companies separate TA vs HR?) and maybe seniority. Worth a read.
Issue #302 published 24 Jul 2022
Research suggests there’s a general ability that may help you succeed in jobs that depend on perceptual decisions.
How well do you categorise things folks? Turns out that it might be a signal of a general cognitive ability, which produces better performance in certain tasks. What if we can identify it in some way, surely we would use them without issue when making hiring decisions….?
Issue #301 published 17 Jul 2022
Let me preface this by saying that I think there are significant ethical problems with US military recruiting, especially in the targeting of the young and the poor. That said, this twitter thread outlines the challenges of hiring during pandemic and during times of culture war. It’s from an anonymous twitter account, so don’t expect niceties. Some education is here though, so have a read.
Issue #301 published 17 Jul 2022
Gary Vee on recruiting? Of course I am going to read it, as whatever people might think of Gary Vaynerchuk, there is no escaping the phenomenal success of his business and his brand. One key line in this short essay stood out for me to be profoundly true - ‘because I’m not afraid to be wrong, I’m not afraid to hire’.
Yes is always the riskier decision but you don’t grow with a no. Have a read - H/T brainfooder Jo McCatty for the share.
Issue #300 published 10 Jul 2022
When Trump says ‘we had great chemistry’ he may not be speaking in metaphors, but literally (albeit unknowing) describing a real process of olfactory exchange. The man is a terrible example of course, but a useful exemplar to illustrate a hidden bias we might have always had - think about this when you next do an in-person interview. Further: how persistent is the effect? If you don’t get used it, you might have an ambient disquiet about a work colleague or candidate and not know why. Anyways, someone recommend me some aftershave, going to beat this one ahead of time.
Issue #299 published 3 Jul 2022
BBC Worklife is officially best part of the Beeb - some of these posts have really thought provoking premises. Does being a great liar confer competitive advantage to your career? If so, effective self delusion is the way to get good at it. This is not a recommendation but something to look out for when you encounter a particularly convincing candidate.
Issue #299 published 3 Jul 2022
This is a super interesting premise given that 99% of startups fail, meaning that outstanding talent is constantly being self trained and then cycled back in the labour market. It’s rather depressing to find that recruiters significantly downgrade founders as viable candidates. Summary on why here (including what former founders should do, what employers need to be doing) and the full research paper here
Issue #299 published 3 Jul 2022
More on assessment; it is generally accepted that the closer we can get to ‘real world’ the more we can trust the assessment. So, I’m a fan of work trials, especially if they are small in scope, and compensated. But sometimes, some employers go too far. More good stuff from BBC Worklife
Issue #297 published 19 Jun 2022
This post starts off a a defence of the now derided whiteboard exercise (which I suspect OP does indeed have some sympathy for) but then produces a number of other coding assessment styles which can complement or replace the idea. Reading code, Debugging code, Sharing code…all pretty good ways to see where a developer might be at in terms of coding chops. Have a read here
Issue #297 published 19 Jun 2022
The shift to remote work has simultaneously been a digitisation of previously analogue process. The shift from in-person to video interview, has meant we can now mine interview metadata and produce content like this, data driven recommendations on how to improve your team’s interview capability. Must read, from our friends at Metaview
Issue #297 published 19 Jun 2022
It’s Dr. Charles Handler, with a great overview of the ‘state of assessment tech’. Brainfooders John Sumser and Jeanne Achille as the interviewers, so you get what you expect - deep dive, super smart and occasionally contested dialogue. Have a listen here
Issue #296 published 12 Jun 2022
Interesting short post on the significance of confirmative outliers in validating our preconceptions. We want to believe what we believe, are sensitive to potential sources of validation and take singular examples as representative of the whole. More evidence, if you needed any, that we need more robots making decisions, not less.
Issue #296 published 12 Jun 2022
Antipathy towards technology manifesting in legislation is nothing new; latest developments from the US is worth keeping an eye on, EU will certainly not do any less than this. Missing from this legislation is of course the idea that humans do any less discrimination against the differently abled.
Issue #293 published 22 May 2022
I love threads like this - the natural structure of them gives the reader a mental milestone with the encouragement for more if the last piece was good enough. This one on decision making models, might help us better understand the metacognition that goes on inside our evolved brains. Might be useful, but only if we put it into practice, otherwise it will turn into yet more junk info leading to ‘intellectual obesity’….
Issue #293 published 22 May 2022
Interesting post here from brainfooder Jonathan Kidder (whose blog is always worth a follow, especially for tech sourcers) on how the FAANG companies assess for recruiters. It’s probably overstating it a little - these companies are so huge that there has to be local variance on how these interviews are conducted - but the general trend of what-must-happen might well be the case. Interesting for a lot of reasons - as a comparator for how you do it, and also, as prep in case you are going for one of these jobs as a candidate.
Issue #291 published 8 May 2022
Open Hiring
ASSESSMENT
One of the great cases for Open Hiring - the philosophy of abandoning assessment in favour of just offering the job to the people who want it, Matt Alder is with Nykeba King, Global Head of Inclusion and Belonging at The Body Shop. Must listen.
Issue #290 published 1 May 2022
Ethan Mollick (must follow on Twitter), once again doing God’s work by crunching down academic research papers in human-readable tweets. The conjecture here is that we over index on IQ, over EQ, and in so doing handicap team performance. How do we assess for candidates again? It’s generally I over E. Full paper here, Ethan’s tweet summary (and links) here.
Issue #290 published 1 May 2022
Odd but interesting post, which accepts the messiness of recruiting, then proceeds to manifest it but putting together a seriously messy post. OP is obviously an artist. Features Wardley maps which is always a bonus, and some penetrating insights on why some hiring challenges repeatedly fail. Intriguing, leaves you wanting more.
Issue #290 published 1 May 2022
Do we recruiters ‘eat our own dog food’? 12 questions to ask when you are hiring for your team - some of these are cliché but some new ones there too. Might be fun to add to this list actually, a future brainfood crowdsource methinks. H/T to brainfooder Gary Berney for the share in the fb group.
Issue #290 published 1 May 2022
Fascinating essay on the role of status on how we are persuaded by arguments. Key takeaway: high status individuals have greater ‘social status loss aversion’ and will adhere to prestige views even if they are flawed or flat out incorrect. Relevant on how we think about candidate assessment methods. Have a read here
Issue #289 published 24 Apr 2022
Fascinating defence of intuition as potentially superior to analytical reasoning when making decisions. The caveat is experience; if you have it then, overthinking is counter productive, but if you’re a noob then your gut instinct is poor because you have not fed it with enough data from prior experience. Lots of things to think about here, especially as we are keen to de-bias everything and eliminate intuition from recruitment decision making. Excellent post again, from BBC Worklife
Issue #289 published 24 Apr 2022
Recruiters hire candidates they think will fit with the company culture. But this is a process rife with biases – and keeps workers from roles they deserve.
Critique of the concept of ‘cultural fit’, which I suspect is already pretty much the ideological consensus in our industry. However, certain criticism are accepted without examination - what for instance, is so bad about ‘hiring for status quo’? For certain hires, maybe that is exactly what you need. The counter counter culture starts here.
Issue #288 published 17 Apr 2022
 “Green lumber fallacy” to describe scenarios where a group of people in a domain mistake irrelevant knowledge for essential knowledge…. 
Fascinating post on a cognitive bias which is under examined, particularly when it comes to candidate assessment. We all profess a commitment to ‘hiring for values’ or ‘hiring for attitude’ but our revealed preferences suggests that we too are often guilty of green lumber fallacy. Superb reading.
Issue #288 published 17 Apr 2022
Interesting conjecture on which tech employers have the best tech interviewers. Some methodology concerns with this analysis (HN doesn’t like the findings, but guess what, they are a tough crowd ;-), but great to see some more attention paid to quantitatively assessing the quality of interviews. Have a read.
Issue #287 published 10 Apr 2022
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - brainfooder Tim Sackett is one of the best conversation starters in our business, mainly through poke-the-bear provocations like this. Is the number of LinkedIn Connections just a vanity metric or a genuine measure of recruiter competence? Read on the get Tim’s take.
Issue #287 published 10 Apr 2022
Computer Says No
ASSESSMENT
So this is a 1 hour documentary from the BBC on the role technology plays in determining whether human candidates get the job. It’s a good watch, so set aside the time for it. H/T brainfooder Stephen O'Donnell for the share in the fb group
Issue #286 published 3 Apr 2022
I joked with Metaview CEO and long time brainfooder Siadhal Magos that he should put out Founder’s Focus conversation through his conversational analytics platform and see how we (or I…) did as an interviewer. The results are in 🤣.
PS: don’t you think every podcaster should do this??
Issue #286 published 3 Apr 2022
The first issue - the advancement of AI generated fakes is likely to have all sorts of implications when tied to the second issue - that we seem to prefer certain facial types over others. We’ve criticised phrenology as quackery but we instinctively go back to it nonetheless. Lots to ponder here, how to assess faces we subconsciously (and erroneously) trust less?
Issue #285 published 27 Mar 2022
There can never be enough content on cognitive bias - it is not something we can defeat but it is something we need to be conscious of. This beautiful website does a great job on describing some of the most common, more than a few of them directly relevant to us in the recruiting business. H/T brainfooder Simon McSorley for the share in the fb group
Issue #285 published 27 Mar 2022
‘Consistently excellent’ is hard to do but Gergely Orosz is doing it week in, week out with these deep dive perspectives on all aspects of tech hiring and management. This one of performance review is typical - must read folks.
Issue #285 published 27 Mar 2022
Clearer Thinking is turning into one of my favourite podcasts. Host Spencer Greenberg is a pretty much a genius nerd who has a great way of interacting with equally intelligent guests. This one, on mental models, is useful for us to get a better grip on a world that refuses to show us the truth.
Issue #283 published 13 Mar 2022
HR commentary from non-HR people remains my favourite kind of content. Simple analysis by this software engineer of two types of culture she has come across and what that means to how you need to behave. Do we apply this thinking in candidate assessment? We should, though we are currently too terrified about talking about ‘culture fit to get there. We need to get over it - have a read.
Issue #283 published 13 Mar 2022
Is the key to diversifying the workforce using more, or less, candidate information? Dr John Sullivan is not providing a recommendation here, but he does outline all the actions you can take if you choose to provide less. Instrumental value in this post, but also a brainfood stimulant - if candidate assessment is so problematic that we need to put these mitigations in place, do we actually need an entirely new approach to how we do due diligence in hiring people?
Issue #283 published 13 Mar 2022
Even in the worst-performing results where a résumé has been so severely stripped of gender-identifying information as to be non-usable, a simple NLP model such as Word2Vec is still capable of an accurate gender identification approaching 70%.
The question of whether more or less candidate data is best method of mitigating bias might have an answer with this research from NYU
Issue #280 published 20 Feb 2022
Two of the good guys in recruiting, it’s brainfooders William Tincup and Bas van de Haterd talking about the current state of innovation and talent selection in assessment technology. Cool stories, cool case studies.
Issue #279 published 13 Feb 2022
Brainfooder Samuel Leduc has put together some smart ideas here, particularly in trying to model the psychological profiles of potential candidates based on their intrinsic motivations. The piece needs editing but as it’s a community project on Notion, it seems you can do exactly that. Some brainfood for sure - take a look here.
Issue #277 published 30 Jan 2022
I’m categorising this into ‘assessment’ as we might most obviously apply some of these mental models to better assess candidates for hire, but this post really is about how we can improve our thinking in any context. Drawing from concepts from maths, physics, chemistry, biology and more, it’s an extraordinary collection. Read it, you’ll get smarter
Issue #276 published 23 Jan 2022
Magic seems to happen when non-specialists address hiring issues through the lens of their own niche expertise. Graham Duncan, VC and therefore recruiting consigliere to many a startup, weaves together parable, metaphor and science in this amazing long read on how to assess for talent.
Issue #274 published 9 Jan 2022
We are getting to the point where you can’t not ‘hire for tech’ even if you’re not a specialist tech recruiter. This report from Deloitte Insights, surveying CIO’s on what they thing are going to be ongoing trends in tech in 2022 is a high level, yet bedrock material for any recruiter hiring for these skills - download here
Issue #273 published 2 Jan 2022
The more we learn about ourselves, the less confident we should in our ability to make the right decisions. Let’s learn anyway about ‘the challenging voice’ vs ‘the supportive voice’. When selecting for team, conflict minimisation is the top priority, which is not always the same as selecting best for task completion.
Issue #271 published 19 Dec 2021
Are standardised tests ever fair? We know that if we have a universal method of assessment, we will have advantage some / disadvantage others, a situation often revealed in workforce diversity. And yet, what can we practically replace it with? Harvard are back to individual judgement calls it seems. Interesting thread, challenging condundrum.
Issue #271 published 19 Dec 2021
One for the tech recruiters - or anyone who appreciates a great interactive experience. Built by front-end engineers, this is a report on how CSS is used in 2021. We won’t get close to this for What Do Recruiters Want? but it’s the inspiration ;-). Also might be useful for tech assessment.
Issue #271 published 19 Dec 2021
It’s brainfooder Mark Deubel on a topic we probably take for granted - how do we interview recruiters? Do we even have a system? Chances are we don’t. Good chat here, though there will be resistance on some of the assessment techniques! Have a listen, here.
Issue #270 published 12 Dec 2021
Structuralism is going to win in the end. Exciting and portentous new research on mapping the brains connections and using those maps to make accurate predictions on behaviour. Do we use this information if we have it? And if not, why not? Brainfood conundrum of the near future - have a read
Issue #270 published 12 Dec 2021
Definitely tongue-in-cheek but I found this post to be useful reminder that a lot of the on-trend concepts in HR and TA need to be frequently and rigorously checked. Particularly enjoyed the criticism of authenticity 🤣 - those people are intolerable!
Issue #270 published 12 Dec 2021
Wonderful post on seniority labels and why - most of the time - they are there for stoking ego’s rather than as descriptors of actual at-work responsibility. OP is a developer criticising other developers, but could be equally applied to recruiters or anyone else I think. Also can be read as an assessment guide for tech recruiters, so I am categorising it there for now.
Issue #270 published 12 Dec 2021
Ethan Molick has been my favourite tweeter this year, with his style of crunching research papers no one is ever going to read into digestible tweet storms which everyone can read. This one - on the uselessness of too much information - has some obvious ramifications for recruitment.
Issue #269 published 5 Dec 2021
Outstanding report on the correlations between ‘high risk’ social media postings from job candidates and their subsequent performance has hired employees. It might not be cool to say it, but it appears that risky social media behaviour is something employers should indeed screen for. South Africa data sample, nearly 10,000 employees screened. It’s fascinating research
Issue #268 published 28 Nov 2021
This is an oldie (published in 2020) but as we’re all trying our best to hire recruiters, it might be a good idea to remind ourselves what competences a great recruiter should have, according to LinkedIn’s own recruiting team. H/T to one of those leaders, brainfooder Emily Atkins for the share.
Issue #266 published 14 Nov 2021
This is why I like it when non-recruiters share their thinking on recruiting. Straight shooting from a hiring manager unafraid to slay a few sacred cows. It might be the only way to be useful.
Issue #266 published 14 Nov 2021
A major hacking group has been recruiting tech talent by setting up a fake cybersecurity company
What can I say? It’s fascinating to see recruitment innovation in the world of cybercrime. Have a listen here. H/T again to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share.
Issue #265 published 7 Nov 2021
Fake resumes / CV’s are excellent in-production tests for recruiter biases. Software engineer “Angelina Lee” faked her resume to see whether recruiters really were susceptible to credentialism. To the surprise of no one, of course we are. Original reddit post and thread here, twitter commentary here. H/T brainfooder Christine Ng for the share.
Issue #265 published 7 Nov 2021
How do you identify hidden characteristics that you ideally want in job candidates? For the Swedish Armed Forces, selflessness was one such, and they conducted a fascinating social experiment to identify those who might qualify. Also a superb piece of employer branding. H/TJim Berrisford
Issue #264 published 31 Oct 2021
“….there’s a massive flaw in human judgment that we’re just beginning to understand, and it’s called “noise.” 
Fascinating concept, fascinating interview. Must listen
Issue #263 published 24 Oct 2021
Short, smart post, taking a countervailing position on the value of specific programming languages to the future capability of engineering talent. It’s based on transferability of technical skills - and that could be different, based on the first language you learn. Compelling argument on a controversial position.
Issue #263 published 24 Oct 2021
I think we need to be experts in this. We are making people judgements all the time - it’s a core part of our work. Hence we need better understanding on how to recognise and mitigate cognitive bias - it’s going to be useful for us professionally, especially when our employers lean on us to help the organisation get better at making better decisions. This beautiful website is one to bookmark
Issue #263 published 24 Oct 2021
Fascinating research from Resumebuilder on the behaviour of 1500 sampled job hunters in the US. Most interesting nuggets: men lie x 2 as much as women and years experience is the most common lie. Lots to think about here, including….do we vary our due diligence based on this research? H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share in the fb group.
Issue #263 published 24 Oct 2021
..because it’s cheaper to hire Senior Developers at exorbitant salaries than train up Junior Developers who then leave for better salaries, is the gist of this piece on the challenges of hiring experienced tech talent. Probably an oversimplification but an interesting angle nonetheless. H/T brainfooder Martyn Redstone for the share in the fb group.
Issue #263 published 24 Oct 2021
The reason, says Brainfooder Kevin Wheeler, is that we are cannot reliably identify them from the outside. Compelling argument using sports analogies on the requirement to ‘develop your own’. Great thinking as usual from Kevin - make sure to catch him on Brainfood Live later this month, when we talk ‘Future Fit TA’. Register here
Issue #261 published 10 Oct 2021
One of those stories which so great that you think it must be apocryphal but you want to believe it to be true 🤣. It is fundamentally a critique of the CV / resume as a method of assessing for competence, in preference to skills based assessment.
Issue #260 published 3 Oct 2021
This post could be read as much as a UX research guide as much as insight on candidate psychology when being asked to conduct technical assessments. Fascinating findings on this very well written post. H/T to brainfooder Denys Dinkevych for the share.
Issue #259 published 26 Sep 2021
We are thankfully well past the era of unthinkingly hero worshipping tech billionaires, but Elon Musk’s favourite interview question is a damn good one. Especially if you want to ‘flush out the bullsh1tters’. H/T to brainfooder Mark Deubel for the share
Issue #259 published 26 Sep 2021
Looking past the distractions of automated screening, this report from Accenture raises some pertinent questions about how and why our entire hiring systems and processes are configured around the default on the full time, onsite, permanent employees. H/T brainfooder Wim Dammans for the share in the fb group, and brainfooder Andrew Gadomski for the report.
Issue #257 published 12 Sep 2021
Interesting angle on assessing candidates at interview. The questions are thought provoking, and I suspect very rarely asked in most recruiting processes. Must read folks. H/T brainfooder Colin Donnery for the share in the fb group
Issue #257 published 12 Sep 2021
Candidate guides for passing interviews is a great source of content for recruiters. This one is a pretty comprehensive how-to for tech candidates. Use it as an educational resource on tech assessment, and the guide book itself is a pretty awesome bit of relationship nurturing content to share to your tech candidate network. H/T brainfooder Jeroen Kneppers for the share.
Issue #256 published 5 Sep 2021
…which turns out to be a rather old form of CV for most of us outside of academia - the narrative based resume. Interesting developments in a labour market most of us don’t know too much about, the replacement of the old CV - a terse summary of a person’s grant and publication record - with this new / old narrative format. It is part of the R&D People & Culture Strategy to increase diversity at both the top and bottom of the funnel - a fascinating project.
Issue #252 published 8 Aug 2021
This is cool 👉 1 million certification attempts on HackerRank’s coding assessment platform, analysed for performance, broken down by programming language, then correlated with University the applicant attended. Pretty much essential reading for any tech recruiter out there.
Issue #251 published 1 Aug 2021
This is really good resource for tech recruiters who are on intake meetings with hiring managers. Written from the perspective of job seekers and they questions they should ask before joining the team. It’s a fascinating exercise in perspective, whilst also getting inside knowledge of things that really matter in a developers work environment. Must read for tech recruiters
Issue #250 published 25 Jul 2021
Avinash Navlani has written an 8 part series on how to hire for data science candidates. Incredibly, only 77 people follow this guy on Medium - I hope at least some of them are DS recruiters. Outstanding resource, really deserves more eyeballs on it.
Issue #246 published 27 Jun 2021
Fascinating and potentially problematic research concludes that there might indeed be universal biological markers of ‘intelligence’ - in this case, pupil size. Three things to think about here: is this true, can we use it if is and what would be the outcome if we did? Brainfood for sure - have a read. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share
Issue #244 published 13 Jun 2021
Approximately half the web is made up of blog posts from developers annoyed at recruiters but this screed raises important some points about credentialism. The HN thread - which rather satisfyingly takes OP to task for his tone - has some great additional thinking, as well as excellent counter criticism.
Issue #243 published 6 Jun 2021
NESTA can come out with some outstanding data visualisations. Somehow missed this (it’s from 2020, things going on etc) interactive map, which supports job transition by using proximity to describe the relatedness of different fields. Also described automation risk, as a bonus. Very well executed website - have a play here. H/T to brainfooder Simon Hammond for the share.
Issue #243 published 6 Jun 2021
Only brainfooder Tim Sackett could write a 500 word blog post that has the potential to trigger at least 3 different arguments 🤣Some interesting threads in each of them though - and typical of Tim - each provides food for thought. The title itself presents is worthy of discussion - is interview behaviour an important part of how we assess candidates? Most of us would say yes, but if we think one stage further we might question ourselves as to why. Have a read.
Issue #242 published 30 May 2021
Do you recognise the 8 most commonly asked interview questions? You’d be lying if you didn’t. Fun post by LinkedIn actually made useful by the provision of alternatives to the questions which have long since become cliché. Good interview training this, so read and share.
Issue #241 published 23 May 2021
Fascinating account of a cybersecurity team responding to a job advert for a cybercriminal. Not only an interesting insight into a world most of us never see, but also for the type of assessment used by the hackers - CV validation, identity verification, practical assessment, very familiar to us, though now relocated to a more disturbing setting….
Issue #240 published 16 May 2021
Succinct and useful breakdown of the theoretical foundations of the dominant personality tests most widely used in recruitment - and upon which many tech assessment tools are based H/T brainfooder Heidi Wassini for the share in the fb group
Issue #239 published 9 May 2021
Creating a taxonomy of skills is a tough undertaking and yet essential for building better career pathing and internal mobility approaches, a topic which has been popular in previous brainfoods. To that end, this document should be useful. H/T brainfooder Denys Dinkevych for the share
Issue #238 published 2 May 2021
It’s the NFL Draft this Friday and I have to say I will monitor it with guilty pleasure - the great entertainment masks troubling ethics behind the whole spectacle. The precursor to the event is equally problematic, the pre-draft prospect interviews. Fair to say, not much of this would ever pass muster in a corporate setting, but its all still recruitment though, so have a read here
Issue #237 published 23 Apr 2021
Excellent post from brainfooder Jan Tegze, who puts forward an equivocal position against the use of facial recognition in recruitment. Aligned with upcoming EU legislation which may soon ban the collection of this type of data for hiring. However, as the world fragments into regional blocs, the EU might no longer be the legislative tone setter for the world as it was once, which could mean regional variance on what tools vendors build and recruiters use. Interesting tension with the globalisation of the talent marketplace.
Issue #237 published 23 Apr 2021
We can probably learn a lot from how pro sports identify, assess and nurture talent. The demand for data analytics experts might predict a similar trend in the corporate world, if we can navigate the different ethical questions. H/T to brainfooder Bas van Haterd for the share in the fb group
Issue #236 published 18 Apr 2021
Remember when applying stress was actually considered a valid interview technique? It might still be in some cases now that I think about it but that is opposite point that Dr John Sullivan is making in this post, which emphasises the requirement for a mindset shift in how we interview. You want your candidates to win, not lose. Have a read here.
H/T brainfooder Colin Donnery for the share in the fb group
Issue #235 published 11 Apr 2021
I am always a fan of hiring managers who write about recruiting. In this case, OP is a Head of Engineering who has compiled a list of interview questions he uses to hire software engineers. It’s a practical handbook - maybe even a personal journal - but it’s worthy of being in the public domain. Have a read if you’re hiring for tech
Issue #234 published 4 Apr 2021
This looks like significant. Following on from brainfooder Grant Clough‘s sharp spot of a potentially new feature, LinkedIn confirmed last week that they are connecting assessment scoring directly with job opportunity, including guarantee of recruiter interview. Expect massive take up of the skills assessment offering, as it’s basically a jump-the-queue pathway for high scoring candidates.
Issue #234 published 4 Apr 2021
If so, this is a power move by LinkedIn that will massively incentivise the adoption of the skills assessment feature on the platform. Questions of whether the assessment is accurate will be pretty much moot as low scoring users will likely not see the job posting to complain about it. H/T to brainfooder Grant Clough for flagging this. One to watch folks - keep an eye on what LinkedIn announce this week.
Issue #233 published 28 Mar 2021
What does your blood say about you? In Japan, it’s believed your personality is determined by your blood.
Fascinating story on a personal attribute considered a non-factor by the RotW but contributive to personality in Japan. Presumably also relevant in hiring. Japan, as ever, following its own path
Issue #231 published 15 Mar 2021
Superb report from Rocket Hire on the state of the HR / TA tech landscape. Wide ranging research coupled with in-depth trends analysis and credible forecasting. Pretty much a must read folks. H/T to brainfooder Michael Blakley for the share
Issue #231 published 15 Mar 2021
Bias On LinkedIn
ASSESSMENT
Some new terms for us to learn: ‘Agenic’ vs ‘Communal’ profile pictures. Agenic as in ‘having agency, propensity for action’, which we seemingly prefer when presented against more ‘Communal’ LinkedIn profiles pictures. Obviously we need to ask questions about the methodology but this experiment presents yet another challenge in how we make assessments when reviewing candidates. H/T brainfooders Joseph Slavin and Michael Blakely for the share
Issue #230 published 7 Mar 2021
It’s clear we need a better model of talent, one which focuses on the conditions suitable for development and nurture of talent rather than attracting talent.
This line rescues this post from being ‘yet another software engineer who hates recruiters’ screed. Uncomfortable reading at times for us but this post makes some excellent points on the challenges of measuring - and therefore assessing - ‘talent’. H/T to brainfooder Denys Dinkevych for the share.
Issue #228 published 21 Feb 2021
It was thrilling to read this level of enthusiasm from business leader who threw out the recruiting rule book and did it her way. Cool thread on changing the order of the hiring funnel.
Issue #228 published 21 Feb 2021
Pattern matching at interview is basically like keyword matching on CV/ resume screen - a derided yet common practice in recruiting. This hiring manager accepts this claim, yet makes a reasonable defence of the practice. Got to be honest….I found myself thinking……the guy has a point….
Issue #227 published 14 Feb 2021
Some new terms for us to learn: ‘synaptic density’, 'fluid intelligence’ vs crystallised intelligence - and one we already know - 'cognitive decline’. Generational stereotyping has been rightly lambasted over the past few years, but we cannot deny that each of us are on the same inevitable and measurable biological journey, and - where we are on that journey - materially impacts cognitive performance. A challenge for assessment, workplace culture, DE&I and ethics, which this superb post makes perfectly clear.
PS: of course you know that the real mission of this newsletter is to encourage synaptic regeneration for the recruiting / HR community…
Issue #223 published 17 Jan 2021
Brainfooder Maxime Le Bras collected 800+ behaviour based interview questions and published them into this open google sheet. Great resource for anyone looking to refreshen up your interviewing questions.
Issue #222 published 10 Jan 2021
Interesting survey that I wish had come out a little earlier in the year, as I suspect its going to be lost in the seasonality somewhat. Still, some interesting insights on how tech recruiters feel about developer hiring in 2020. H/T to brainfooder John Rose for the share in the fb group
Issue #220 published 27 Dec 2020
Fabulous essay which describes how the rhythms of your heartbeat can influence what you see and how you feel. Implications for us in the assessment stages of hiring are obvious - was your heart in diastolic state when you narrowly rejected that candidate?
Issue #220 published 27 Dec 2020
So this is an insane post which uses probability theory to make the case that hiring always means tradeoffs. The evidentialising (made up word, let me know if you think you know what I think I mean) is kind of overwhelming but there’s truth here - we don’t weight values accurately, therefore have poorer grasp of rational trade offs which might make us more competitive employers of highly skilled in demand talent. See how far you get ;-)
Issue #219 published 20 Dec 2020
Human Benchmark
ASSESSMENT
Been talking a lot about assessment lately - from hosting a panel on it with our buddies at Landing Jobs last week, to focusing on tech assessments on Brainfood Live this Friday. It’s clear that in a remote friendly, remote first world, how we assess is going to escalate up the priority list for any TA / HR manager. This website is a cool tool for a couple of reasons - it’s educational on the categories of assessment that we want to think about - and it’s pretty fun to play.
Issue #218 published 13 Dec 2020
It’s going to be difficult to find a post which packs more in as few words as this - startup hustle porn, each employer’s right to determine company culture, work ethic vs worker exploitation, passion vs productivity. Perhaps missing from the online hubbub generated by this post is its understated premise - a critique of credentialism. Read and join the discussion on the thread here and also in this HN thread here. H/T brainfooder Siadhal Magos for the share in the fb group
Issue #216 published 29 Nov 2020
Interviews.school
ASSESSMENT
The intellectual arms race between tech candidates vs tech recruiters never ceases to fascinate me. Jumping over the fence now and again to the candidate side can be a smart way to learn about what you need to know. This ‘how to beat the tech interview’ guide book is actually really useful for tech recruiters thinking about how to structure tech assessment.
Issue #214 published 16 Nov 2020
One of those ‘too embarrassed to ask’ scenarios, solved by a recruiter-turned-developer who explains in this excellent post exactly what a merge request is. Useful for any tech recruiter, especially one early in the journey. Kind of useful to all of us, as the model and language of collaborative work translates into the non-tech world.
Issue #211 published 26 Oct 2020
Who is your fictional alter ego? Fun exercise by a society which seeks to open source / demystify the discipline of psychometrics - which I think it succeeds in doing with this questionnaire, especially in the way it enables results to change when you apply filters by various assessment techniques and paradigms. 5 minutes, good edutainment - give it a shot.
Issue #211 published 26 Oct 2020
It’s always fascinating to read recruitment content from the candidate perspective. Often times, there are some useful concepts for us, including this concept of ’overfitting’. Perhaps this could be a criteria in how we think about jobs….how precise does the need actually need to be for a person to do this job? Brainfood for sure, so have a read here
Issue #210 published 18 Oct 2020
Cool project here from brainfooder Bas van de Haterd, collecting together a number of common unconscious biases, putting a recruitment lens on them, and presenting it an easy-to-read one pager. Interactive website is next step I would say, eh Bas?
Issue #208 published 4 Oct 2020
Very interesting piece of research from brainfooder Siadhal Magos, whose product Metaview is a kind of ‘interview analyser’. The top 3 mistakes are: 1) failure to set expectations, 2) failure to get concrete answers and 3) too many closed questions. Take a look at the post here, and let me know what you think
Issue #206 published 20 Sep 2020
Dr John Sullivan with another thought provoking post on how Covid-19 impacts the hiring interview. Many traditional techniques focus on examples from a candidates past….yet what value does this have if the present is now so different? As Dr Sullivan says, we need to ask better questions. H/T brainfooder Martin Poole for the share.
Issue #205 published 13 Sep 2020
Candidate advice posts for passing interviews are often very good sources for recruiters on the other side doing the assessment. I think this one from Builtin falls into that category. Hiring for Product Manager’s? Have a read.
Issue #204 published 6 Sep 2020
This is an unusual and fascinating post from a hiring manager at Amazon who wants to give insight on how Amazon conduct interviews. A great insiders view on the competency interviewing model, list of leadership values hired for and, of Amazon’s own internal hiring and organisational culture. Not sure how much you can do with this …but it is interesting. H/T to brainfooder Daniel Paul for the share
Issue #202 published 23 Aug 2020
Here’s two words we didn’t know: ‘diastole’ and 'systole’. They are the oscillating phases of cardiac activity which corresponds with contracting and then relaxing the heart muscles to pump out and then refill, with blood. Turns out, which phase of cardiac activity you’re in has an impact on your perception - and on your judgement. Have a think about this fascinating phenomena the next time you’re about whether to Y/N a candidate…..
Issue #202 published 23 Aug 2020
The context in this post is about a software development team but really, the characteristics of the archetypes translates across industries. In recruiting, we mostly assess for skills, and only rarely for characteristics….guess which one might be more important?
Issue #201 published 16 Aug 2020
Robert Walter Weir was one of the most popular instructors at West Point in the mid-1800s. Which is odd at a military academy, because he taught painting and drawing. Weir’s art classes were mandatory at West Point. Art can broaden your perspective, but that wasn’t the point. Nineteenth-century West Point cadets needed to be good at drawing because cartography was in its infancy…..
And with that intro, I was in, on this post. First time I’ve encountered this framework of thinking about skills as expiring vs permanent and the list of permanent ones I think we can all agree would be premium ones in any candidate we look to hire. Great brainfood folks and a must read.
Issue #201 published 16 Aug 2020
Fascinating essay on personal development and skills learning, essentially that deliberate practice is only useful for skills where knowledge is explicit, generalisable and therefore teachable. Bit of a mind bender of a post, but the author has a case I think, and makes a rather good job of explaining it. Might also be relevant to how we interview for talent
Issue #199 published 2 Aug 2020
Do we really know what good looks like? It may be the wrong question to ask, as it inevitably sets into motion an assessment process that over indexes on the most conveniently available proxies.
Issue #198 published 26 Jul 2020
When reviewing CV’s or interviewing candidates, how many of these are we subconsciously deploying? Inevitable that we’ve evolved these cognitive shortcuts, and essential we keep reminding ourselves of them. H/T brainfooder Ivan Harrison for the share.
Issue #198 published 26 Jul 2020
Builtin are producing some really good content these days. This collection of questions for product manager interviews is directed at candidates, but equally useful for any recruiter hiring for PM’s. H/T to brainfooder Denys Dinkevych for the share
Issue #198 published 26 Jul 2020
The design of “technical interviews” is hurting the tech sector.
I’d actually argue the purpose is the bigger problem. As we discussed in last Friday’s awesome Brainfood Live, interviews are not what we think they are, and don’t assess for what we think they assess. This excellent retrospective adds more weight to the argument that we need a fundamental rethink of the interview. H/T brainfooder Kristian Bright for the share
Issue #197 published 19 Jul 2020
Someone should do this for the recruiting community. Not saying that we necessarily need to think about alternative careers…. but it would be great to see those paths visualised. Do we agree? NB: oh yeah: this post is also pretty useful for understanding tech roles.
Issue #197 published 19 Jul 2020
Understanding how tech managers review tech CV’s is a critical component to any recruiter’s performance. This fascinating introspective provides great insight on the process a manager might go through during CV review. Particularly good on the self awareness of how flawed this process is (CV’s have to look good….).
Issue #196 published 12 Jul 2020
Interviewing to be a Product Manager is a dance, and to do well you have to learn the moves.
There is so much to like about this guide for candidates….coda.io showing us the future that Google docs should’ve been, Hadar showing us what interview transparency really means and the content itself…gold for anyone hiring for PM’s. H/T to brainfooder Denys Dinkevych for the share
Issue #196 published 12 Jul 2020
I wondered: what more am I hoping to learn?
One of many great lines in this fantastic retrospective from a manager brave enough to break from the protocol. It encourages us to go further: what are we really hoping to learn in each stage of the hiring funnel? Must read folks.
Issue #194 published 28 Jun 2020
Is the ability to bullsh1t actually predictive of a person’s intelligence? And - if so - can this be a legitimate measure for hiring? I’m not even sure if I’m joking. Have a read of this accessible, smart and (probably) spoof paper.
Issue #189 published 24 May 2020
We can learn a great deal about recruiting and assessment from pro sports. Red Bull - especially their Salzburg team - has been a pioneer on traits based assessment and hiring. Obvious D&I incompatibilities vs the corporate world but lots to learn here. H/T Bas van de Haterd for the share in the fb group
Issue #187 published 10 May 2020
Facebook appointed an independent oversight board, and its actually a rather interesting recruiting challenge: How do you hire people, to be independent of your business? Here’s how Facebook did it. H/T to brainfooder Stanislaw Wasowicz for the share
Issue #187 published 10 May 2020
Research from Hirevue with important implications for in-person vs AI driven video assessments. Non-verbal communication impact assessment for the job, but not performance on the job. H/T to Bas van de Haterd for the share in the fb group
Issue #186 published 3 May 2020
I’ve been a believer in ‘real world assessment’ since my days as HoTA - got to be better than CV/resume + interview right? The caveat is the workload shifts to the candidate, sometimes to an untenable degree. This point is underlined in this example from the world of journalism, where job seekers have to do 'edit tests’ to get a shot at the job.
Issue #79 published 23 Apr 2020
Firstround do a great job on crowdsourcing / community sourcing content like this. You don’t have to agree with every question to recognise that this is a great resource. 40 questions - check out them out here
Issue #158 published 23 Apr 2020
Tech candidates and tech recruiters are kind of involved in a knowledge arms race on how one side can beat the other. It’s always interesting to see how candidates talk & think about beating tech assessments. Great how-to from the candidate side by Yangshun Tay, Dev at Facebook
Issue #158 published 23 Apr 2020
Amazing post by our buddies at HackerRank, looking at the importance of shared language when describing the work we do. Focus of this post is on Full Stack Developers but a must read for anyone hiring for developers of any kind.
PS: Reminds me of Problem with Job Titles, we created at WorkShape.io, where we removed terminology from JD’s. Maybe the words are the problem eh?
Issue #107 published 23 Apr 2020
Here’s a new term for you - ‘embodied cognition’ - the use and interpretation of gesture to support communication. Fascinating post on the brain links what we see with what we hear. Now layer this on top of innovations in video interview tech , especially in the analysis of micro expressions.
Issue #159 published 23 Apr 2020
There’s a kind of evolutionary arms race going on between developers vs tech recruiters. Here’s a cool resource from the developer side by Yang Shun - an interview handbook for front-end interviewing. Useful for tech recruiters also
Issue #71 published 23 Apr 2020
Natasha Ouslis is an organisational psychologist who has summarised the findings of a 2016 research paper on the efficacy of various types of job assessment. Turns out, we need to look mainly for GMA - General Mental Ability, ahead of work experience, job knowledge, peer ratings, reference checks or interviews. 
Issue #71 published 23 Apr 2020
“…You’re as likely to get a job interview by meeting 50% of job requirements as meeting 90% of them…..” amongst some of the interesting insights from this research from our buddies at Talent Works, a post not without controversy or support, tellingly from different sides of the application fence. Take a look here
Issue #112 published 23 Apr 2020
The arms race between job seeker and recruiter is fascinating to observe on the Internet. This google spreadsheet is a massive list of resources on how-to pass Data Science interviews. Equally useful resource for those hiring for Data Scientists.
Issue #138 published 23 Apr 2020
What do Startups (or any company for that matter) mean when they ask “why should we hire you?”. Some much needed reflection on the very nature of interviewing by our friends at AngelList. We ask not to investigate or discuss but to test responses. And we wonder why candidate experience is bad…
Issue #113 published 23 Apr 2020
Why are software developers so hard to hire? In large part, it’s because they really don’t respect the process that employers put them through. The ‘assessment load’ is too high. Melissa McEwen tells us what she thinks with this readable and good natured thought experiment, which aims to illustrate that point.  Thanks to brainfooder Stephen Killilea for the share. 
Issue #61 published 23 Apr 2020
Strange, funny and maybe useful post by long time brainfooder Stephen O'Donnell. What are the crazy interview questions you remember being asked? There’s a long list of them here, for your entertainment and maybe for your use. 
Issue #61 published 23 Apr 2020
Fun fact: sitting next to your boss has positive effect on your career and salary progression. We like the people we know over the people we don’t and this is a problem says brainfooder David D'Souza - more precisely, a Proximity Problem. Very good thinking from a very good brain. Have a read here
Issue #176 published 23 Apr 2020
Functional assessments are necessary when hiring for ‘hard’ technical skills. But how much, is too much? This is fascinating thread on Reddit, where developers discuss what is a reasonable coding challenge. Essential reading for anyone hiring developers and sending our tech assessments. 
Issue #62 published 23 Apr 2020
An excellent counterpoint from Matej Latin to popular post, 6 things ‘I hate about your design CV’ (see post here). Some genuinely great advice here, especially point 5 on the futility of design challenges. Design is a social process. Thanks to long time brainfooder, Stevie Buckley for the share
Issue #62 published 23 Apr 2020
“Whiteboard” interviews are widely hated. They also discriminate against people who are already underrepresented in the field. But we use them all the time, all the same. 
Issue #54 published 23 Apr 2020
Fascinating analysis from our buddies at Talent Works, on the relevance of timing when submitting job applications. Perhaps another unconscious bias which we now need to be aware of and name. ‘Temporal bias’? 
Issue #54 published 23 Apr 2020
We are at the point of a delta here - do we allow aggregation technologies like Trooly to provide verification, or do we give ownership of data back to individual (GDPR)? I confess I’m unclear on this. It’s a political issue rather than a technological one, and whose clear on politics these days?
Issue #54 published 23 Apr 2020
Fascinating text analysis from Cornell University on the words we use when we lie.  Kind of the relevant in the people game, I think. Don’t be put off by the academic format - this is a short, accessible report and well worth a look.  
Issue #54 published 23 Apr 2020
Excellent research from our buddies at Indorse, which reveals that candidates and hiring teams have a communication problem when setting up tech assessments. If you are hiring and technically testing for, technical talent, this is a must read
Issue #136 published 23 Apr 2020
Developers hate whiteboard technical assessments. And yet this form of testing is managed and delivered by other developers. We’re trending against this though and this repo might become a good resource for showcasing alternatives.
Issue #24 published 23 Apr 2020
How many of us have tried ‘job auditions’? I think it’s a good idea. We’re still going to do interviews though - just not for assessing functional capability
Issue #24 published 23 Apr 2020
The talent shortage is not only absolute but exacerbated by errors we make in assessment. This is an excellent post by our buddies at Hire by Google, who are consistently producing top quality hiring content. Expand your talent pool by reducing your bias.
Issue #124 published 23 Apr 2020
Can they do it, do they want to do it and do you want them to do it with you? It’s the big three questions that need answering in interview assessment, which this rather neat guide from Notion does in some style - download it here. H/T to brainfooder Rob Long for the share
Issue #100 published 23 Apr 2020
How do you evaluate a person? Is it the way they walk? The way they talk? Surprisingly good listicle originally posted in Lifehacker. Relevant for us, especially at interview. 
Issue #10 published 23 Apr 2020
100% relevant to everyone reading this newsletter. We are reaching consensus that interview performance is a poor predictor of performance. Why do we keep doing them? Could we hire without?
Issue #23 published 23 Apr 2020
“..if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there…” . Great writing from Cade Massey as he picks up 5 lessons on talent evaluation from the NFL Draft, especially like the idea of separating the evaluators from each other to avoid artificial consensus. This is a rare post folks - a sports listicle that is a must read. H/T Kristian Bright for the share. 
Issue #81 published 23 Apr 2020
Is the ‘Big Five’ the most credible psych assessment out there? Any psychologists out there want, pipe up because I want to know what you think. This online assessment is at least is a great UX - give it go here
Issue #120 published 23 Apr 2020
Brainfooder Bas van de Haterd leads by example on the theory and practice of assessments in recruiting. His ‘No CV, no not even interview’ approach might be a little extreme for some, but it sometimes makes for a great story and maybe greater results. Have a read here.
Issue #120 published 23 Apr 2020
Aline Lerner has been an important voice in the world of tech recruiting for some time now. Prepared to voice unpopular opinions she does so with enough big picture understanding that the message can get through. This post, on women-in-tech, is must read for those of us struggling to diversify our engineering teams. H/T to Denis Dinkevich for the share
Issue #166 published 23 Apr 2020
I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of measuring going on here, but Bogdan Frankovskyi does a reasonable job of explaining the core components of modern software development best practice. All requires context tho. Decent learning resource for recruiters who want to know about development
Issue #30 published 23 Apr 2020
Proof we are suckers for social proof, this incredible story from the world of hard rock has plenty lessons for us in recruiting. How sure are we on the information we use on candidate prescreening? It’s rarely much better than the stuff we see from Jered. H/T brainfooder Mark Mansour for the share. PS: Belfast gig is still on…
Issue #109 published 23 Apr 2020
Meet Yourself
ASSESSMENT
Wonderful essay by Angela Chen, critiquing the reductionism inherent in ‘personality profiling’. Her argument that humans are irreducibly complex is validating, but is it wholly correct? Brainfood for sure, so have a read here. Artwork in this piece is a considerable bonus.
Issue #109 published 23 Apr 2020
Greg Jorgensen expertly unpacks a term we’ve all heard before, but….were probably too afraid to ask what it actually means.  Turns out, even engineers aren’t clear on it. Funny, useful and true. Tech recruiters, have a read. 
Issue #77 published 23 Apr 2020
What are the best questions to ask when ‘recruiting a recruiter’? Long time brainfooder Mark Shortall is the pro at this, running Re:Work, one of leading staffing agencies specialising in placing internal recruiters. He’s come up with a rather handy list. Check it out. 
Issue #77 published 23 Apr 2020
If you’re not thinking about hiring for remote workers by now, chances are you’re already behind the curve. As Josh Bersin asks, at what point does ‘alternative’ become mainstream? Our buddies at Zinc are 'open sourcing’ their remote hiring interview process - something to check out if you want to know how others are doing it. Read it here and make sure to follow their series here
Issue #114 published 23 Apr 2020
The Body Shop made the news last week with its ‘No CV, no interview’ hiring process, offering the job to the first person to apply. Then brainfooder Robin Schooling tells me that this is nothing new, but simply something companies are terrified to experiment with. Perhaps because it invalidates a lot of what recruiters do? Have a read and think people
Issue #177 published 23 Apr 2020
Is this the last unconscious bias we need to tackle when assessing for candidates? Not sure how we’ll ever get past this, unless we literally do hire ‘sight unseen’. Have a read, and a ponder, here
Issue #111 published 23 Apr 2020
Superb interactive guide for recruiters and hiring managers who want to step up their interviewing game. This is a beautifully presented, super valuable resource for anyone involved in interviewing candidates - must read folks. H/T to brainfooder Yuki Kho for an exceptional piece of work.
Issue #111 published 23 Apr 2020
‘Interviewing’ tech candidates is moving ever closer to 'real world assessments’ - assessments which aim to replicate or simulate the actual conditions of the job. It’s welcome progress, as this cool blog from Google tells us
Issue #145 published 23 Apr 2020
Lou Adler writing for LinkedIn on the elimination of ‘first impression bias’. Not sure I agree with all the points here, or even with the feasibility of the original premise, but there’s something in every one of Lou’s five points we can use in our work.
Issue #145 published 23 Apr 2020
Been meaning to share this for a while - an excellent post which recognises a fundamental problem of assessment - that it is at best a proxy for the work that the candidate needs to do. The solution? Just measure the work. Have a read if you want to get a few ideas on getting better at hiring for devs. H/T ‘foodie and new father(!) Kris Bright for the share
Issue #128 published 23 Apr 2020
Hard not to disagree with Jeff Waldman’s verdict on this tortuous interviewing technique. Interrogations don’t work - yet the remain a key part of almost all recruiting processes.
Issue #28 published 23 Apr 2020
The interview is dead - again. Perhaps it should be, as an assessment tool for functional competence, it’s completely unfit for purpose. Whether Weebly’s technique is entirely right is open to debate, but more of this ‘try-before-buy’ is happening to remove false positives / negatives from the hiring pipeline. 
Issue #26 published 23 Apr 2020
You know I’m a fan of FirstRound - the most featured original source in brainfood in 2017. This is a collation of the best interview questions to ask - it’s a fantastic resource. 
Issue #63 published 23 Apr 2020
This is an amazing post on interviewing by a software developer, who takes the position of a product manager when asking stakeholders to explain what it is they want. Simple and profound - a super useful guide for any recruiter involved in interviewing. 
Issue #63 published 23 Apr 2020
The ‘whiteboard’ is a much hated assessment method for validating a developers coding chops. Everyone hates it, yet everyone still does it. Apart from this list of companies, who are leading the resistance. Appropriately enough, it’s all organised in a public github repo
Issue #63 published 23 Apr 2020
“It’s time to stop the witch hunt on intuition…” is the opening sentence in this mind bending defence on the gut instinct. It is the original big data after all, and there’s not a self help book on the planet which doesn’t advocate for listening to your gut / heart / other non-brain organ. But in recruitment, it’s beyond the pale. Time for a reset?
Issue #131 published 23 Apr 2020
‘Recruitment is like’ type posts usually get a hard pass from me on recruiting brainfood but I gave this one a go because HBR usually has some good stuff. And quite unlike my stock picking, I got lucky this time because it is really quite good - especially on the 'buy low / sell high’ analogy applied to hiring. Have a read here
Issue #165 published 23 Apr 2020
Firstly, I love this format of content delivered by Michael Wright. Secondly, all the points made are valid. Give yourself 5 minutes today and give this interactive quiz a shot. 
Issue #27 published 23 Apr 2020
Lot of this going on it seems - developers sharing information on what happens when they get technically assessed. Check out this wonderful repo from Deepak Vadgama - study notes, on Java interviews. 
Issue #27 published 23 Apr 2020
Github is becoming a ‘beat the tech test’ resource for developers. It’s an arms race, and it will continue until we figure out a better way to confirm functional competence before hire. 
Issue #27 published 23 Apr 2020
Kevin Wheeler attempts to save the interview. Trust me, not even he can do it, though this is a good effort as you can hope for. We’d be better off recognising our true motives for doing interviews - it’s an irrational yet necessary sniff test - and abandon any idea its any else. 
Issue #27 published 23 Apr 2020
We’re learning that this is true, but I think struggle to find a way to make them better or replace them. There is another way of course - to rethink the value of 1-2-1 interviewing - an essential bonding ritual rather than an appropriate assessment of functional competence. 
Issue #27 published 23 Apr 2020
Aishwarya Hariharan interviews Anne Gregory, Head of Customer Success, at our buddies at Gapjumpers to find out more about the concept of ‘blind auditions’. Think 'The Voice’ for tech hiring, removing bias from hiring by sorting candidates based on their challenge round.
Issue #75 published 23 Apr 2020
Fascinating research by Hanif Samad who analysed the hiring habits for data scientists and reveals universal bias on how we - as recruiters & employers - make decisions. Attachment bias, prestige hiring, over indexing on the wrong things….it’s all here. Vital and entertaining read
Issue #150 published 23 Apr 2020
Stop press: listicle sometimes be quite good. 5 very interesting questions that you probably don’t use at interview but maybe should. Thanks to OH subscriber Steve Jacobs for the share.
Issue #45 published 23 Apr 2020
Timing is such an underestimated factor in interview success. Are we aware how significant scheduling can be to effective interviewing? Not sure anyone has any ideas on how to correct for this but thanks to OH subscriber Joe Burridge for bringing it to our attention. 
Issue #45 published 23 Apr 2020
Our buddies at RecRight have been conducting a rolling survey on the impact of video assessments on both candidate experience and recruiter performance for the past 4 years. Here’s the summary of what they’ve found.
BONUS: brainfood subscribers get 3 months usage of the RecRight platform for what maybe a typo on the price.. check it before they change it…on this link
Issue #108 published 23 Apr 2020
How do you make sure you have the right people and the right skills to start quickly and finish the job successfully? The skills matrix, or competency matrix, is your best friend, says Erik van Vulpen, who is quickly becoming a favourite of brainfood here. It’s all about proficiency vs interest folks. Great framework, so easy you can use it right away. Check it out here
Issue #108 published 23 Apr 2020
We all know that interviews is are deeply flawed assessment methods. This candidate interview guide exposes them by teaching technical job seekers how to navigate through them. Main point? deliver on the preconceived ideas of the interviewer. Food for thought here, for us, on the other side
Issue #74 published 23 Apr 2020
Lots of organisations rely on personality measures for selection and training. The problem? Many of those measures aren’t actually rooted in research, even though they seem to be scientifically sound. The challenge of knowing what good looks like laid bare in this excellent post from Talent Quarterly. H/T Christian Madsen for the share
Issue #152 published 23 Apr 2020
And it is a rather good question. From Laurie Ruettimann, a writer who’s always a pleasure to read. (Also check out her Startup, GlitchPath - an interesting take on failure pre-emption)
Issue #17 published 23 Apr 2020
So the founder of Ruby on Rails doesn’t like interviewing in coffee shops. And tells us in no uncertain terms in this great mini rant on Medium. Does he have a point? I think so, though the problem is surely the concept of using interviews as an assessment tool…. 
Issue #17 published 23 Apr 2020
There’s an evolutionary arms race going on in tech recruiting and it’s always useful to see innovation from the other side. Nice web app here from the devs - a curated collection of common web development questions to help candidates get through the interview. Obviously useful for tech recruiters also. 
Issue #86 published 23 Apr 2020
Superb resource by the ever resourceful Denis Dinkevich, who has put together some raw content into this into interactive kanban board. It’s a massive list of 1:1 questions for managers and is a fabulous resource. Bookmark this because at some point, you’re going to need it. 
Issue #122 published 23 Apr 2020
There’s been some exceptional content about the topic of hiring Product Managers lately, but I’ve read nothing quite as exhilarating as this. That might be because Ken Norton, writes like Anthony Bourdain, or maybe because he just knows what he’s talking about. It’s probably both. Long, brilliant read, so read it.
Issue #122 published 23 Apr 2020
Great method post by Jackie Bavaro, Head of PM at Asana, on hiring for Product Managers. Key challenge: how do we assess a PM when the role is impossible to isolate from the team? Jackie’s got some ideas on that - check out her thoughts here.
Issue #119 published 23 Apr 2020
Brainfooder Bas van de Haterd has been taking a deep dive into the world of assessment tooling for the past several years. He’s got a whitepaper out, which is free to download, and has written up the exec summary in this post. I particularly like the taxonomy he’s created of different assessment types. Worth a look, if you think that that the CV/Interview combo no longer cuts the mustard
Issue #119 published 23 Apr 2020
Kamran Ahmed produced one of the most popular posts in Brainfood in 2017 - a roadmap to becoming a developer. Here he is with an updated post for 2019. Must read for anyone hiring for software developers - it’s a great assessment resource.
Issue #119 published 23 Apr 2020
I’m down with Hire by Google’s nuanced defence of hiring for culture fit - see Issue 139 for how they respectively made this argument. This is yet another excellent how-to post on how to get better at hiring for culture fit. Particularly like the follow up questions on this list.
Issue #142 published 23 Apr 2020
Aline Lerner produces some great data driven blog content. Sourcing data from her platform Interviewing.io, she draws insight here on what great interviewers have in common and how we can all improve at this crucial part of the assessment / attraction process. Thanks to brainfooder Verena Berg for the share. 
Issue #60 published 23 Apr 2020
We all know the interview is flawed as a method of assessment, but what we can do about it? LinkedIn has 5 ideas, packed into this excellent downloadable PDF. It’s all about ‘real world assessment’ - get it here folks.
Issue #92 published 23 Apr 2020
InterviewSteps
ASSESSMENT
If you get brainfood chances are you’ll understand the guiding principle of ‘making the internet smaller’ by gathering all the good stuff in one place. I’d say this amazing resource from our buddies at InterviewSteps does that and then some. H/T to brainfooder Kristian Bright for the share. 
Issue #95 published 23 Apr 2020
Some common sense here from Dr John Sullivan. Not sure this works as a framework but there are nevertheless some sound ideas on how to get better at assessing the intangible. 
Issue #12 published 23 Apr 2020
Pet hobby of mine: tracking the informational arms race taking place between tech recruiters vs software engineers. Here’s an escalation - a comprehensive how-to on passing tech interviews. Of use to tech recruiters of course, so check it out here
Issue #133 published 23 Apr 2020
Let’s be real says Amir Yasin. Interviews are a terrible way to hire tech candidates. Here’s why paying candidates to solve problems works. Can’t disagree with this - conduct ‘real world assessments’ for every role. Question is, how / when.

Issue #7 published 23 Apr 2020
We need to understand why we conduct interviews. It’s a necessary sniff test, not an effective assessment tool
Issue #22 published 23 Apr 2020
We need ontology classes. If we better understand categories of information, we would be better able to distinguish which types of knowledge are required for the job. 
Issue #22 published 23 Apr 2020
Superb interview from FirstRound with Lever’s Director of Engineering, Marco Rogers. Loads of takeaways here, especially on the value of moving from 2 to 3 person interviews. This is a must read folks - do it here
Issue #91 published 23 Apr 2020
Our buddies at GapJumpers were early and persistent evangelists for ‘blind assessment’. This is an interesting field report from founder Petar Vujosevic on why it is more than just the words you use that matter on job adverts.
Issue #82 published 23 Apr 2020
We’re groping our way toward a consensus that interviewing is no good for functional assessment. So why do we continue to do it? This post from HR Weekly is starting to ask the right questions
Issue #33 published 23 Apr 2020
Facial recognition techniques is already making headway into the world of recruitment, with providers of video interviewing tools being the primary vector. It’s the return of phrenology, whether we like it or not (hint: we probably don’t like it all)
Issue #67 published 23 Apr 2020
We all know interviews as assessment is a flawed exercise. That doesn’t meant that we give up trying to get better at it. LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions blog came out with this easy-to-use post last week - it’s well worth a read. 
Issue #67 published 23 Apr 2020
It always great to see practitioners share their experiential learning; Brainfooder, Daniel Illes, co-founder and formerly CPO at Drover, writes an excellent post on to run better interviews. ‘Informed intuition’ is an interesting, if problematic, concept. Have a read here
Issue #170 published 23 Apr 2020
Dan Luu is a strange bird. An experienced software engineer, he is an infrequent but brilliant writer, who publishes his often recruiting related thinking on his unapologetically ancient looking blog. It’s almost as if he is testing whether you care about substance or style? This post, on algorithms interviews is all substance. Read it if you care about assessment - but please be aware - there are no prisoners with this UI.
Issue #170 published 23 Apr 2020
Recorded tech interviews for jobs at Facebook, Google, AirBnB and others. Credit to founder Aline Lerner on getting this stuff released to the public. Fascinating to review and, for tech recruiters, an inside look at how top tech employers assess software developers. Have a browse here
Issue #101 published 23 Apr 2020
Did you know that psychoanalysis is a common assessment stage throughout Latin America? I didn’t and I’m still not convinced - I would love for any of our South American brainfooders out there to confirm the veracity of this extraordinary article from the BBC. 
Issue #55 published 23 Apr 2020
A developer’s online work has become a method of validation preferred over the CV/resume. Is it fair to judge a person this way? Ezekiel Buchhiet says no in this post which resonated with many across the tech industry. Also check out the counterpoints in the comment thread on HN here
Issue #55 published 23 Apr 2020
Each year, 3.5 million MBTI tests are administered each. Businesses have been using the test to make hiring decisions. The problem? The MBTI is bullshit.
Fair to say this post is a critique of psychometric assessment
Issue #161 published 23 Apr 2020
Interview Insider
ASSESSMENT
You can see this being an interesting idea of the job board / matching platform. Provide transparency on the assessment process and allow the candidates to select in or out according to the style of assessment required. Very SV / US focused and some concerns on the persistence of the assessment type (i/e are Reddit always going to recruit like this?) but a neat idea worthy of support. H/T the ever resourceful Denis Dinkevich for the share.
Issue #126 published 23 Apr 2020
There’s fascinating arms race going on between tech candidates vs tech recruiters right now. More ‘beat the interview’ content here, this time on graphics jobs by Eric Arnebäck. Easily re-usable resource for recruiters also.
Issue #78 published 23 Apr 2020
Detailed post on how to get hired at Google. Written by lead engineer and interviewer Alex Golec. Quite technical but is accessible for most, and a fascinating journey into testing for how people think. Needless to say for tech recruiters, this is a must read. 
Issue #106 published 23 Apr 2020
’…diagnostic value of interviews is nearly zero…’. Some thrilling research here from the University of Warwick, which tells us in this short and accessible report, what we already know. Worth a read though to get to the language on how we really do make recruiting decisions. 
Issue #65 published 23 Apr 2020
Github is rapidly becoming a place for hosting great crowdsourced content. This is quite an amazing resource from Maksim Abramchuk - a list of lists of tech interview questions, broken down by language and framework. Bookmark for anyone hiring for engineering. 
Issue #117 published 23 Apr 2020
So this is a great example of ’being open with your journey’. No magic here, just Lyft’s engineering team telling you how they design their ML interviews. Great learning on assessment but also…very clever employer branding. 
Issue #160 published 23 Apr 2020
Recent study by Yale suggests that it takes only seconds for opinions to form - positively or negatively - based on the accent of the candidate. A further argument for animatronic robot head interviewers perhaps?
Issue #160 published 23 Apr 2020
Accessible product review from Josh Bersin (you know him don’t ya?) on Workday Skills Cloud. Leaving aside the product placement for a second, there’s some interesting thoughts threaded in this post - the ontology of skills, our challenge in grading them and most importantly, how skills interact with each other. Worth plowing through folks
Issue #169 published 23 Apr 2020
Todd Jackson, formerly Dropbox’s VP of Product, shares his hiring philosophy for top PM’s here. What I like most: the recognition that Product is rarely an entry level position so we need to consider the archetypes from other careers that are most often found applying for PM roles. As with every thing from First Round, it’s a great read
Issue #134 published 23 Apr 2020
In that context a less technically proficient developer but someone more thoughtful about end-users and their needs suddenly becomes a 10x (or 1000x) developer
The money quote in this excellent piece on assessing software developers. The way we do it now, is inevitably reductionist and that is the original sin of recruitment.
Issue #183 published 23 Apr 2020
Refreshing change of perspective to see non-specialists put together recruiting how-to’s. This short guide from Josh Sassoon at Thumbtack nails an important and neglected phases in the workflow - sharing interview feedback. 
Issue #85 published 23 Apr 2020
FirstRound has one of the best business blogs around. This is a collation of the best interview questions to ask. Fantastic resource. Thanks to brainfooder Jane Reddin for the share. 
Issue #53 published 23 Apr 2020
It’s always great to see hiring managers contributing to the conversation in recruitment. Here is Greg Hausheer - non-tech founder of a tech firm - showing us his framework of sorting out the right from the wrong in tech hiring with a simple, practical guide. As tech recruiters are generally all ‘non-technical’, this is an essential read
Issue #147 published 23 Apr 2020
A mostly reasonable collection of technical software development interview questions solved in Javascript
Issue #20 published 23 Apr 2020
Interesting illustration of the PBS assessment framework from our buddies at Meetal - how to use patterns from past behaviour to target candidates who are likely to be strong culture fit for your organisation. Lets get over the caveats on the rightness / wrongness of culture fit for a moment and dive into the technique - this could be useful additional tool for candidate discovery .
Issue #172 published 23 Apr 2020
What personality traits and values help agile team members thrive? McKinsey & Co unashamedly dive into psychology in this how-to on assessing and developing individuals to succeed in agile environments. A little deterministic perhaps, but this is a useful set of tools for managers and recruiters who need to get agile way of working, working. Must read
Issue #172 published 23 Apr 2020
Crystal Knows have produced this ultimate guide to personality, covering the some of the main personality models such DISC, Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, and the Big Five. Of interest to anyone into candidate selection and assessment. H/T Bas van de Haterd for the share
Issue #154 published 23 Apr 2020
Fascinating account of MIT’s measurement of biometric data vs actual performance. Turns out, in some circumstances, it was possible to predict performance based on biometric measurements such heart rate. Will consumer wearable tech usher in a whole new era of performance analytics. Arguably, it already has.….
Issue #149 published 23 Apr 2020
Extraordinary numbers from Unilever on the impact on efficiency from the deployment of AI driven assessment software. 70,000 human interview hours saved. Mainstream article, but detailed enough to get a flavour. Worth a read folks.
Issue #140 published 23 Apr 2020
More cool content from the team at Hire By Google. Accessible reading on a part of the recruiting process we pretend to know more about than we actually do. Up your interview game and have a read here.
Issue #140 published 23 Apr 2020
The fact is that we agree far more easily about what is unfair than what is fair. We may all agree that racial discrimination is wrong, yet sixty years later we’re still arguing about whether Affirmative Action is a fair remedy.
How the challenges of ML might end up helping us figure out how to define ‘what is fair’? Great brainfood from HBR
Issue #163 published 23 Apr 2020
We all want to hire people who are compatible to the values of our business. But how to get there? Key Values has a massive list of interview questions categorised according to the values you’re testing for. Lynne Tye is onto something here
Issue #70 published 23 Apr 2020
One of my many sad hobbies is to monitor the ‘arms race’ between developers vs tech recruiters. This how-to on how to prep for a tech interview is an example from the developer side, but super useful for tech recruiters also, as the roadmap is an aggregation of topic areas typically covered in standard tech assessments. Speaking plainly, this can also be useful interview prep for tech recruiters. Check it out here
Issue #144 published 23 Apr 2020
What makes a good recruiter? Hell if I know - I’ve seen great ones from every demographic and character type. So this post from my buddy Milan Novak caught my eye - an experiment to match performance with results from the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory Test. Take a look if you’re building a TA / Consultant team
Issue #127 published 23 Apr 2020
Some amazing stories here, which I’m sure will resonate to many of us. Make sure to filter for ‘Top’ and read the comment by Redditor doctor_7 - it’s a heart warming story and will be a smile to your day.
Issue #127 published 23 Apr 2020
Love the boldness of this initiative - forget web based psychometrics - let’s build an actual robot to ask the questions. Meet Tengai, an assessment product by Swedish recruitment company TNG. Good news about this: TNG executives Elin Öberg Mårtenzon and Charlotte Ulvros will be joining us on Brainfood Live soon to talk about Tengai- follow the channel to watch the show.
Issue #127 published 23 Apr 2020
Mind boggling brainfood in this post on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, whose famously strange baritone voice was another thing about her that turned out to be fake. Got a bit of everything - gender, leadership, personal branding, psychology and how we make judgements on what people we like and trust. Have a read here
Issue #127 published 23 Apr 2020
Fascinating study on ‘credentialism’ by Institutional Investor, which discovers no relationship between CEO background and company’s stock performance. Investment related, but relevant to us recruiters here, especially on how we use often use 'past performance’ to predict future behaviour when assessing candidates - take a look here
Issue #127 published 23 Apr 2020