How I Hire: The Road Trip Test
I have a question in every job interview that I never ask, but always want answered: Could I handle a road trip with this person?
I’m not kidding. Jobs are a lot like road trips. You’re stuck with a bunch of people in a situation where things don’t go according to plan. You may get a flat. You may hit traffic. That “three star” hotel where you booked two “quiet and comfortable rooms” may turn out to be a dump sandwiched between a truck stop and an awful-smelling tomato soup factory. A whiner can take a simple annoyance and turn it into a nightmare.
You’re also going to be spending a lot of time together, so you need people who are interesting. You don’t want clones of yourself; you want people who are different. They have to have their eyes open and know how to make fun out of nothing. And there can’t be any drama at all.
Work is not all puppies and rainbows. Something annoying happens every day. The server goes down. Your coworker sloshes your keyboard with coffee. You get dropped off by a cab driver exactly 16.2 miles from where you’re supposed to be. People who can roll with these things and find the humor in them are priceless.
Good coworkers also see something
unusual in the ordinary. They are interesting. They’re different from me and the other people in the office. They don’t sit around the house on the weekend watching TV. They go out and find a camel farm or a bumper car museum, so that when they tell you about it, Monday no longer seems so dreary.
Whenever I hire someone, of course I want to them to be bright, qualified, motivated, creative, innovative, dedicated, hardworking, and all that stuff. But I also want to make sure that if we end up having the day from hell together or getting stuck in a traffic jam on I-5, we’ll push through just fine.
Photo credit: Aaron Hewitt ?2009
Consultant, Program Manger and Quality Assurance Specialist
11 年Depending on the environment, there are times when you need diversity in the workforce and time when you need conformity. The upside to a diverse group is that it brings creativity and fresh view to the table. When you have a proven formula that is working, do you need or would you benefit from someone treading on people’s toes. Personally, I am a big fan of having mavericks on the team. All teams decisions should be tested and that is what mavericks do, they test the status quo. Sadly, I work in a public environment, where every new employee is a clone of those conducting the interview. This goes a long way to explaining why public institutions struggle to think outside the square. In summary, the employment decision should be balance between creative thinkers and ideas people and those that need to grind out the work. Neither to many mavericks or to many clones will result in a great outcome. If you are going to employee a maverick , don’t kill the enthusiasm when they don’t comply or toe the line and or have a different opinion to majority of the team.
I really liked the way you have put it Shane. More often than not, companies try to summarize these qualities as "diversity" but the unfortunate part is that "diversity" somehow gets lost in the mad rush to meet the next approaching deadline. Too often companies decide to push "diversity inclusion" for a "more amenable phase - when the business is doing well and competitors are far and few", but Alas!!! in today's fiercely competitive environment that time almost never comes by. In the mad rush to please the shareholders and board of directors, companies end up on-boarding clones and robots - we want to be surrounded by interesting people but end up getting more of the same people around us. We do not have the time to explain things to a newbie - lest our own ignorance surfaces in the wake of uncomfortable and fundamental questions! We feel more comfortable when we can leave things unsaid and assume that the listener will understand since he/she is just like me! A grave mistake!
Entrepreneurship | Vision | Marketing | Communications | Strategy | Operations
11 年Love it. I learned a while ago that you really don't know someone until you have worked with them. This is the true test. Let me know when you get the bumper car museum opened - I'll be one of the first one's to check it out!
Student at Albany State University
11 年Hi...
Analytics / Operations / People
11 年Oh man, I love this! SO true. Six weeks after I met my now-husband 20 years ago we planned a 10 day road trip to the Grand Canyon. Friends told us, "If you can survive this, you can make it through anything." We did...and, have! The whiners, complainers, and negative nay-sayers can just stay home, please!! The rest of us want to make the most of the journey, learn, grow, discover and have fun along that way, thank you very much, even if it doesn't go exactly as planned.