A degree filter never sees its own mistakes
A hiring filter is only judged on the people it lets through. Why the candidates it rejects never prove it wrong, and how to break the loop.
A degree filter is only judged on the people it lets through.
The ones it rejects never produce the proof that it was wrong.
The idea comes from Paul O'Brien, an economist who studies startups, writing as he headed to HR Tech in Las Vegas. I find it brutal, because it describes a system that cannot learn.
Take a filter like "engineering school + 5 years of experience." You hire people who pass it. Some are very good, some less so. You adjust.
But you will never learn anything about the others. The self-taught engineer who maintains a library used everywhere. The one who spent three years building everything at a startup that died.
The filter looks like it works. It simply can't see its false negatives.
O'Brien sums it up: schools teach for the job description, employers measure the CV, and the economics play out in what happens after the hire, which nobody shares.
The only way to break the loop is to go and look at the work of the people the filter would have eliminated. Not to lower the bar. To change what you measure.
