EVERYTHING is so much easier when the right people are in the right jobs.
Productivity is higher. Morale too.
But it’s not so easy to hire the right people, is it?
We include our favorite tips on the subject in our workshop: 4 Ways to Maximize People Resources, a very popular one, especially now with everyone trying to do more with less.
One of our suggestions is to go beyond the standard interview questions. Most candidates have practiced these over and over in order to put their best foot forward. It’s important to dig deeper with the questions. And if at all possible ask for work product to be created or completed right there on the spot. If you’ve never hired a typist who couldn’t type or a proofreader who couldn’t spell or a copywriter who couldn’t write, believe me. It can happen. Having them do an assignment let’s you see their work in advance. Include a dose of your company’s culture into the assignment and you’ll also get an indication of how suited they are to your environment.
So – what does all of that have to do with Ken Auletta’s book, Googled? Well – I’m on page 98 where there is a perfect example of this. You can be sure that we’ll be adding it to our workshop materials. But I just had to put the book down to share it with you here and now.
It’s about Google founder, Sergey Brin’s, interview with Harvard alum and contracts lawyer, Allisa Lee. Here’s a passage from the book:
Brin said, “I really need to see how you will practice law. I need you to draw me a contract. Don’t spend a lot of time on it. Draft it and send it to me and to David so we can review your work.” And then came the Google test: “I need the contract to be for me to sell my soul to the devil.” Brin remembered his request and recalled: “I just figured that if I’m interviewing an attorney I should validate their work product.”
Lee remembered repeating the question, not sure she had heard it correctly. Brin told her he wanted the contract e-mailed to him in the next thirty minutes. “Amid the surreal oddity of it all,” she recalled, “I had forgotten to ask him all sorts of lawyerly questions, like what sort of protections he needed, what conditions he wanted to attach, and what he wanted in return for his soul. But then I realized that I had missed the point. he was looking for someone who could embrace a curveball, even relish it, and thrive in the process of tackling something unexpected.”
Lee was hired and is now Google’s associate general counsel.
So – next time you are interviewing candidates for a position, think in advance about a test or assignment you can give them. if you have a huge number of candidates, it might not be practical to do it with all of them. But you could certainly do it with the final candidates. And by doing so, the chances are high that your choice will be clear. Without even having to sell your soul to the devil.
copyright 2010 – Business Class Inc
