Category Archives: Selection

Skills matter. Experience matters. Performance matters.

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Skills, skills, skills, skills…

If you’ve been around HR tech for two minutes in the last five years, “skills” is basically all you’ve heard. Well, okay, “skills” and “AI.” The HR Tech community is jamming skills down your throat like a new pharmaceutical drug that cures narcissism.

Why do we feel “skills” are so important?

  1. Hiring by skill is thought to eliminate bias. It’s not about relationships, or what school you went to, or that you went to school at all, or what color your skin is. If you have the skill to do the job, you should be hired to do the job.
  2. As a concept in organizations, skills seem to connect a lot of dots. We can measure skills and make a giant inventory of all the skills we have, and our all-knowing executive team can tell what skills we need in the future, and we can build those skills to be ready.

In theory, hiring and promoting people based on skill makes a lot of sense. In reality, it’s super hard to pull off. It’s difficult to truly assess someone’s skill in most areas. We just don’t have enough black-and-white skills measures that truly differentiate nor do we have the ability to build all the skills we believe we need.

Does “experience” matter?

The folks on the skills side of the fence want you to believe experience is an outdated concept being sold to you by “the man.” Or, more specifically, by men who have traditionally controlled the world in so many ways. Some of that is also true. But that doesn’t mean that experience doesn’t matter. It does.

You are about to go to prison for a crime you didn’t commit. You can choose between two lawyers. Both passed the bar to demonstrate their “skill” as an attorney. For one, this will be their first case. For the other, it will be their 2,000th case. Who will you choose? You are about to go into a life-saving brain surgery. You have two surgeons to choose from. Both of whom passed their boards at the highest level. One has performed over 1,000 of this specific operation. One has done 50. Which one will you choose?

There is a piece of this skills revolution that also is veiled in ageism. One of the reasons “skills” has risen is that young people are sick of old people getting hired and promoted over them. Old people who might not have the same skill level, but definitely have more experience. We can’t just say stop hiring them because they’re old, but we can say stop hiring them because I have higher “skill.” So, if it’s only about skill, we eliminate the ageism bias.

Your experience actually does matter.

Wait, what about performance?

Here’s where I get a bad feeling in my stomach around “skills.” It’s not just that a person has a certain skill, but how they perform in that skill. The reason we say “experience” doesn’t matter because there are dozens of academic studies that have shown that when we measure new hires and we take a look at their resumes and their previous job experience, there is very little correlation between where they worked previously and the job they had, to success in the new job and company.

That isn’t because experience doesn’t matter. It’s because high-performing experience matters!

Therein lies our problem. We can’t measure the performance of someone’s past job.

Let’s get back to our lawyer and doctor examples. What if I now told you that our lawyer, who has tried over 2,000 cases, actually lost every case? You would obviously try the inexperienced lawyer! Same with our doctor. The doctor who had 1,000 brain surgeries under their belt has a success rate of 10%. But our 50 case doctor has a success rate of 90%!

But wait, what if I tell you the “experienced” doctor only takes on the most difficult last-chance cases? And the less experienced doctor is given the “easy” cases where the vast majority of patients are thought to recover. Does that make a difference? You see how complicated “experience” as a factor can be.

Performance matters a great deal!

If you are looking to hire the best talent, it’s not only about skill. It’s about choosing individuals who have the skill to do that job at a baseline, then looking at their experience and their performance, and probably their intrinsic motivation. This is why a job sample is the number one predictor of a new hire performing well on the job. If they can actually do the job, successfully, then it stands to show they will probably be successful when we hire them. Although, even that isn’t guaranteed. We then add in factors like culture, leadership, peer support, etc.

It turns out hiring is really hard.

So, why is everyone saying the future of talent is skills?

I believe it’s because this is something we can control. It’s tangible and feels like something that can work. I can try and measure for skill. I can assess and build for skill. It seems obtainable, and it seems like something better than our past hiring based on experience.

In reality, hiring and promoting should have always been about skill. And experience. And performance. I want to hire highly skilled people that have amazing experiences and have performed in their previous jobs at a very high level.

What I don’t want to do is blindly hire and promote based on someone’s ability to demonstrate they can do a bunch of random skills. A job and performing in that job is not just about doing a bunch of random skills. That simplifies what employees do down too far. People and work are much more complex than just skills.

Skills. Experience. Performance. I want to hire the complete package. Be careful selling “skills” as a strategy to your executives. Most executives have great experience and high performance, and they actually believe that matters. Because it does.

I want to know how the sausage is made.

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I’m a curious person. I’m sure I drove my parents crazy as a boy. I was that kid who asked “why” a lot. It’s in my nature to want to know how stuff works and why things happen. I like to be in the know.

Growing up, my Dad would say, “no one wants to know how the sausage gets made.” Because, as it turns out, the process of making sausage is gross. There are a lot of parts being used. The theory being if people knew how the sausage gets made, they wouldn’t want to eat it. But sausage is delicious, so it better not know and just enjoy. Dumb and happy.

I want to know how the sausage gets made. It doesn’t stop me from enjoying it.

I tend to enjoy being around others who have the same mentality. I like people who are intellectually curious. I find myself drawn to that personality type. I also find myself withdrawing from the opposite. Anyone who says, “Well, I don’t care, it tastes good, and that’s good enough for me,” perplexes me. I know I shouldn’t, but I tend to question their intelligence. How the heck could you not care? Why don’t you want to know? Aren’t you even a bit curious?

Of course, this is rarely about the sausage!

When I look at the people in my life who are super successful, they all share this trait. They are curious to a fault. They want to understand things. They want to learn new things. They have the desire to see things work better.

This doesn’t mean that all of these things they can fix. But they have the knowledge of why it’s broken and what they can do or not do to make it better. Just being curious isn’t a superpower. If you add in self-motivation and some intelligence, well then, that combination might be a superpower!

So, how do we find folks who are curious?

I heard a hiring manager recently ask this question, and I kind of love it:

“Tell me something new you learned in the past three days.”

For those who are curious, we are learning new stuff every single day! So, just picking one from the last three days isn’t as hard as it might sound on the fly. Just yesterday, I went down a rabbit hole on how to eliminate ground bee nests using dry ice and the science behind it (BTW – don’t try this at home, it doesn’t work well).

So many questions. Why bees? Why dry ice? It turns out I hate bees. It’s spring and getting warm, so why not be ready? Dry ice? I don’t know, it sounded different, and maybe it’s as effective as using chemicals since I have dogs. See, you can learn more than you want to know!

My grandmother would always say, “Curiosity killed that cat.” Again, you can tell my entire family got sick of me asking questions. But I also don’t like cats, so it didn’t bother me much. We tend to have a problem with people asking too many questions. Certain people become wary of those asking too many questions. As parents, we become frustrated with answering questions from our kids over and over. I actually love little kids who ask a million whys! It’s like a game to see how far I can string them along.

As we look at talent, especially this spring, in trying to decide between a bunch of entry-level talent that all looks the same on paper, I believe those who are curious need more consideration. The world is filled with people who will follow commands and not ask why. What we need is a few more people asking why.

I’m Your King for Pretty Research!!! #HireMorePrettyPeople

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If you read this blog for a while, you know I’m absolutely fascinated, almost to an unhealthy level, with research about pretty people. First, as a society, we throw way too much praise and privilege at attractive people. Take a look at Instagram follower numbers. Take a look at TikTok follower numbers. We love to pay attention to pretty people!

So, the world of academia did not disappoint, and once again came out with another study that proves my point. Pretty people, on average, are better than ugly people! But this one has a nice little wrinkle that I think most of us will like.

First, I have to come clean with a confession.

I have a disorder. I think it would probably be considered mental, but it has to do with the physical body, so it’s in a confusing space. I have Reverse Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Stop! Before you go all crazy and try to cancel me, I’m not making fun of people that have Body Dysmorphic Disorder! As Taylor Swift poetically says, “You need to calm down.”

100% True Story. When I look in the mirror, I honestly think to myself, “You know what, kid, not bad. People could do worse. Have a great day!” I look at myself getting ready in the morning and think I look pretty damn good!

I then, later that same exact day, will see a picture of myself that someone took and go, “For the love of God! How did I turn into Shrek on stage!” That my reverse body dysmorphia. Some people look in the mirror and see Shrek when they should see a prince. I see a prince when I should probably just see some middle-aged dude who needs to work out more!

Why do I share this confession? Because this new research as it helps me make sense of my own dilemma. The University of Missouri and DePaul University researchers found that pretty people have better lives! Okay, it’s a little more involved than that, but that is my layman’s take on the research! Surprise, surprise! Pretty people’s lives are better! Who knew?!

From the research:

Three studies examined the association between physical attractiveness and meaning in life. Study 1 (N = 305 college students) showed that self-reported physical attractiveness positively correlated with meaning in life. Study 2 (N = 598 noncollege adults) replicated the association between self-reported physical attractiveness and meaning in life and extended those findings, demonstrating that outside perceptions of attractiveness are linked to outside perceptions of how meaningful a person’s life is. Study 3 (N = 331 targets, 97 raters) replicated these findings and probed the nuances of the relationships between outside ratings and self-reports of attractiveness and meaning in life. Across the studies, existential significance, or the feeling that one’s life matters, was the facet of meaning that primarily explained the link between attractiveness and meaning in life. In addition, a person’s view of their own attractiveness is more indicative of their well-being than outsider ratings. Implications for our understanding of meaning in life are discussed.

Turns out, your perception of your own attractiveness is key to your life outlook!

I think this is why our mothers tell us we are all pretty and handsome, even when we aren’t. There’s a chance we just might believe them, and in the end, that’s all that matters! The key is you truly have to believe it. You can’t just be like, “Girl, I slay!” and then ten minutes later, look in the mirror and see flaws.

I love pretty research because it’s all truly based on this concept.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You might not think you’re beautiful, but if a majority of people you surround yourself with think you’re beautiful, well, your world will be a better place. If you truly are attractive, but you surround yourself with people who make you feel ugly, well, your world is awful.

I’m not blind, but I’ve met some blind people and have had this conversation about pretty. Their definition of pretty is way different than mine, and it makes me envious. I would love to “see” the world through their non-seeing eyes for a bit to understand the power of that ability. To see someone as attractive based on non-physical attributes would definitely make our world a better place. We get a bit of this when we meet someone who we feel is of average attractiveness, but the more we get to know the person, the more they become attractive to us. Or, meeting someone who we find very attractive and they open their mouth, and immediately you view them as less attractive.

So, maybe my hypothesis about hiring more pretty people needs to change a little bit. The new hypothesis will be “hire more people who truly believe they are pretty”!

The Trait Every Employer is Looking for in a New Employee

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Don’t buy into the hype! “Oh, just do what you love!” That’s not being an adult. That’s being a moron! Just do what makes you happy! No, that’s what a child does.

“Tim, we just want to hire some ‘adults’!” I hear this statement from a lot of CEOs I talk with currently!

That means most of the people they are hiring aren’t considered adults by these leaders. Oh, they fit the demographic of being an adult from an age perspective, but they still act like children!

I tell people when I interview them and they ask about our culture, I say, “We hire adults.”

That means we hire people into positions where they are responsible for something. Because we hire adults, they take responsibility for what they are responsible for. If I have to tell them to do their jobs, they’re not adults, they’re children. We don’t employ children.

I think about 70% of the positions that are open in the world could have the same title –

“Wanted: Adults”.

Those who read that and got it could instantly be hired, and they would be above-average employees for you! Those who read it and didn’t understand are part of the wonder of natural selection.

How do you be an Adult?

– You do the stuff you say you’re going to do. Not just the stuff you like, but all the stuff.

– You follow the rules that are important to follow for society to run well. Do I drive the speed limit every single time? No. Do I come to work when my employer says I need to be there? Yes.

– You assume positive intent on most things. For the most part, people will want to help you, just as you want to help others. Sometimes you run into an asshole.

– You understand that the world is more than just you and your desires.

– You speak up for what is right when you can. It’s easy to say you can always speak up for what is right, but then you wouldn’t be thinking like an adult.

– You try and help those who can’t help themselves. Who can’t, not who won’t?

My parents and grandparents would call this common sense, but I don’t think ‘being an adult’ is common sense anymore. Common sense, to be common, has to be done by most. Being an adult doesn’t seem to be very common lately!

So, you want to hire some adults? I think this starts with us recognizing that being an adult is now a skill in 2021. A very valuable skill. Need to fill a position, maybe we start by first finding adults, then determining do we need these adults to have certain skills, or we can teach adults those skills!

The key to great hiring in today’s world is not about attracting the right skills, it’s about attracting adults who aren’t just willing to work but understand the value of work and individuals who value being an adult.

I don’t see this as a negative. I see it as an opportunity for organizations that understand this concept. We hire adults first and skills second. Organizations that do this will be the organizations that win.

The Motley Fool has a great section in their employee handbook that talks about being an adult:

“We are careful to hire amazing people. Our goal is to unleash you to perform at your peak and stay out of your way. We don’t have lots of rules and policies here by design. You are an amazing adult, and we trust you to carve your own path, set your own priorities, and ask for help when you need it.”

You are an amazing ‘adult,’ and we trust you…

If only it was so simple!

Hiring Managers! Job Seekers Are Judging You on These Two Criteria!

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If you’re out looking for a job, it usually feels like you’re being judged on every little thing you do, have done, or potentially will do in the future. Interestingly enough, a Harvard professor discovered you’re actually only judged on two things:

“People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating?

Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years and has discovered patterns in these interactions.

In her book, “Presence,” Cuddy says people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you:

 – Can I trust this person?

 – Can I respect this person?

Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence, respectively, and ideally, you want to be perceived as having both.

Interestingly, Cuddy says that most people, especially in a professional context, believe that competence is the more important factor. After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to handle your business.”

Trust and Respect.

I’ll add these are probably two things you’re being judged immediately following the judging that gets done on your overall appearance, which is almost instantaneous! Let’s face it, we like to hire pretty people.

Once you open your mouth, you’re being judged on how well you can trust what this person is telling me and if you respect their background, work ethic, where they came from, etc. Most of this is based on the person doing the judging, not you. I know, that sucks.

How do you help yourself?

1. Try and mirror the energy of the person who is interviewing you. If you come in all calm and cool, and the person who is interviewing is really upbeat and high energy, they’ll immediately question you as a fit.

2. Do research on who you’ll be interviewing with and try and get some sense of their background and story. Try and make some connections as fast as possible in the interview. This will help build trust and respect with this person. In today’s world, it’s not that hard to find out stuff about an individual. If HR sets up your interview, just politely ask who you will be interviewing with (the name).

3. Be interesting. Have a good story to tell, one that most people will find funny or interesting. Not too long. A good icebreaker to set off the interview in a great tone.

I tell people all the time. An interview isn’t a test, it’s just a conversation with some people you don’t know. We have these all the time. Sometimes you end up liking the people, sometimes, you don’t. If you don’t like the people you’re interviewing with, there’s a good chance you won’t like the job!

Hiring for High Give-a-Damn!

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Josh Zywien, the CMO of Paradox, made a great hire recently, and I sent him a note telling him so. I like to do that. He knows he made a great hire, but it’s always nice to get a note confirming your belief! If you don’t know Josh, you should give me a follow, he’s one of the good guys in our industry.

Josh responded to my note with a statement I wanted to share because it’s profound:

I like to hire people who have a ‘high give-a-damn’! 

I absolutely love that and told him I was stealing it!

What does hiring for High Give-a-Damn Mean? 

It’s one of those intangibles you know when you see it. Like porn. Hard to explain, but when I see it, I know what it is. High Give-a-Damn (HGD) individuals don’t just care about their job and their company. HGD is pervasive in all aspects of their life. You’ll see it come out in other ways away from their career as well.

The High Give-a-Damn Traits:

  • High attention to detail
  • Live an orderly life
  • Most likely, they have a well-kept house, clean, and probably make their bed every single morning.
  • Classic fashionable dress styles that don’t stand out, but you notice them
  • They say the right things and the right times
  • They can be counted on
  • Follow-through is impeccable
  • They give a shit about stuff that matters
  • Have a habit of taking care of their physical & mental self more than the average person.

People with HGD don’t drive around in a messy car with a coffee stain on their shirt. They might not have a lot of money, but what they have, they take care of. They do more with less because part of HGD is not to waste resources, both professionally and personally. So, you take care of your stuff. Part of your ‘stuff’ is your personal self.

I’ve written about organizations “Hiring Pretty” in the past. Scientific research shows that organizations that tend to hire more attractive people actually have higher results. There is a bit of this in HGD. Individuals with HGD most likely get the most out of the attractiveness they have.

It doesn’t mean the person has to be naturally ‘pretty,’ but think of the time when you took that one selfie, that one time when you were feeling super cute, had that one hat on, the light was right, and now it’s your favorite IG photo. Yeah, that, but now what if you did that every day? That’s HGD. “Felt cute, not ever gonna delete!”

Now, at this point, you might be saying, “Tim, all of this seems superficial. There is nothing here about skill or performance, about actually being able to do the job.” Yeah, I’m not only hiring for HGD and nothing else. This is about what if I had three people who had similar skill levels, education, and experience. At that point, my tiebreaker is, who has the most HGD?

Who is going to bring the most HGD to the team? Because in the end, when I’m going to war with my team, I want people who give a damn. Yeah, we might be making widgets for crackheads, but I still want people who want to make the best widgets for crackheads. People who want to make sure that crackhead has the best experience with our product and service. (Right now, Josh is like, WTF, how did I get in a Tim Sackett Blog Post with Crackheads!?)

Not enough Hiring Managers are hiring for HGD. In fact, as a society, we have kind of gone soft on HGD. We have this belief that you can be HGD in your personal life but not your professional life, or vice versa. The reality is true that HGD is always on or never on as a personality trait. You either give a damn about your life, or you don’t. I want to be around and work with people who are HGD.

What are we missing around Quality of Hire (QoH)?

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This week CrossChq released a report titled”The CrossChq “Q” Report” that was loaded with some research and data around the quality of hire. The quality of hire metric is like the holy grail of HR and Talent Acquisition! Everyone talks about it, but no one really feels like they know what it is and where they can get it!

Download the “Q” Report Here

Let’s dig into what they found

The one that will jump right out and make you question your own existence is this:

“Internal Referrals have a Quality of Hire -26% below the industry average”

What? The What?!

Since the beginning of time or at least the beginning of HR, we have all lived by one unbending truth! Referral hires were always of higher quality than some hires out of the general population. You get taught this in the first hour of the first day of HR and Recruiting school!

Turns out, we’ve been lied to or at least led to believe that referral hires were better when they weren’t. How could this be the case? Well, we love to believe in this one premise, which was probably never proven. We want to believe someone who works for us would never refer a candidate who wouldn’t be a great worker!

The reality is most people just refer friends or family, and they have no idea how that person works, nor do they really care. They just want to hang out all day with people they like, regardless of how they work!

Another thing in the report that was somewhat shocking:

“Interviews show only a 9% correlation rate to Quality of Hire!”

Okay, we all know that our hiring managers suck at interviewing. In fact, almost everyone sucks at interviewing! Why? For one, 90% of hiring managers don’t interview enough to ever sharpen that skill. On top of that, we are all too gullible and believe what we here and don’t dig in. BUT, this number is shocking!

I think most organization should be testing “no-interview” hiring. That doesn’t mean we don’t talk to people or try validated assessments (more on this in the study), but formal interviews with a 9% success rate are a giant waste of time!

This study is definitely worth a download and read. I’m always skeptical of vendor-based research, but I really like the effort, data, and quality of this one. I think it has some true merit. We all know we need to select better, but we mostly keep doing and believing the same stuff, without really any merit.

Does working for a bad boss help your career more than a good boss?

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If you’re like most people, you’ve probably worked for some good bosses and some bad bosses. The best bosses I worked for were supportive and empathetic. They cared about me as a person and supported me as a professional. The bad bosses usually just focused on themselves and what I could do for them.

I know many people who will talk about working for a terrible boss and actually show signs of professional PTSD! We joke, but sometimes the experience can be that awful. There was a recent study done with refugees who are survivors of torture. I’m not saying working for a bad boss is “torture,” but I know I can find some people who would argue it is!

Here goes, Tim! Good bosses, bad bosses, and torture survival!

The study mentioned above found that refugees who were tortured, compared to those who didn’t get tortured, became more resilient. That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, comes to mind.

I think the same can be said about working for a bad boss compared to a good boss.

Employers are constantly looking for resilient employees. We try to measure resiliency in pre-employment assessments. During the past few years, resilience as a hiring competency has been very hot.

I have this theory that working for a bad boss or a bad company that treats you poorly, in many ways, makes you a better employee than you working for a great boss and a great company. And it all has to do with raising your level of resilience! You see, when times are good, and things are relatively easy, you are exercising that resiliency muscle.

I’m not saying you get soft working for great leaders and great companies, but you might get a little soft!

We see this constantly in the world as we go through great economic times. Everyone gets a little softer. Hard economic times force us to work that resiliency muscle. To harden up a bit, to grow a thicker skin, put up with some stuff that we wouldn’t normally, to survive.

Bad Bosses and Bad Companies Make More Resilient Workers!

There’s a fine line between becoming resilient and getting broken. That’s the hard part. Like the study found, in some cases, a person just gives up and accepts their fate. They begin to believe this was somehow deserved. The key is to find the “survivors,” those who wouldn’t give in or give up. Those who actually become more resilient from their experiences. Those are your diamonds in the rough from an employee perspective.

Too often, we only want to hire from winners. “Well, they worked for Google. They must be awesome!” And they might be. But I want “awesome” and “resilient” when I know we’ll face tough times. When we have to dig ourselves out of a hole, from a business perspective, I want to have some people who have been in a hole before and found their way out!

Another option is looking for strong workers who work for a bad boss at a good employer. We all know the world, at every company, is littered with some bad bosses, no matter the brand. I have a feeling the same resilience is built up over time. Having to “deal” with a bad boss for a while, and figuring out how to be still productive and get things done is an amazing skill to have acquired in your career. Even though it won’t feel that way at the time!

Yep, today Tim wrote about how refugee torture victims and working for bad bosses is similar to how we build resilience. Now to work on a case study with my own team…

Stay hard.

Is More Efficient Recruiting Always Better? #TruthBomb

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If you’re in HR or TA and read this blog on a regular basis, you know I’m all for making our recruiting process as efficient as possible! Primarily because so many of us are woefully inefficient in using our technology and the belief that a more involved process must be a better process.

I’m a little nervous about the future and recruiting efficiency.

I think in our rush to become ever more efficient. We might miss out on some great talent. At this point in the recruiting tech stack, I can actually automate every single piece. Anything you have a person do in recruiting, I can automate. I can even ensure that candidates “don’t” get dispositioned if that’s how you like to play it! I mean, about 50% of you don’t do that now, so it seems like that is probably the way you like it.

If recruiting was only about taking a requirement, matching that requirement to available talent, screening that talent, interviewing that talent, assessing that talent, and onboarding that talent, well then, technology can do that better and more efficiently than humans at this point. But, I think recruiting has always been about getting the best talent for your organization.

Available vs. best is where the technology starts to fall down if talent truly makes a difference in your organization. Honestly, for many, “best available” will work just fine, and it has for decades. The vast majority of organizations are hiring the best available at this point.

Technology is exceptional at hiring the best available. Technology hasn’t figured out how to hire the best talent that isn’t openly available at this point. If you don’t have that talent in your database, and that talent isn’t active on LinkedIn or other job boards, technology has a really hard time getting your message in front of them.

The future of recruiting isn’t about efficiency. That is already here. The future of recruiting is about your organization’s ability to actually go out and discover who is the best talent for your organization. That person might not actually be on the “jobs internet,” or they were, but that was five years ago, so you’ll never see them as someone you want because the five years ago person isn’t the person you need today.

Efficient recruiting is great until it isn’t. If you suck at recruiting, then becoming more efficient at best practice recruiting (which recruiting technology can definitely make happen) will elevate your function for sure. But efficient recruiting isn’t world-class recruiting. It’s just efficient.

The best talent acquisition in the future will be able to go out and discover the talent that hasn’t been discovered by everyone else. We like to believe that everyone who is anyone is on LinkedIn, Indeed, or you name the site. But they are not, or they haven’t been active for a long time, so this is a hidden talent.

Too many TA shops are currently working too hard at becoming efficient and not hard enough at becoming experts of the talent for their industry and their marketplaces. You know I love technology. So, be great at technology, but don’t forget to be great at recruiting.

You Have No F@cking Idea What You Want!

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Can I be real a second?
For just a millisecond?
Let down my guard and tell the people how I feel a second?

We have a core problem in HR and Talent Acquisition that might be impossible to solve. On one side, we have hiring managers who think they know what they want, but any Recruiter can tell you that changes by the minute and by the candidate you put in front of them. Can you spell conscious bias?

On the other hand, we have candidates who truly believe they know what they want, but until they actually get into the job and work with the team and get a feel for how the culture works, they also have no clue of what they really want. Can you spell clueless?

All the while, the reality is that none of us really know what we want.

Oh, Timmy, I do! I want more money! Ugh, this new job with more money sucks!

Oh, Timmy, I do! I want passion and purpose in my work! Ugh, this new job doesn’t pay enough for me to live!

Oh, Timmy, I do! I want a job that pays me more than I should be making, makes me feel like I’m helping out the world in some major way, allows me to come and go as I please, and never asks me to produce any evidence of any work that I ever did!

Well, yes, yes, you do know what you want!

Even then, some idiot would find fault with that job. The brand isn’t cool anymore…(and here comes the throat punch!).

Humans are awful at knowing what they want and combining what’s best for them. We tend to pick things that make us feel good at the moment, but a week later, we hate ourselves for it. This makes employee selection super difficult. You have two people meeting each other for an hour, if you’re lucky and then making a life-changing decision. Turns out, that rarely works out well for either side.

We try to throw psychology and technology into the mix, and honestly, this would work better, but we still throw a human in the loop (candidate) at some point who basically can’t be honest with themselves or the A.I., and we can’t figure out why this entire thing keeps failing.

So, what should we do?

I think we should just select employees based on a lottery. “Are you interested in this job? and Do you meet the requirements?” Two yes’s, and you get a shot at the job lottery! Let the odds forever be in your favor! Good luck.

I mean, would it really be worse than what you’re doing right now?

I don’t know.

I hope you liked the picture of my puppy.