Dating, Audition, and Interview

Nicholas Metropolis, the co-inventor of the Monte Carlo method – indisputably the crown jewel of numerical computation, was once asked how he conceived such an ingenious idea. He answered:

“By working with the right people.”

The reply was toned in humility and humor. But the statement, taken out of context, sounds trite. “Working with the right people” is the well-known secret of all successes. Jim Collins, in his best-selling business book, Good to Great, made it a clear principle: First who, then what. The paramount task of a successful business is to get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and assign the right people to the right seat. Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron CEO, believed in this principle. He told reporters that the greatest asset of Enron was nothing else but its people. Consulting firms and investment banks can’t agree less. Each year, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and their competitor firms lavish millions of dollars on fresh graduates from top universities in the grand endeavor to recruit the next superstars. In the style of a Mastercard commercial, the recruitment effort can be justified as:

First-class flight from San Francisco to New York: $1500.

Five-star hotel near Time Square: $300.

Lunch at Four Seasons: $70

Finding the next business superstar: priceless.

Finding the right people, however, is easier said than done. Like all principles of life, there is no concrete guideline to implement it.

The firm where I work now is obsessed with recruiting. It even has a fancy name for its recruiting department: Strategic Growth. (I half-jokingly call it Star Gate, which shares the same acronym and has pertinent connotation.) Shortly after joining the firm, I realized that everyone in the firm works for SG, since everyone is at SG’s disposal to be put on the interview schedule. And SG uses us good: I have had at least one interview each week. Before long, I wondered: am I conducting sensible interviews and hiring the right people?

One central premise of all interviews, it seems, is that past achievement is the best indicator of future success. Hence the resume-based questions. How did the candidate overcome obstacles, deal with failures, work in a team, demonstrate leadership, etc.? These questions are so prevalent that tons of books have been written on how to answer them. Nowadays no job-seeker shows up in an interview without preparing for these standard questions. This, of course, diminishes the value of these questions, much as the cheat sheets diminish the value of an exam. So a short memo circulating in the firm encourages the interviewers to ask candidates surprise questions. Regretfully, the memo suggests no example of such questions.

Unimaginative of surprise resume-based questions, I looked elsewhere to find my own interview questions. I started an experiment: I would not look at the candidate’s resume before the interview. Instead, I would just chat with the candidate about something of our common interests. With one candidate, I asked him about his favorite movies; with another, I talked to her about humor writing. This way, not only did I put the candidate at ease, I also gained a good idea of his communication skill and style.

I would then outline a technical problem from my past work to the candidate, and ask him to work out a solution together with me. Of course, the choice of the problem is tricky. A good problem should require no specialized knowledge, and can be solved to different extent so that the candidates’ abilities can be differentiated. Due to obvious reasons, I cannot reveal here any specific examples.

So how did I do with my resume-free approach? I took a look at my colleagues’ recommendations on the candidates that I interviewed, and found that most of them agreed with my own. There were differences. In the case of a recent candidate, my hire recommendation was overruled by unanimous no-hires from my colleagues. But overall, I was not an outlier. My resume-free interview technique seems to be working.

Knowing now that my resume-free interview works reasonably well, I wonder: does it work better than the resume-based interviews? I have no data to answer that question. But two analogies come to my mind.

In dating, we also look for the right person. Imagine dating as a resume-based interview:

Man: So tell me about your last relationship.

Woman: Well, we got along really well, and had a very happy relationship.

Man: What made your relationship successful?

Woman: I had a good sense of humor, and he knew how to appreciate it.

Man: Why on earth did you break up then?

Woman: I had to relocate. Now tell me something about your last relationship.

Sure that is no way to date. Dating, we go to restaurants, movies, bowling alleys, and other fun places. The right person is the one who we enjoy the time with. Success of a past relationship seems irrelevant.

Take another example: audition of actors. In choosing the right actors, the foremost requisite is that they fit the roles. Audition ensures that by having the actors perform the intended roles. The best performance stands out clearly. In contrast, interrogating the actors about their past performances is useless. (Of course, past successes get them the audition. But the influence ends there.)

The interview is supposed to answer the question: is the candidate going to work well with us? So why beat about the bushes and half-guess the answer, when we can directly address that question by having the candidate work with us during the interview? Why not create a real working situation and have the candidate solve a problem with us? Why ask about past experiences when we can create a present one first hand?

McKinsey, the leading management consulting firm, interviews by case questions. The candidates are presented with real business situations and are required to collect relevant information from the interviewer and produce concrete recommendations to solve the problem at hand. The interviews are not different from a real work day of a consultant. Hardly can there be a better way to select future consultants.

It is time that we all follow the suit. Toss away the resume-based questions. The resumes tell what the candidates have done in the past, and get them in the door. Interviews are time to find out what they can do here and in the future. Forget the silly brain teasers. Being smart is nice, but are they willing and able to use that intelligence in real work? Just get up and walk to the whiteboard, sketch the problem, and say to the candidate:

“Here is a problem that we will be solving today. Any ideas?”

And let the candidate disappoint or delight us.