Interviewing for a job is the same as dating someone new. In both cases, we're trying to figure out if the person will *become* who we need them to be for the role they're applying.

With employment, we lean heavily on past experience as a proxy for this, but it's merely a proxy. Someone very adaptable with little relevant experience is a better hire than someone very experienced yet extremely rigid.

Imagine we started first dates with a resume reviewing prior relationships? Is that ridiculous? Should hiring be more like dating, or should dating be more like hiring?

A doodler and computerer. I like permissive/permissionless open source, smart contracts, p2p systems, room-scale VR, and NixOS.

shazow.net

Currently: WhatsABI

Do you mean it'd be a good idea just hypothetically?

Cuz practically I don't see how it's possible. People lie as they want even on their resumes.. past relationships allow for way more fabrication

Fun havoooooooor | Co-creator of the universe | FuckANiche.com | prev @forefront

I guess I mean to say that even if it's no different, it's still a really low bar haha

But also much easier to even fake references. How would the evaluator know the reference given was the actual ex?

Also couldn't someone say "I've only had one serious relationship before" even when they've had many? (This wouldn't be a negative unlike the job context where more experience is better) So even if they give a real reference, it could be the ex that had the most favorable view of them.

Beyond that, I think even if you could get the complete set of real references somehow, it'd be so much harder to get a good signal from someone's ex given that their opinion about the person is going to be (highly) emotional in nature, whereas a past employer can go on some semblance of objective performance metrics.

I appreciate the thought experiment btw :)

Which part are you responding to?

Not sure fabrication threat model is any different for employment vs relationships, it's just a difference in process. We could normalize asking for references just the same! :P