I have been putting a lot of thought lately into some concepts on hiring people out of college. In my Design Thinking class, I posted this in the slack channel:
Hi all, I have recently had some mental mashups of information I am learning both inside and outside of this class as well at work. I wanted to share some ideas with you and see if anyone had thoughts or feedback to add to this. I thought it could be a fun discussion for anyone interested in reading!
Let me start by explaining the ‘problem’ that I have been considering. In organizations, there are often high performers that grow and learn very quickly. These people tend to become leaders in their teams and they bring up everyone around them to a higher level. I am conceptualizing if there are possible methods to pick these high-performing people out in the interviewing process in a more design-thinking way. Interviewing can be a stressful time and those that go into interviews tend to put on a facade and show what they believe the interviewer wants to see.
To solve the problems listed above, I came up with this theoretical process. First, I want to break through the facade. In a recent communications course I took, I learned about Humble Inquiry. The idea is that to promote effective communication we must ask questions of a more personal nature and let others do the talking. This establishes empathy and might also alleviate the stress from the person interviewing.
So what question do I ask? I am currently reading this book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. In the book, they mention that we learn and grow the most when we are at ‘play’. Since I want to determine how people learn and grow, I think my initial question is, ‘As a child what was your favorite toy, game, or activity to play’, and ‘why’. I personally think that the toy is not so important, but the ‘why’ is. I also believe that when we reflect on why certain memories are happy, we draw relationships to what is important to us here and now. For example, my favorite toys were Transformers, and my reason ‘why’ is because I liked seeing the potential for one shape to morph into a completely different thing (and usage)! This ‘why’ explains to me why Innovative thinking is something I am passionate about and is something I pursue in all areas of my life.
I then thought about how I could combine this with design thinking and determining the innovative potential of the person being interviewed. I think that all great leaders harness some or all of the 6i’s we discussed to some capacity. Also mentioned in class, an organization or team should be diversified and/or require certain mindsets to tackle specific projects. For example, if you need to deal with a lot of people, you might want someone who is more willing to use their interactions mindset rather than implications. Ultimately, I think that the hiring manager needs to decide which mindsets are most important for him or her.
So the next question would be, ‘If you were part of a task force designated to help adults everywhere experience your favorite toy, game, or activity, what would be your first move to accomplish this?’ From there, whatever answer(s) they share can be translated into the mindsets that they favor. If those mindsets overlap with the ones that you are missing from your team/ need to accomplish a certain project then they could be a good fit!
