Don’t interview your next hire/employer, test drive instead

Jason Freedman at humbledMBA posits “Everyone sucks at interviewing. Everyone.”

He describes a great way around the challenges involved with identifying a good new hire (or identifying a company you want to work with).

I’d like to do this for our work, if I could find people to even work on the things we could projectize this way…

“I think of hiring as mutual courting. The only way to court in a work setting is to spend time working together. Whenever I’m thinking of hiring someone, whether entry-level or senior, we do a project together. I pay them a reasonable contractor fee for the work, and I make sure it’s the type of work that’s easily definable, has clear deliverables, and lasts a few weeks.

Sometimes we do this process and the project goes outstandingly well, and we make a full-time offer. Our ability at this point to define a job description and compensation package is remarkably easy. We know what we’re getting. The employee is also motivated at this point because we’ve all proven ourselves to each other. He’s learned the real strengths and weaknesses of the business and of working with the team. A decision to accept a full-time offer at this point is a well-informed one.”