Hmm, I don’t entirely disagree but I also don’t fully agree either:
Where I agree: I have indeed hired people on the opposite side of the world (eg Australia) for whom it was not a problem.
Where I disagree: working at weird hours is a skill, and one that is hard to test for in interviews. There is a reasonably high base rate (off the cuff: maybe 30 percent?) of candidates claiming overconfidently in interviews that they can meet a work schedule that is actually incredibly impractical for them and end up causing problems or needing firing later on. I would rather not take that collective risk—to hire you and discover 3 months in, that the schedule you signed up for is not practical for you.
There is a reasonably high base rate (off the cuff: maybe 30 percent?) of candidates claiming overconfidently in interviews that they can meet a work schedule that is actually incredibly impractical for them and end up causing problems or needing firing later on.
That is a very real concern, and strikes me as reasonable. While I don’t have a good sense of what the percent would be, I agree with you that people in general tend to exaggerate what they are able to do in interviews. I wonder if there are good questions to ask to filter for this, beyond simply asking about how the candidate would plan to meet the timing requirements.
For the time zones, I had been thinking of individuals that had done this previously and can honestly claim that they have done this previously. But I do understand that for many people (especially people with children or people who live with other people) it would be impractical. Maybe my perception of people is fairly inaccurate, in the sense that I expect them to be more honest and self-aware than they really are? 😅
Even if the justification is reasonable, it is quite exclusionary to candidates outside of the required time zone. Think of a company who wants to hire a data analyst, but instead of the job posting listing ‘skilled at data analytics’ it instead lists ‘MA in data analytics.’ It is excluding a lot of people that might be skilled but which don’t have the degree.
I think the broader idea I’m trying to get at is when X is needed, but Y is listed as the requirement, and they are two distinct things. Maybe I need someone that speaks German as a native language for a job, but on the job describing I write that I need someone who grew up in Germany; those are distinct things. I’d reject all the German expats that grew up abroad, as well as the native-German speakers who grew up in Switzerland or Austria.
There might also be something here related to the non-central fallacy: applying the characteristics of an archetypical category member to a non-typical category member. Most people in distant time zones probably wouldn’t be able to manage an abnormal working schedule, but that doesn’t mean we should assume that no people in distant time zones can handle it.
Of course, the tradeoffs are always an issue. If I would get 5 additional candidates who would be good and 95 additional candidates who are poor fits, then maybe it wouldn’t be worth it. But something about the exclusion that I can’t quite put my finger on strikes me as unjust/unfair.
Hmm, I don’t entirely disagree but I also don’t fully agree either:
Where I agree: I have indeed hired people on the opposite side of the world (eg Australia) for whom it was not a problem.
Where I disagree: working at weird hours is a skill, and one that is hard to test for in interviews. There is a reasonably high base rate (off the cuff: maybe 30 percent?) of candidates claiming overconfidently in interviews that they can meet a work schedule that is actually incredibly impractical for them and end up causing problems or needing firing later on. I would rather not take that collective risk—to hire you and discover 3 months in, that the schedule you signed up for is not practical for you.
That is a very real concern, and strikes me as reasonable. While I don’t have a good sense of what the percent would be, I agree with you that people in general tend to exaggerate what they are able to do in interviews. I wonder if there are good questions to ask to filter for this, beyond simply asking about how the candidate would plan to meet the timing requirements.
For the time zones, I had been thinking of individuals that had done this previously and can honestly claim that they have done this previously. But I do understand that for many people (especially people with children or people who live with other people) it would be impractical. Maybe my perception of people is fairly inaccurate, in the sense that I expect them to be more honest and self-aware than they really are? 😅
Meandering and exploratory follow-up.
Even if the justification is reasonable, it is quite exclusionary to candidates outside of the required time zone. Think of a company who wants to hire a data analyst, but instead of the job posting listing ‘skilled at data analytics’ it instead lists ‘MA in data analytics.’ It is excluding a lot of people that might be skilled but which don’t have the degree.
I think the broader idea I’m trying to get at is when X is needed, but Y is listed as the requirement, and they are two distinct things. Maybe I need someone that speaks German as a native language for a job, but on the job describing I write that I need someone who grew up in Germany; those are distinct things. I’d reject all the German expats that grew up abroad, as well as the native-German speakers who grew up in Switzerland or Austria.
There might also be something here related to the non-central fallacy: applying the characteristics of an archetypical category member to a non-typical category member. Most people in distant time zones probably wouldn’t be able to manage an abnormal working schedule, but that doesn’t mean we should assume that no people in distant time zones can handle it.
Of course, the tradeoffs are always an issue. If I would get 5 additional candidates who would be good and 95 additional candidates who are poor fits, then maybe it wouldn’t be worth it. But something about the exclusion that I can’t quite put my finger on strikes me as unjust/unfair.