> Hiring is a Hard Problem, and there's a big gap between well-intentioned intuition and translating that into robust processes.
Ultimately, hiring is INTRINSICALLY a subjective process. If it were quantifiable and one could reliably screen based on "objective" criteria, it would have been a solved problem by now and employers could hire "robustly". But it is not and it never will be that way.
That said, hiring and assessing talent takes practice and there are some techniques that work better than others. In particular, behavioral techniques are extremely valuable and sadly often take a back seat to persnickety homework quiz questions. It takes some skill and practice to get good at behavioral interviews (for both parties). But when it's used properly, the candidate has a chance to actually demonstrate "chops" even though they may lack some of the job requirements.
Your argument presupposes that an objective criteria is optimal. It's trivial to refute that, for example a company could hire people based on whether they are greater than 6 ft tall, that's an objective criteria but it would still be terrible.
Objective doesn't mean "good/optimal/solved" and subjective doesn't mean "bad/suboptimal/unsolved". All subjective/objective refer to is how sensitive a property is to a specific context. An objective measure is not particularly context sensitive whereas a subjective measure is.
My company has both objective and subjective criteria. Competency is mostly measured objectively and represents the bulk of our hiring criteria, the subjective assessment involves things like communication, collaboration and professionalism.
Both aspects are difficult and imperfect to assess regardless of whether they are objective or subjective, but I don't think it's particularly appropriate to assess someone's competency based on a subjective measure.
If someone is a good basketball player, or a good plumber etc... they are likely good regardless of the intricacies of the individual making the assessment that day and hence it's something that is probably best measured objectively. However, whether someone will get along with the rest of the basketball team, or whether a plumber can properly communicate to a customer what the issue is and how to fix it, that may very well depend on what team that player is playing for, or the relationship between that specific plumber and the specific customer. That would be more of a subjective criteria.
There certainly are subjective aspects to competency as well as objective aspects to communication, but it's minor (perhaps a basketball player is good only on a specific team, perhaps a plumber is illiterate).
Thanks, but I don't need the explanation about the difference and nature of objectivity and subjectivity and don't need to be told that it's not a value or worthiness dichotomy. Admittedly, the HN crowd clearly heavily favor what they think is objectivity, so it's easy to assume everyone thinks like that on here!
I do think we sort-of agree that BOTH subjective and objective measures need assessment and they're both difficult to measure.
The purpose of the explanation is to point out the flaw in your argument that if hiring was purely quantitative and objective then it would be a solved problem. To quote you:
"If it were quantifiable and one could reliably screen based on "objective" criteria, it would have been a solved problem by now"
Given that was the premise of your entire argument, once that flaw is exposed the rest of your argument falls apart.
Ultimately, hiring is INTRINSICALLY a subjective process. If it were quantifiable and one could reliably screen based on "objective" criteria, it would have been a solved problem by now and employers could hire "robustly". But it is not and it never will be that way.
That said, hiring and assessing talent takes practice and there are some techniques that work better than others. In particular, behavioral techniques are extremely valuable and sadly often take a back seat to persnickety homework quiz questions. It takes some skill and practice to get good at behavioral interviews (for both parties). But when it's used properly, the candidate has a chance to actually demonstrate "chops" even though they may lack some of the job requirements.