Recently, I searched Amazon to see how many books were listed about conducting a job interview. There were over 7,000 results, so I’m not going to try to address what has been covered ad nauseam in the books. While I have shared several ways to conduct an interview to see if the candidate is lying or not, I’d like to focus on a few ideas that most books never cover when it comes to the screening process that exists outside of the standard job interview questions.
Most books on the interview process from the employer’s perspective focus on the types of questions to ask to reveal the most about the candidate. However, study after study has shown that interviews, as they are typically conducted, are close to useless. According to Adam Grant, asking candidates behavioral and hypothetical questions tends to favor the slick talkers and fibbers over the quiet, yet more competent candidates. Also, interviewers are notoriously swayed by biases, which is why I like to use platforms like Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, and TopTal.com when I hire freelancers. My selection criteria are not only based on how the candidate responds to a series of oral or written questions but almost entirely on the historical reviews that the candidate received from previous employers and on the content of their cover letter.
If the job interview process is close to useless when it comes to asking behavioral and hypothetical questions, and if, as interviewers, we are overly prone to biases, how can we improve the job interview process to determine the true value that a candidate will have to the business? Elon Musk and Thomas Edison introduced a few interesting twists to the job interview process that are worth considering.
Recently, I read an article that discussed the 2-hands test used by Elon Musk when hiring talent for SpaceX and Tesla. We have all heard about Elon’s partner at PayPal, Peter Thiel who pays 20-25 students per year $100,000, developed a business idea instead of enrolling in college. So, it should come as no surprise that Elon is not a big fan of traditional education either. Rather than focusing on academic degrees and GPA scores to find talent, Elon employs the 2-hands test.
What is the 2-hands test?
First-Hand Experience
The first hand is “First-Hand Experience”; Elon believes that experience is a form of education that is very different from traditional education.
In German, there is “Wissenschaft,” which is knowledge gained through secondhand sources, such as reading a manual or textbook or perhaps listening to a lecture or audiobook. Wissenschaft is the traditional approach to education.
Then there is “Kenntnis,” which is knowledge gained through firsthand personal experiences.
Wissenschaft knowledge is like reading a recipe from a cookbook, then looking at the pictures of the finished dish and trying to memorize it to recall it when you need it later.
Kenntnis knowledge is where you would actually prepare the dish to internalize the procedures and techniques necessary to prepare it. By physically preparing the dish, you create a deeper degree of understanding that can more easily be recalled and applied to future recipes, adding to your general understanding of cooking as a whole.
So, when it comes to First-Hand Experience, Elon places value on Kenntnis knowledge and not on Wissenschaft knowledge.
A study by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) proves Musk’s theory about the value of college at some level. The AACU study found that while three-quarters of hiring managers believe that a college education has value, the value they attribute to a college education is not based on a specific curriculum, but on the soft skills acquired during the college experience.
Soft skills such as creativity, emotional intelligence, and resilience are difficult if not impossible, to assess in a typical oral job interview. Moreover, these same soft skills can be acquired by real-life experiences outside of college.
Hands-On Testing
The second hand refers to Hands-On Testing. Rather than actually examining a candidate’s capabilities, many companies simply try to evaluate a candidate’s knowledge during an oral-based job interview. Oral-based job interviews are flawed because there is a major difference between someone who is good at memorizing and parroting information and someone who has an actual understanding of how something works.
My son Hank is a Sous Chef at a nursing home and has worked in the industry since high school. At one point in his career, he interviewed for a job in a hotel restaurant. Rather than conduct a standard interview, the Head Chef walked Hank into the kitchen and asked him to make a Denver Omelet. During the interview, the Chef asked Hank to describe what he was doing, step by step, while observing Hank’s knife skills as he made fast work of dicing up the ham, onion, and peppers and how and when he seasoned the omelet. It was pretty clear Hank had not learned his craft from a course or book and he was hired on the spot.
Testing a candidate by having them complete a task that closely matches what the job position may entail yields a much more accurate measurement of the candidate’s ability to effectively perform in the position.
Dining Test
Then there was Thomas Edison’s weird interview trick. As part of the interview process, Edison always invited the candidate out for a meal. He made sure they order soup with the meal, putting the applicants on the spot to unwittingly show their true colors by the way they approached the soup course.
By leaving the confines of the interview room, candidates lower their guard and are more likely to reveal more of their true character. The idea behind Edison’s soup test was that Edison wanted to see if the applicant added salt and pepper to the soup before even tasting it. Edison rejected premature seasoners because he didn’t want employees who relied on assumptions. Adding seasoning to the soup before tasting it proved to Edison that the candidate held the assumption that all soups were bland. In his opinion, those who were content to abide by preconceived notions had no place in his business because the absence of curiosity and willingness to ask questions were directly opposed to the principles of innovation.
Incidentally, the soup test wasn’t the only test job applicants had to deal with when it came to Edison. He liked to ask candidates trivia questions such as where prunes came from or who invented printing. He wanted to get a general idea of the candidate’s level of intelligence.
Giving a candidate a trial assignment or sample work project to perform or asking trivia questions to get a sense of their thought process, is far more effective than simply talking with them about their previous work experience, character, and career goals.
When it comes to job interviews, a candidate’s actions speak louder than their words. While Edison’s technique to hire staff members may seem weird, it was not that crazy after all. Seasoning a dish before tasting it first is an indicator of how a person thinks through problems and is likely to reveal something more about their mindset than abstract discussions, typical of the job interview process.
How can you discover a candidate’s true value to the business during a job interview?
