There are lots of tools out there to help you hire people. But, let me ask you this – have we gotten better at hiring because of application management systems, standardized corporate assessment practices, and industrial psychologists? What about new social tools like Klout? Here’s an interesting article on how Klout recommends you consult their scoring system before making any hires and one man’s view of that:
I have to admit, I signed up for Klout and got all wound up about it and realized my score was 10 on a scale that goes to 100. That’s not great but I’m going to play the game and see if my score improves. It may even get better with this blog post and your reaction to it.
I have some personal experience with industrial psychologists, don’t we all? A friend of mine recently spent a whole day being tortured by pre-work, online assessments, a series of personality and intellectual tests under time duress and then role plays that included responding to an e-mail box full of e-mails and acting out a live scenario. Really? I think I’d rather just pay for therapy so I’d get something out of it.
This reminds me of one of my favorite movies – Tommy Boy. Do you remember the scene where Tommy (Chris Farley) was trying to make a sale using an old joke of his dad’s? His prospect said that he’d like to get a look at the new brake pad line before making a decision about buying break pads. Tommy was trying to overcome this obstacle with “when you’re trying to buy a good steak, do you stick your head up a bull’s ass or would you rather just take the butcher’s word for it?” but instead I think he suggested that his prospect stick his head up a butcher’s ass and there wasn’t any steak involved. I laughed until I cried. Eventually, he found his own style and was successful at influencing people using that style, not trying to be someone else.
I was in a meeting recently where two different senior people said that their interviewing style drives their HR people crazy but they focus on “intellectual curiosity” and have different ways of getting there. Their focus is on trying to get to know the person and how they think, not asking a bunch of questions about problem solving ability and conflict management. My favorite interviewing strategy is from Zappos.com. They are quite seriously looking for weirdness and trying to harness creativity to deliver great customer service. They have some very different interview questions like “What’s your theme song? When you enter a room, what song should be playing?” Mine is probably “Small Town” by John Mellencamp. Why don’t we trust people to hire people anymore? Isn’t that how it used to be done when people spent an entire career at one company? I’d hire Chris Farley if he were still around.
The view from the suburbs 