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I've hired people for a long, long time. Even with a bad economy, with a lot of prospects out there, it can feel like a crap shoot. Anything we can do to make it less so we should do.
Some utilize personality, strength/weakness and career orientation tests, for example. These evaluations can help, and I don't discourage their use, but so many things look good (or bad) on paper.
There is, of course, the actual sit-down interview which is necessary so that we can ask certain questions and give the candidate an opportunity to do the same. But if we leave it at that, we may hire an excellent interviewee, but not necessarily a great employee. We could also miss some excellent prospects because they may not interview well.
We may introduce the candidate to the people he or she may work with should they be hired. We might even give these peers an opportunity to interview the candidate themselves. Feedback from a prospect's potential future colleagues can add yet another layer of information that can be helpful.
But Theo Epstein, the new President of Baseball Operations for the Chicago Cubs, takes this process a step further. He and new General Manager, Jed Hoyer, are interviewing candidates for Cubs manager as I write this.
"We create some sort of game simulations where we handed [the candidates] statistics and line up cards and things like the history of bullpen usage," Epstein told the media the other day, "and we had them watch key innings of the game and walked them along in the game, and then we'd stop and try to create real-life situations. We'd try to create some intensity, so we got right in his face and asked for an answer pretty quickly."
They also have each candidate conduct a press conference with real media so they can observe how they handle that.
The theory, of course, is the more you can simulate the real job the more you can ascertain whether or not they are a good candidate. This is an approach I fully endorse.
Interviewers should think creatively about how they can infuse as much real life into the interview process as they can. Asking practical questions about how they would deal with very specific scenarios, and, where possible, simulating real moments.
Too, Theo asks different kinds of questions to get a feel for someone's thought process. He'll ask some questions that require quick answers. But he'll also ask questions that take more thought and may give the candidate up to thirty minutes to develop an answer.
Granted Theo has a small sample size, but in his first go-round in Boston he did pretty well. He hired Terry Francona who went on to lead his team to two World Series Championships.
Interestingly, the manager who finished second in that hiring process was Joe Maddon, who went on to Tampa Bay, resurrected that team and might well win Manager of the Year this year for the second time.
Not bad.
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