Agreed completely. But how do you get more information cheaply?
Remember, all you know is P(qualified| resume says autodidactic)= P(qualified | autodidactic) * P(autodidactic | resume says autodidactic) . The second term can easily kill you. Do you trust everything people put on their resume?
On the other hand, P(degree | resume says degree) is probably close to 1, since a degree is so easy for an HR person to check.
Look, I've got nothing against hiring good people who have no degree, and I certainly don't think a degree proves much (my current students prove that conclusively). If you know you have such a good person, hire them, ignore the degree.
I'm just pointing out that the game is to find the good people. And that's a bit tricky to do.
[edit: by this way, in the interest of clarifying, what you want to optimize is not candidate quality, but (candidate quality - search costs). Don't ignore the search costs term.]
Remember, all you know is P(qualified| resume says autodidactic)= P(qualified | autodidactic) * P(autodidactic | resume says autodidactic) . The second term can easily kill you. Do you trust everything people put on their resume?
On the other hand, P(degree | resume says degree) is probably close to 1, since a degree is so easy for an HR person to check.
Look, I've got nothing against hiring good people who have no degree, and I certainly don't think a degree proves much (my current students prove that conclusively). If you know you have such a good person, hire them, ignore the degree.
I'm just pointing out that the game is to find the good people. And that's a bit tricky to do.
[edit: by this way, in the interest of clarifying, what you want to optimize is not candidate quality, but (candidate quality - search costs). Don't ignore the search costs term.]