Topgrading

If you were a color, what color would you be?

What’s your favorite movie and why?

Has an interviewer ever asked you one of those questions? Or, even worse, have you ever asked one of those questions in an interview? Granted, the questions are a little “out there,” but tens or even hundreds of candidates got asked one of those questions today.

Unfortunately for the interviewers asking those questions, they aren’t going to learn much about how the candidates will perform on the job. We are strong believers in basing hiring decisions on reality (i.e. what the person has done and how he or she has done it), rather than on interpreting a crazy answer or relying on a hypothetical one. In Applying Gestalt to the Hiring Process, Jonathon Davis drives this point home; base hiring decisions on facts and not opinions…because you will arrive at conclusions based on data, and get the right people in the right jobs a lot more often!