From: aw3a+@andrew.cmu.edu (Anatole Wilson)
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc
Subject: they really want SALARY
Date: 7 Nov 92 09:57:17 GMT
Article-I.D.: andrew.Aez1yRC00iUzA1rn1V
Organization: Masters student, English, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Okay Mark, roll your sleeves up. This is a long one...

>I think that you will agree
>that one or two supporting cases are statistically insignificant.

I think the point is that people are not statistics, and none of us want
our personal worth evaluated on a scale that is realy only accurate for
large scales of information, be it years of experience or average salary
increases. 
    I realize that, for the hiring manager, this is just another
position to fill, and generalizations make the system work more
smoothly. That's also a justification for the way our legal system
works. Defendants come and go, but the lawyers and judges are always
there, so "deals" are cut in packages. If you were a defendant, would
you want your innocence or guilt and subsequent punishment decided on
its individul merits or by a statistical method, based on their
experience with other cases? Similarly, any hiring manager who bases
decisions on any statistical method is being unfair to the individual.
No one wants to get chewed up by the system. 

>> One company I worked at based salaries on a scale that took into
>> account the industry average for each position and the level of
>> decision-making required in the position. Not 100% objective, but
>> there were no unknowns.
> 
>This is typical of many companies, particularly for technical
>positions.  The question just changes form; how do you evaluate an
>employee's level of responsibility in a former company?

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. The company evaluated the
position they were offering, not previous positions of the candidate.
This gave them an objective scale for making an initial offer, and for
awarding pay increases. (You'll note that pay increases would then
depend upon industry averages, not the employee's particular worth.)

>Imagine you are a hiring manager.  You have two candidates who have
>similar backgrounds.  Each candidate gave you a well written resume
>with nice adjectives.  You have talked to both candidates in person.
>They are both qualified for the position.  Who do you choose?  
> 
>Hint: You know from experience that bad resumes nearly always mean
>poor workers, but good resumes do not necessarily mean that candidates
>will be a good employees.  You also know that you cannot evaluate a
>person in only a few hours.  You have to turn to the people who have
>worked with the candidates day in and day out for many years.
>However, you know that even the worst employees can usually find three
>people who will say something nice about them.  
> 
>You end up choosing the candidate who's salary history shows some ups
>and downs but is generally good with respect to the environment from
>which he/she came.

Your conclusion is a jump in logic. I'd like to hear from some more
hiring managers as to what their conclusion would be. You're also
assuming knowledge about the "environment" the candidate came from.

>The average person works for about 40 years.  People with ten or more
>years of experience in one or more careers comprise nearly 75% of the
>labor pool.  This hardly excludes a major segment of the working
>population or greatly limits the utility of the analysis.  

25% isn't a major segment of the working population? I'm sure (soon to
be ex-) President Bush would have loved having you analyze the
unemployment statistics. That means that for every four positions you
fill, you picked the wrong candidate for one of those positions. (Okay,
statistically you probably have a slightly better chance than that, but
for argument's sake, it's accurate.) Even so, is this a record you would
want to stand on?

>> I'm a writer, and a very good writer.
> 
>If you are taking classes at CMU, you couldn't be that good. :-)

Oooooh. Hey buddy, I know where your desk is, and thirteen evil things
to do to a computer. So watch it.


Anatole Wilson
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Business and Technical   Yeah, and an MAPW student at CMU. 
Communications           Wanna make something of it?                    
         
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