Hire humble people who argue.

Category: Selecting for character

I read an article on Google’s interview process. Google, Microsoft, Intel, in past would get quoted for their intense, often absurd hiring questions. How many gas stations are there in the country? How many manhole covers need replacement in the next decade? Give three steps towards ending world hunger. Show your work of course. Nobody cared about the answer, only how you approached the problem. There is value in seeing how someone’s brain works, but does it influence job effectiveness? Creative people can have high IQs, but they tend to have many more options and therefore suffer less roadblocks. Chimps aren’t that smart but they sure have options, they’re very creative. These questions all reveal how you approached the problem, the process, not the answer. If we wanted answers, we’d use Google. What’s the correlation between interview scores and job performance? Google’s HR VP, Laszlo Bock tells us, “zero relationship.” Google has shifted to finding character qualities such as learning ability, appropriate leadership, humility, ownership, and expertise. Bock says, “If you don’t have humility, intellectual humility, you’ll never be able to learn.” Bottom line, the information that we get from an interview is not that useful. The character qualities it reveals are very useful. Only character will tell us if this person “will” do the work. The funny thing about character, we all see it but tend to look past it. A well dressed candidate with a nice resume, will still get hired faster than deep thinking, committed, serious, boring, often unsure, humble candidates. They also get elected more frequently. Google has it down to deciding on character especially humble people who argue. Okay, I’m going to try that in the next interview. Let’s build great companies by selecting great people. Thank you Wolf Partner, Metrik Management Inc. 1. Creative people can also be very smart. The creative component is what kicks up options. 2. Source: Google article, Fast Company. Drake Baer. 3. “My bad” is false humility. It’s glibly streaking past your mistakes. There’s no humility, only arrogance, in saying “my bad.” Our website: managing.ca