BOLD: Reinventing Hiring

Hiring is a process that creates too much risk.  It needs a bold makeover.  As practiced by most companies, hiring is illogical.  We are encouraged to evaluate a candidate’s fitness for duty with no real data.  Why is it considered normal to make a hasty decision about a long-term commitment?  That’s not merely illogical, it’s stupid.  It is easy to hire someone and radically difficult to fire someone.  Nonetheless, we hire as if we’re afraid to truly know and test the person.

For the large, financially healthy, and smart companies (that’s a small group) there are answers to this conundrum.  They use longer interviewing processes, extensive testing, and finely tuned assessment centers combined with real applied work to evaluate potential new hires.  This substantially increases the odds they will find good talent that will mesh with the organization’s culture.  Very cool – and ridiculously expensive.