I always found the questions to be a bit gimmicky - the most it showed was if the person being interviewed was quick on his feet or not; it didn't say anything about whether the quick thinking was right or not and whether it would lead to the solution. If you look at real life examples you'd find that most successful people are those that keep hammering away at the problem till they achieve a breakthrough. Other than in hand-to-hand combat situations, quick thinking is generally not the most important predictor of future success. Angela Lee Duckworth talked about this in an interesting presentation at TED - her analysis, after years of teaching math to 7th graders, has lead her to believe that it is "grit", and not IQ, that is a more reliable predictor of academic and professional success.
Another finding indicated that a successful hiring is a complete crap shoot! You may interview a person all you want, look at his GPA, talk to people who recommend him - it ultimately comes down what that person wants you, the interviewer, to think of him. You probably need a Master's degree in psychoanalysis to be able to cut through people's presentation to look into their souls and determine whether they'll be successful in your company or not. And even then you'd not be able to predict future circumstances that will influence their performance.
The best way to improve a person's performance depends, to a large extent, on the leader of the group. As I pointed out in another post, an inconsistent leader is a big killer of morale and productivity. Being consistent in your approach to management and instructions will encourage everyone to put their best foot forward, without fearing that you will later change your mind and all their work will come to a naught.
The other, not very surprising, conclusion was the disconnect between performance at school and long term performance in 'real life". Schools, I've believed for a long time, have not been designed to produce risk taking entrepreneurial members of the society. At the graduate school level, in the US at least, this mold is partially broken and people are encouraged think on their own but till you reach that level of schooling you are mostly encouraged to conform with the teacher's expectation - there is only one correct response to a problem and they are the arbiters of what it is!
In any case, I could go on and on on this subject but I'd encourage you to read at least the summarized conclusions and, if you have a bit more time on your hand, the full interview on New Your Times with Laszlo Bock of Google. Let me know your thoughts on the subject in comments either here or on my Google+ page.
No comments:
Post a Comment