I was rereading an old
issue of the Harvard Business Review (June 2005) and came across an interesting
article on Herb Greenberg, CEO of Caliper, a human resource consulting firm.
Blind since childhood, Greenberg gave some great advice on “Knowing What
to Listen For” when interviewing candidates. All too often, managers tend to
place a lot of importance on appearances and presentation or misread visual cues. The interview that ensues then becomes skewed according to
those first visual impressions.
In a nutshell, Greenberg states that character is more important than presentation, thus the need to rely less on appearance and visual cues. For him, the key to hiring people is “to find out what drives them <and to> try to get at what is genuine.” Not surprisingly, he pays close attention to a person’s voice. From that, along with good questions about their accomplishments and failures, you can derive a sense of that person's inner character.
In fact, not only has he consulted to corporations, but also for professional sports teams, revealing that evaluating professional athletes is very similar to evaluating corporate professionals. Athletes clearly need talent, but if they don’t have the drive, or “inner fire” to push themselves, they won’t win or succeed. It’s the same in the corporate world. Listening for and getting at that inner drive and motivation is key.
It's interesting to note here about the belief held by some hiring managers and recruiters that meeting people face to face is essential in finding a good candidate. I think every siutation, positions and company is different - so it all depends. But this goes to show that meeting face to face is not a prerequisite for finding out whether a candidate is good or not.
I'd like to quickly add here a story from Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink:The Power of Thinking
without Thinking. As the classical music world began to implement “blind” auditions in
the past thirty years, the make-up of the orchestra changed
drastically. Historically dominated by white male musicians who were often thought to be superior musicians than women, the number of
women winning orchestra auditions increased five-fold since screens were placed between the musician and the judges. How’s that for relying less on sight and getting genuine results?
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