Comments on: Toward a More Efficient Labor Market

By: dave schutz

dave schutz — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:07:13 +0000

“Asked to promote an officer who had already shown talent, bravery and leadership, Napoleon, it is said, would always ask “Is he lucky?””

So maybe the question about this math department chair should be: “Is he short?”

By: offshore

offshore — Tue, 18 May 2010 16:58:17 +0000

Toward a More Efficient Labor Market at Steven Landsburg The Big Questions Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics Economics and Physics best post. I has been collection in my blog. 2010/08/08

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:04:46 +0000

Have each candidate view and evaluate the records of the other candidates, ranking them in the order they would hire them if they were on the selection committee. Then select the Condorecet winner (if any). A qualified candidate can probably detect weaknesses in other candidates, and unqualified candidates will probably be rated lowly by others.

There might be an argument that this is open to collusion between candidates, either to artificially raise one of their members to get the job (though this only benefits one of them), or to artificially bury more qualified candidates to punish the school if those from a particular group are not selected. However, if a group of people selected someone who was unqualified, they could be considered unqualified as well, harming their future job prospects and making contrarians seem more qualified (or at least more honest). And of course, the school doing the hiring could cross check both the rankings and the reasoning for such ranks in order to weed out the dishonest.

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 15 May 2010 23:06:41 +0000

Steve, my apologies for not having read The Big Questions yet, but surely such an announcement will generally be seen as an explicit admission that said department is no better (and likely a level beneath) Stanford etc. Which might not be too horrible in itself, for high enough values of Stanford, but... Harold, I appreciated both of your comments. Richard, the fellow must be lucky. After all, he has become chairman of his math department! Oh... wait...

By: Tweets that mention Toward a More Efficient Labor Market at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics -- Topsy.com

Fri, 14 May 2010 19:08:42 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by syllabub69. syllabub69 said: http://bit.ly/cRo9dh How to recruit smart – randomly reject half the applicants, thus removing the 'unlucky' ones [...]

By: JLA

JLA — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:57:05 +0000

Perhaps the reason top school’s don’t free ride on each other is because a candidate who may be a great fit at one school may be an awful fit at another school. So much depends on a candidate’s research and their future research agenda.

By: Jonathan Kariv

Jonathan Kariv — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:51:27 +0000

As a math grad student this makes me happier about the places that rejected me :-)

By: Michael Bishop

Michael Bishop — Fri, 14 May 2010 15:21:24 +0000

People take pride in evaluating candidates with care. Candidates take pride in having been evaluated positively. That is why your proposed outsourcing doesn’t happen openly, behind the scenes, it probably does happen. That is, people probably rely on reputation rather than focusing purely on the quality of someone’s work.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 14 May 2010 14:52:09 +0000

Didn’t David Brent do that on the UK version of the office?

Your friend is not very original, but I can’t fault him on his taste in TV shows

By: Ken B

Ken B — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:51:18 +0000

SL has withheld a key piece of information: what school is this. Perhaps the lucky one are ones not hired? In that case other schools can easily free ride on this plan, by accepting only candidates he does not interview?