Is it wiser to hire people without meeting them?
I’ve just come across a great article from Fast Company. It’s around hiring new people. And we all know that once the economy turns, and business increases, we’re going to need new people.
This particular article focuses on how we weight interviews in the hiring process. And how we may be making some very large mistakes in the process.
With so little proof that interviews work, why do we rely on them so
much? Because we all think we’re good at it. We are Barbara Walters or
Mike Wallace, taking the measure of the person. Psychologist Richard
Nisbett calls this the “interview illusion” — our certainty that we’re
learning more in an interview than we really are.
Late last year Malcolm Gladwell released his new book ‘Outliers’. It’s a long story to go into on a blog post, but I’m of the opinion, having read the book, that you’d be better off simply choosing candidates born between January and April and ditching the rest. Quicker, cheaper, and some great odds : )
It certainly is going to be interesting to see what we learn once the re-hiring starts up?
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Nice thoughts, Barrie,
In almost every other area of endeavour that looks for talent, interviews are a last resort. As the article points out, if you’re looking for a talented sports person, you’d get them out on the field and watch them in action. You’d look at past performance and their record. You’d get testimonials. You’d try them out. But you wouldn’t just rely on an interview.
It’s amazing how good interviewers think they actually are. And how they think they can ask better questions than today’s young talent can anticipate. My favourite interview question is still, “What are your weaknesses?”. How many books have been written helping people to answer that question with a weakness that sounds like a strength (I always say that I am driven to succeed so much that I cause stress to those around me by pushing them too far too fast – a debilitating weakness that is).
So, yes, let’s move beyond the traditional interview. It’s going to fun as hiring starts to pick up. I don’t think are ready for the talent tsunami to come…
I was born in October – guess there’s no chance anyone will hire me!