Hiring smart

Not necessarily hiring smart people (though that’s always good too), but being smart about hiring.  That’s the good stuff in a recent post from Only Once.

This made me remember something I like to do when hiring (or even during regular employee reviews).  I like to get out the current job description for the position and give the candidate two highlighters–a green one and an orange one.  Ideally the candidate has already familiarized themselves with the job description, so I ask them to green highlight all the areas of the job that they can do right now, with no further training.  I ask them to orange highlight all the areas where they either need further training, or don’t have a clue about.  This is generally a pretty useful excersise, but every once in a while you get someone who does the highlighting and realizes that they’ve applied for a job that’s way over their head.  They kinda self-select themselves out of candidacy when they see all the orange on the page.