[lb1lf]

Also, in some jurisdictions, you are required to hire whoever has the best qualifications for the job (makes sense), but maybe you as an employer already have your sights on someone particular and wants to ensure the chosen candidate is the winner in the end.

Fresh out of university, I applied for a job as a lab rat/hardware designer at another university. The list of qualifications mostly made sense - electronics engineering, PCB design, SMT soldering skills, some assembly and C skills, swahili...

Swahili?

When coming to the interview, I walked past the door to a postgrad office liberally decorated with photos from East Africa. Bingo. They had already decided on who to hire; they just needed to make sure the hiring was legit, too.

It did make for an entertaining interview, though - at first they were more than a little embarrassed that their sham hiring process was outed, but once they realised I was OK with it, the mood lightened considerably and I was given a grand tour of their research facilities.

(I already had two other interviews for more relevant positions lined up, so I could appreciate the humour in failing a HW design interview due to deficient Swahili skills...)

[umvi]

A similar thing happened to my uncle. He applied for a university position for which he was qualified (military history/strategy)- but there were a few odd requirements like needing to speak Italian (luckily he had gone to high school in Italy and spoke fluently). He also did his post-grad at MIT so it would be very unlikely someone would be more qualified than him. Yet, he was rejected and they informed him that they were closing the position and not hiring anyone for it after all because they didn't have the budget. Later he saw it up again with even more obscure and stringent requirements... they were obviously just going through the motions in order to justify hiring someone they already had in mind and he had thrown a wrench in their plans.

[closeparen]

Having only an interview and resume to go on is really a nightmare scenario as hiring goes. When a team already knows who they want to hire, they shouldn’t have to sneak it by the institution - the institution should celebrate! Positive professional reputation / recommendation by another skilled practitioner makes for a much higher quality hire than strong interview performance.

[mikejb]

That is the ideal. But it can be abused as well,which is why I think the regulation exists. So the best person is hired, and not the guy who happened to be a good friend of your boss.

The tricks applied still allow that, but they produce a clearer paper trail.

[closeparen]

Reputation networks deal with that just fine. If someone’s recommendations/referrals turn out to be incompetent, it reflects back in the person making them.

[mikejb]

The friend has to be significantly less competent than required for this to work, but they only need to be less competent than other candidates to have a negative impact on hiring.

[dagw]

Something similar happened to a friend of mine when applying for a PhD position, except that due to a strange set of circumstances she actually had every single qualification they where asking for, even the obscure/irrelevant ones. She went in to the interview thinking she basically had it in the bag (I mean how many other people could tick all those obscure boxes) and then it turned really weird once she realized that the reasons the qualification where so specific was that they'd already decided on someone else and where now desperately trying to come up with a reason to turn her down.

[Izmaki]

When companies list many seemingly silly requirements (example, why do I need experience with database x, when I can pick it up in less than a week?), at least two types of candidates will be likely to apply: those that know all of it and possibly more, and those that don't check off all boxes but had the guts to attempt to convince them to pick them anyway.

The one type is going to fit right in and be ready to contribute quickly. The other has the drive to get up to speed and further. Both are much desired people.

[Aeolun]

I can tell you right now that I do not want to hire the people that show up to my interview without checking at least some of the boxes, guts or no.

It’s a (senior) programming job, why are you here if you have barely 2 months of experience...?

[penagwin]

For sure you need them to for sure meet certain requirements.

My current job was listed as full time (Entry/mid level) but I'm a student and in my phone interview told them that - guess they wanted me anyway. My biggest value IMO is that I've dabbled with a lot of stuff. Okay I haven't worked on a personal project in Django, but I'm at the point where the exact language/framework is semi-irrelavant. I was confident I could, and was able to be semi-fluent with Django for example in a few weeks (only 25 hours a week).

My point is that what GP is trying to say is more about "Oh we listed postgres but they've only used mysql" if the person is motivated they should have no issues picking up postgres

[heavenlyblue]

They shouldn’t have listed a database if they don’t require a specific vendor of DB for operation.

Jusging by what you are saying you’d probably have a problem telling the two apart, while they will have many differences when run at scale.

[gaius]

why do I need experience with database x, when I can pick it up in less than a week

You can use a serious database like Postgres or SQL Server or Oracle for 5 years or more and still not see more than a fraction of it or its surrounding ecosystem. MongoDB sure, you can know everything you need to know in a day.

[heavenlyblue]

By “use” you mean is when that database size fits in a single page of memory, right?

[xkcd-sucks]

Maybe an unfulfillable set of requirements is the point? That way they've got a bulletproof reason to reject you, and if you do get hired it's negotiating leverage

[WalterSear]

There are way too many of the latter for the signal to be important.

[ghostly_s]

> in some jurisdictions, you are required to hire whoever has the best qualifications for the job

Curious, what jurisdictions would these be? Nice idea I guess but I don't see how it could possibly be enforceable.

[lb1lf]

-In this case, Norway. The public sector are required to publish all available positions and adhere quite strictly to the listed qualification requirements when determining who to hire.

It is a nice idea, but in practice it basically means the system will be gamed like I experienced in the cases where they already have a candidate lined up.

[cf498]

It is especially obvious for research assistants and phd positions. And it makes complete sense, as you are not looking for someone to do a specific job, but quite the opposite, for funds to prolong someones position. It is especially obvious, if the person in question was the one writing the proposal for the grant money.

[sideshowb]

This is true in the UK. At least, we are trained that we must have a paper trail to show we picked the best candidate, so you have to think carefully about which requirements are essential vs optional. I'm not sure what the law says, but the aim is more to avoid lawsuits than to find out I guess.

Closely tailored requirements to pick the candidate already in mind are definitely a thing that still happens, though. It annoys me as it wastes the time of everyone from the hiring manager through to the unsuccessful candidates, but alas we're all slaves to HR :( Lol at the Swahili thing, I've not seen it so blatant before!

[sideshowb]

Thinking about it, this is discrimination law: you have to be able to prove you selected the candidates based on their merits as outlined in the job requirements, rather than a protected characteristic such as race, gender, sexuality etc. Proving a negative is difficult so you need a watertight case for the positive.

[kweks]

Definitely France, and quite possibly this is a law ratified into EU law. For example, if a French company wants to hire a specific American (or any non EU citizen) person, they need to prove that the position is unfillable in France, and then unfillable in Europe. The leads to incredibly obscure job adverts as explained in this thread ..

[mjlee]

A similar thing happens in countries where you must justify visa applications by proving that nobody in the existing hiring pool fits the criteria.

[miranda_rights]

That's funny! But mostly because you already had other interviews lined up. I'm curious -- did they actually ask you anything in/about Swahili?

[lb1lf]

-Nope, they didn't - and I don't think they would have (could have?) anyway.

(In fairness, they never got the chance - I did break the ice by observing that after walking past that office door down the hall, I realised why Swahili had been on the list of qualifications - so were they interested in looking at the work samples I'd brought along, or should I rather fail the Swahili test first?)

[walshemj]

Or explain why Swahili was "required"

[lb1lf]

Oh, if I were them I'd just say something along the lines of 'We've been working with an East African university (I believe their preferred candidate had spent some time in Dar es Salaam), and have found a working knowledge of Swahili to improve cooperation greatly' or something to that effect.

[dmurray]

Sadly they wouldn't have to, because he (presumably) didn't put Swahili on his CV.

[zimpenfish]

Had a similar experience with a university where they already decided who was going to get the grant money (an internal candidate) but had to do the hiring dance for probity's sake. I must have impressed them somewhat since they hired me to take over his old job.