The Most Qualified Person Never Gets Hired
Is hiring ever fair? Probably not.
Yet it appears like hiring is a sacred subject for a lot of people. People get really upset when something threatens what they perceive as the natural, correct order of hiring: like when nepotism happens, or when a company says they are implementing a DEI policy.
A lot of this whining can be summarized under the following assumptions: 1. That the most qualified person usually gets hired, 2. That there is even an objective way to determine who is the most qualified, and 3. That qualification is all that important for how good someone is at a job.
It would be nice to think that every time a company wants to hire for a new position, they:
• Post a new job
• Equally review all of the ~800 applicants
• Choose the person who is the most qualified.
But that is almost never what happens.
Many jobs don’t get posted in the first place because the company already knows someone they want to hire. Other jobs do get posted, but the company ends up hiring someone else who comes as a recommendation from someone they trust. Even if the company finally decides to sift through the massive pile of generic LinkedIn applications, it’s not as though they all get a fair shake. Applications are rejected based on split-second intuitions. And the people who make it to interviews are judged just as much on their vibes, appearance, and speaking style as they are on their technical qualifications.
If there even is a way to determine how qualified someone is (more on that next), it’s funny to me that some people think the most qualified person gets hired more than maybe one percent of the time.
If there was such a thing as objective qualification for a job, there would probably not be millions of words published online about how to hire. There would not be thousands of theses about the things to look for when hiring (some of which might say resume qualifications, others curiosity, still others vibes).
Qualification, if we are to define it as how well someone’s attributes prepare them to do a specific job, is not an objective metric that everyone agrees on how to define. And in fact the way you arrive at a mental qualification score for someone probably does, and probably should, change based on what the job is.
If we can return a moment to the premise of this essay, I think what the people frustrated about equity initiatives mean by qualification is traditional resume qualifications: where you worked before, where you studied, what job titles you’ve held, and so on.
And if that is the definition that we’re going to use, then, well, the argument gets even worse. Traditional resume qualifications may have some correlation with how good someone will be at a job, but they are far from the only thing you should use to determine if someone is qualified — otherwise we wouldn’t even need interviews and could simply hire people based on the text on the resume PDF they sent.
In summary? If you are going to engage in conversation about this or read opinionated essays about this, it’s worth examining the assumptions about hiring that underlies them. Many of them turn out to be incorrect.
Yet it appears like hiring is a sacred subject for a lot of people. People get really upset when something threatens what they perceive as the natural, correct order of hiring: like when nepotism happens, or when a company says they are implementing a DEI policy.
A lot of this whining can be summarized under the following assumptions: 1. That the most qualified person usually gets hired, 2. That there is even an objective way to determine who is the most qualified, and 3. That qualification is all that important for how good someone is at a job.
1: How hiring usually works
It would be nice to think that every time a company wants to hire for a new position, they:
• Post a new job
• Equally review all of the ~800 applicants
• Choose the person who is the most qualified.
But that is almost never what happens.
Many jobs don’t get posted in the first place because the company already knows someone they want to hire. Other jobs do get posted, but the company ends up hiring someone else who comes as a recommendation from someone they trust. Even if the company finally decides to sift through the massive pile of generic LinkedIn applications, it’s not as though they all get a fair shake. Applications are rejected based on split-second intuitions. And the people who make it to interviews are judged just as much on their vibes, appearance, and speaking style as they are on their technical qualifications.
If there even is a way to determine how qualified someone is (more on that next), it’s funny to me that some people think the most qualified person gets hired more than maybe one percent of the time.
2. What is qualification, anyway?
If there was such a thing as objective qualification for a job, there would probably not be millions of words published online about how to hire. There would not be thousands of theses about the things to look for when hiring (some of which might say resume qualifications, others curiosity, still others vibes).
Qualification, if we are to define it as how well someone’s attributes prepare them to do a specific job, is not an objective metric that everyone agrees on how to define. And in fact the way you arrive at a mental qualification score for someone probably does, and probably should, change based on what the job is.
3. Does qualification even matter?
If we can return a moment to the premise of this essay, I think what the people frustrated about equity initiatives mean by qualification is traditional resume qualifications: where you worked before, where you studied, what job titles you’ve held, and so on.
And if that is the definition that we’re going to use, then, well, the argument gets even worse. Traditional resume qualifications may have some correlation with how good someone will be at a job, but they are far from the only thing you should use to determine if someone is qualified — otherwise we wouldn’t even need interviews and could simply hire people based on the text on the resume PDF they sent.
In summary? If you are going to engage in conversation about this or read opinionated essays about this, it’s worth examining the assumptions about hiring that underlies them. Many of them turn out to be incorrect.