The Challenge of Hiring People

This video of Malcolm Gladwell talking about the challenge of hiring people is fabulous. The question he addresses is, “How do you hire the right person?”

He talks about the Mismatch Problem. Recruiters: Watch and weep.

BTW: If you’re asking new hires about their college GPAs, stop it now. It’s ridiculous. It has nothing to do with how well someone will do at work. (Um, I graduated with high honors in undergrad and grad school, so it’s not sour grapes.)

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Frank Roche 
Filed Under Recruiting

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    Gladwell's presentation is utterly useless. He draws some interesting sports analogies and makes some good points. He's right that our ability to measure human performance and potential is flawed. However, he fails to suggest a better process for hiring people. He says to give them a shot at the job and then make a subjective judgment of performance. From a practical hiring perspective, that is an impossible solution. Hiring criteria, behavioral interviewing and assessment centers are not perfect hiring tools, but they provide extra data and information for making the best hiring decision possible.

    If he is going to trash the status quo, he should offer a plausible alternative.
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    Oh,my. Malcom Gladwell has singlehandedly validated what I have suspected for over thirty years - there are few effective methods for hiring the right people.
    I have dedicated much of my HR career in trying to match people to jobs effectively. I've used sophisticated processes and also hired on gut feel. It seems that both were equally reliable or equally unreliable for making good hires.
    In some strange way, I am relieved to hear the news. It doesn't relieve me of my responsibility to hire the best, however. Hopefully, my batting average has been high with the use of the tools and my intuition.
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    Hi Ann, the Gladwell piece was the thought-provoking start. He's got a book he's releasing in November, in which he talks about solutions. One of the big ones is about "gut feel," what he talked about in Blink and what Ron says here.

    Measures matter, but it's always good to step back and make sure we don't do them just because. Many measures are just dead wrong. For example, GPA and success as a lawyer have no correlation whatsoever. Desire, interest, real world practicality, those matter.

    One of the best hiring managers I know would be as likely to hire an MBA as an archeologist. He was looking for smart people with varied interests. I like people who don't follow rules to work at our shop, and I don't think that would come on a standard test.

    You're right, getting the best people is right. But I do think psych exams is just a waste of time. I'd be interested to hear something different, but any that I've had experience with are great at providing all kinds of "data" and very little in the way of results. Have you seen them work? And can you claim reliable correlations?

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