A Guide To Recruiting The Best People

A Guide To Recruiting The Best People

Sean: Is there a reason why you didn’t do it in such a way as we did where we have a multiple choice answer and they could just answer the test? Are there advantages to doing it live?

Jay: It doesn’t scale as well. So I will say that your approach is certainly more scalable. However, I think the differences between self-reported data and observed data. And so if you ask a candidate a question during a job application process, they are trying to game the system to get hired. So they’re not necessarily answering the question in an honest way that reflects them. They’re answering the question in a way that gives them the best chance of being hired, even if it’s actually; hopefully not intentionally a lie.

Jay: So for anybody who applies to Sensei Labs, you’re going to know the secret to this answer. But what we’re looking for is the language that they describe the team. Because if the language is ‘all I, I did this, I accomplished this.’ They are not selfless. If the language is ‘we did this or even as a leader, I really enabled the team and then they took it and were successful with it.’ That’s what we’re looking for in that answer.

Jay: So we’ll ask that question and we’re listening to the language that they’re using. Are they saying’ I’? Are they saying ‘we’ when they get to the end of it, I’ll say, ‘hey, that was really great. Tell me another one,’ because they usually don’t have a prepared second story to go to. So you’ve got through the managed and massaged language of what they were going to tell you. And now they kind of have to think on their feet a little bit and they have to come up with that second story. And that’s where you’re going to start to really get to the good stuff, where the message isn’t being manipulated as much and you can’t get there when you’re asking people to self-report that in an application, which doesn’t mean that you can’t screen earlier through automated means, right?

Jay:  But the best people that we’ve hired over the years were people that we went out and recruited rather than the candidates who have applied. So is not to say that we haven’t had some great candidates who have applied. So don’t just throw those resumes out when people apply. But if you just think about it in terms of supply and demand, most of the candidates who are the best candidates for your role are happily being very successful somewhere else, and they’re not on the market. If you happen to have got lucky with timing and they had decided to look for some new role.

Jay: But the really great people aren’t looking. They’re in a great job right now that they’re being successful at. And so it’s your job as a hirer to go out and find those people and recruit them out of those jobs. It’s not great for the company that was happily employing them right now, but they are going to end up being some of the best candidates. And you will occasionally get lucky with people who have applied.