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Ask HN: How can recruiters select for high integrity?

10 points by wiggler00m ↗ HN
Simplifying: I want to optimize hiring for integrity, intelligence, and energy.

Vouches and references are helpful in gauging a candidate's integrity, but I want to learn of other approaches that might help filter out people who lack integrity.

The definition of integrity is subjective but that's probably beyond the scope of this post.

10 comments

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andrelaszlo
Can you expand a little bit on the question? I think I understand what you are asking but maybe a concrete scenario or some sort of example would make it easier to start a discussion?
janbernhart
It's tricky, because as soon as you (as a test) start fishing for information they shouldn't provide, you'll come across as having low integrity yourself. Which will scare away the right folks and attract the wrong ones.
randomvectors
“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”

-- Warren Buffet

This is what your post is based on, right?

Some managers will be better judges of character than others but as soon as you formalize the process, you also very likely open it up to be exploited by people with low integrity and high intelligence.

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cbluth
This is why the human element to recruiting will never go away.
duxup
Maybe by folks who are good at recruiting, but I'm not sure how many of those people there are.
JoachimSchipper
The usual answer is background checks, no?

(If nothing else, ensuring that employees don't e.g. have massive debt makes it less likely that an otherwise-reliable person feels forced into doing something bad...)

duxup
I wonder how often a pressure like debt really plays a part in bad choices in the day to day business world.