Business

I am a Suitor.  As described in my last post, a Suitor is an executive who tends to spend all of his energy selling a candidate on the opportunity in an interview. A Suitor spends his time talking and virtually no time listening. Suitors land their share of candidates, but they take their chances with the candidate actually being a good fit.

My previous posts addressed voodoo hiring tactics numbers 1 through 6 from Geoff Smart's book entitled Who.  The following are numbers 7 through 10:

7.  The Chatterbox. This technique has a lot in common with the “la-di-da” interview. The conversation usually goes something like this: “How about them Yankees! Man, the weather is rough his time of year. You grew up in California? So did I!” Although enjoyable, the method does nothing to help you make a good decision. You’re supposed to be picking up a future trusted colleague, not someone with whom you can bat around baseball stats.

8.  The Psychological and Personality Tester. The Handbook of Industrial/Organizational Psychology recommends against using these types of tests for executive selection decisions, and with good reason. Asking a candidate a series of bubble-test questions like “Do you tease small animals?” or “Would you rather be at a cocktail party or the library on a Friday night?” is not useful (although both are actual questions on popular psychological tests), and it’s certainly not predictive of success on the job. Savvy candidates can easily fake the answers based on the job for which they are vying.

9.  The Aptitude Tester. Tests can help managers determine whether a person has the right aptitude for a specific role, such as persistence for a business development position, but they should never become the sole determinant in a hiring decision. As we’ll see in Chapter 2, aptitude is only part of a much larger equation. Use these tests as screening tools if you like, but do not use them in isolation.

10.  The Fortune Teller. Just like a fortune-teller looking in a crystal call to predict the future, some interviewers like to ask their candidates to look into the future regarding the job at hand by asking hypothetical questions: “What would you do? How would you do it? Could you do it?” Fifty years of academic literature on interview methods makes a strong case against using these types of questions during interviews. For example, asking, “If you were going to resolve a conflict with a co-worker, how would you do it?” is sure to get the response, “Well, I would sit my co-worker down, listen to her concerns, and design a win-win solution with her.” Maybe. Then again, maybe not. The answer sounds nice, but we question how many people would actually do those things. Remember, it’s the walk that counts, not the talk.

According to Smart, "All these voodoo hiring methods share an assumption that it’s easy to assess a person. Just find the right gimmicks, pop the right quiz, and trust the scattered chicken bones to point the way, and you’re certain to have great hiring outcomes. Beyond that, we’re all prone to certain cognitive traps. We want to make quick decisions to get on with things. We like to see people as fundamentally truthful. We wish that it were so, but one of the painful truths of hiring is this: it is hard to see people for who they really are."

Despite the current economic climate, many of my clients (especially those Indiana technology and software licensing businesses) are in periods of strategic high growth.  My business law firm is also in a period of expansion and looking to add attorneys and staff over the next few months.  Let's work on our interviewing skills and fitting the right persons to the job.