Month: July 2018

Yesterday I wrote about why it matters that a deeply experienced/senior person held an interview.

Today is time to write about such kind of person(although to say about him that is senior is too little, he is much much more) . Is about a special and important example of an action, made by him, in context of interviews . Is special and important because he helped people which now are ok because of him.

His name is Flaviu Boldea.

Almost 4 years ago we held lots of interviews. I was sad because I saw good/nice/pleasant people which did not passed the interview. With his calm voice he told me that this does not mean it should stop there. If I see a candidate which is ok, as a person, but is not passing, yet, the evaluation to offer him/her my time to help them prepare. Is important to say that he had done this several times before, so his words were not just some empty words.

I liked that he did not transform this in a process to do in the company. No no, it was about our willing, as simple persons, to help from our free time. It was about taking the responsibility of doing something and not to abdicate after saying no. It was not easy at all, but it was rewarding.

Experience/type of people involved/seniority/professionalism/craftsmanship/… matters.

Too often I began to see a strange thing regarding people who make interviews for hiring or evaluates other people in companies. I saw that those persons are not actually seniors(deeply experienced) although there are , in the company, also seniors, who can handle this part. As I said, is a thing I experienced – maybe is not generally applicable, but it made me think deeply about this.

Another detail I did not mention is that these evaluations are made after a checklist, sometimes having a Dreyfuss representation.

I am not speaking regarding the practice that, at interviews for hiring, team members can join the interview just to see the type of the person being interviewed.

I try to be careful about dichotomies in the sense that more often  people use dichotomies when dealing with situations when is not the case. So, in our context, I imagine that is possible that at a certain moment a person with not so much experience can hold an interview/evaluation because of a special context( for example he/she is alone and is an urgent need).

Why I  thought that this might be a problem? Because:

• experience matters. It matters because of the: different types of situations that person had, different types of skills he/she has acquired, the knowledge he/she has gained, the bad experiences he/she lived(all those lessons learned the hard way), familiarity of situation(s),…;
• is hard for the evaluator to transcend the things. What if that checklist will not be of any direct help, does it mean the candidates will not be evaluated ok?;
• It will be hard for him/her to see not just the letter of the law, but also the spirit of the law;
• the language will be different. And now, I remembered Alistair Cockburn work. A Shu level has a different language than the Ha level or the Ri level or the Kokoro level. A Kokoro level having passed through all stages, if I can say so, will be able to understand and recognize the other levels even the Kokoro level itself. This means it will be a problem to decodify/interpret/analyze/acknowledge what the respondent will say;
• Go to other domains like medicine. Is it normal for an intern to decide a certain level of an experienced surgeon?

Is important to mention that this evaluation can have an important impact on the person being evaluated( maybe is about money, image, dreams, promotion which can be affected in a bad way) or on the company also. Should an evaluation be let in hands of the not experienced? I hope not. I hope to see human judgment prevail, not to see some actions inspired by a checklist used by inexperienced people.(note: checklists are good, but when I see that for each type of problem the answer is to make a checklist then, maybe, something is not ok).