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September 29, 2005
Temporary Autism - darn, I knew it all along...
I have always marveled at entrepreneurs, CEOs, and hiring managers who seemingly breeze through the hiring process like they’re channel-surfing; ultimately landing on something they like. Many of the hiring execs I know (including myself sometimes) suffer from “temporary autism” when it comes to hiring for higher level positions.
The Sad Story of Amadou Diallo
Malcolm Gladwell brought the term "temporary autism" closer to business-use in his bestselling book "Blink - The Power of Thinking without Thinking”. In his work he describes situations where people override their usually decent and mainstream common sense by temporarily reacting to a situation that is happening differently in their minds than in reality. In one of the most intriguing speculations in the book, Gladwell proposes that all of us can be guilty of "temporary autism," incidents when we completely misread the situation and react incorrectly. His examples are a bit extreme. In one case he describes the reactions of police officers under stress, most notably the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo in a hail of bullets fired by undercover New York cops. The four white officers became "temporarily autistic" when facing a black man acting suspiciously in a high-crime neighborhood. They were "blind," Gladwell says, and mistook the wallet in Diallo's hand for a gun. As a result of this Diallo died in a hail of over 40 bullets fired directly at him. Extreme? Absolutely! Rare exception? Definitely not!
In a Medical Sense
Let’s take a quick step back. Clinical autism, by definition, is a form of pervasive developmental disorder with an unknown origin. Symptoms are a marked lack of awareness of the feelings of others and little or no social interaction or communications with others. Children with autism are often described as "within themselves" and may seem to avoid affection and love. They can be taught self-care, social skills and language skills, but many times the disorder may result in learning difficulties, speech problems and difficulty relating to people.
Do I have a Point?
Now what does all of this have to do with hiring, you might wonder? Good question! To some people it won’t have anything to do with hiring. Others will have already recognized the connection. The answer will most notably affect and interest entrepreneurs and hiring managers who have not only hired a bunch of people, but more importantly MIS-hired for some of their open positions. To those of you who still wonder, it should become clearer in a minute.
The Power of Natural Desire
If you are hiring you are naturally having the desire to find the perfect candidate. At Globat we usually get a small flood of resumes from more-or-less qualified candidates with every job opening we post. Take it from me; variety doesn’t make it any easier! To make it even more difficult, Globat’s located in Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world, and you can probably imagine what that means. If not, let me try to paraphrase what I mean by that. See, I like Bill Maher and his “New Rules" skit. Inspired by that I created my own “New Rule” for the dilemma we, and many entrepreneurs and hiring managers alike (not just in L.A.) find ourselves in at times:
“New Rule: No more resumes from people who think that they are replying to a casting call instead of a job opening! At age 24 these folks list so many accomplishments and executive job experiences in their six page resumes that simply time-wise they had to start managing people when they were still sperm”! ;-)
What's the Big Deal?
Especially lately I have spent a lot of thought on what the underlying reasons are for people to trigger these mis-hires. After all, you are gung-ho, an expert of your company’s products/services, and know exactly what your perfect candidate needs to know and do. What kind of experience he/she needs to have; and the type of personality that will match with the rest of your staff. You will spend hours weeding through resumes and interviewing these folks to check them in and out. How difficult can it be?! Well, virtually everyone who has done this a few times knows that it is extremely difficult!
The Road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions
Have you ever been in a situation where you absolutely needed to fill a position? Did you also feel like you just didn’t get enough qualified responses from your job postings and that the general level of candidates that apply seem to hope for a long-shot rather than being a fit – even on paper? Did you then go ahead and select the best people out of the small pool of resumes you did collect and invited them for interviews (hey, the show must go on, right)? If so, you have taken your very first steps towards a temporary autism outage. You are going down a path that will more often than not end in your logical mind overwriting what you in your gut know is right. The reason for that is men’s instinctual need for progress. We want to move forward not backwards! You will end up hiring one of these candidates because you already went so far and now you are at a point where your mind talks you into it. If someone else would walk into the situation at that very moment they would be able to say “no, don’t hire this person”, but you’re too far into it to realize where things are going. The classic example of the frog who’s thrown into hot water and jumps out right away, while the poor frog, when put into cold water which is than slowly heated up, will boil to death. Welcome to temporary autism!
Don't Go There!
Hiring is more of an art than a science; you are dealing with people’s personalities after all. Are some positions harder to fill than others? You bet they are. In my experience some of the toughest jobs to fill are marketing positions. These folks sell for a living and many of them are pretty good in selling themselves. Marketing people can easily create an interview environment that makes a fertile breading ground for the temporary autism “bug”. They want to you to see them as a perfect fit and know how to say the right things at the right time; talk about manipulation. Don’t go there! Smell the coffee! Make sure you stick to your notepad and the questions you wrote down beforehand or use your interview form sheet you brought with you (you need something that keeps you on track) to keep you focused and go down your list of questions before you get excited at all. If you have to fight the overwhelming feeling that “this is our gal/guy”, do fight it; otherwise you are walking down a slippery slope and need to remind yourself that there is a whole lot of selling going on and you need to look past that to find your true fit.
The Cardinal Rule
At Globat, we created a cardinal rule for situations like this: We do not offer the job to anyone until we have at least two more-or-less equally qualified candidates for the position from which we have to choose. If we don’t have two we keep interviewing despite the chance of “loosing” that one seemingly perfect candidate we might already have. This forces us to keep our focus on the position instead of on a single person. We’re keepin’ it real!
In regards to techniques I have a final book recommendation, for the voracious readers amongst you, which I thought was a very helpful tool in formulating a solid interviewing strategy: The Boss’s Survival Guide. It’s a bit of an encyclopedia, but it will come handy whenever you are faced with some hiring and interviewing questions that would normally go unanswered or require calls to outside consultants.
Listen to Your Gut!
The environment we are sliding into during interviews, combined with the desire to find the perfect candidate, and the instinctual need for progress is the main reason that causes the decision to hire someone who is not really a “fit”. Recognizing this is a huge step toward preventing it. Awareness leads to focus, which is a pretty solid reality check for most people. Don’t put yourself into a position where you say in hindsight (after the “perfect fit” quit or was fired) that you knew it, and you should have listened to your gut. If that is the case, you truly should have listened to your gut instead of letting temporary autism override it! According to Ex-GE CEO Jack Welsh, “gut feeling is simply strong pattern recognition”, and you knew it all along.
Posted by Ben at September 29, 2005 09:13 AM
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Comments
Hi Ben,
Intresting post, had to laugh at the casting call Idea. Now one thought that struck me, while reading this especially when you mention the need to progress and when your under pressure to find a canidate that temporary autism kicked in is the idea of commitment to esculation, that management theory where you go so far that you dont want to back out. Worth checking out to see if you can rationalise the two. Thanks fec, Ill never work in hr ;)
Posted by: T-Bone at September 30, 2005 04:50 AM