Have you ever asked candidates to come in for six, eight, or even 10 interviews? Does your culture demand that candidates answer weird and irrelevant questions like those infamous ones Microsoft used to ask about why manhole covers are round or how many eggs it takes to fill up a school bus?
These were so well-known that in 2003, William Poundstone published a book about them called How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft’s Cult of the Puzzle – How the World’s Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers.
And in 2005, Vicky Oliver published a book called 301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions to help interviewees reply to the increasingly bizarre and unrelated questions that recruiters like to throw at them. Some of these questions are more useful as interrogations techniques than as legitimate interview questions that should have some direct relevance to the position.
Some organizations require candidates to participate in stressful group activities, dinners, or social events. Others apply rigorous selection criteria to acceptable candidates such as having attended a particular school, achieved a certain grade point average, or worked for a specific company.
These practices are based on two beliefs. The first is that by subjecting a candidate to a stressful or unexpected environment, a recruiter or hiring manager can determine the creativity or adaptability of a candidate. The second is that attendance at a particular school or the achievement of a high grade point average means that the candidate is smarter or more creative.
There is little in the psychological literature that supports these beliefs. A paper written by Robert D. Bretz, Jr., entitled “College Grade Point Average as a Predictor of Adult Success” published in Public Personnel Management Journal (Vol. 18, No 1 Spring 1989) states, “. . .empirical analysis . . . suggests that college GPA is generally a poor predictor of adult work-related achievement.” He goes on to say that “GPA . . . should not be assumed to be a measure of general intelligence.” And we all know employees whose GPA or academic performance was sub-standard but who are strong performers. We also know that thousands of employees who contribute at high levels did not have stellar GPAs in college, and in many cases, may not have even completed college.
In addition to whether or not you are chosen has little long-term impact on a person’s success. Many of the candidates interviewed by Microsoft and not chosen have gone on to other organizations and have been highly successful and productive. We also know that many who have made it through the tough processes at Microsoft, Google, and other companies that practice elitism in their selection processes do not necessarily fare any better or produce better work than those chosen by more traditional means.
Here are four good and bad things about practicing this elitist approach to hiring, and some reasons why it is so hard to not practice it:
In the end, good selection is based on matching candidates’ competencies and skills to the particular set of activities an organization needs to have completed or outcomes that need to be achieved. These competencies can be identified with a variety of objective tests and properly constructed behavioral interviews.
Whether someone can answer the manhole question, has a 4.0 GPA, or has gone to Harvard makes no difference at all to potential performance.