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On the other hand, in my experience, the question works much better when asked in person than in writing. Just seeing the face of the interviewee while you ask
by danmaz74 13y ago
On the other hand, in my experience, the question works much better when asked in person than in writing. Just seeing the face of the interviewee while you ask the question lets you understand if there is real passion for that kind of job; the answers I get in writing these days (ie by email while screening people) are unfortunately much less telling :(
- jseliger 13y agoJust seeing the face of the interviewee while you ask the question lets you understand if there is real passion for that kind of job; Is this deceptively informative? I hate to cite Malcolm Gladwell but I do think Blink shows us that first impressions and fleeting impressions can be dangerous and wrong. What do we think "real passion" is? Does it really show on the face, or do we only think we know? Can being flustered or off-kilter skew the impressions we give?
- danmaz74 13y agoTo be clear, I don't care what "real passion" really is. I just care about selecting a candidate who is interested in what we work on, and not just for the money. Interviewing is just a screening process, and of course fluster increases the risk of a false negative, but in that situation I'm much more concerned with false positives, and in that respect: No, watching also the body language for that kind of question isn't deceptively informative; it's much more informative than reading the same answer from a written text.
- afterburner 13y agoI thought Blink primarily showed how first impressions can be more correct than considered and careful reasoning.
- czep 13y agoThat was my first impression too.
- afterburner 13y agoFunny. Looks like it's about both. It had been a while since I'd read it. The downside of snap judgements is obvious, so I remembered the more interesting part, where trained experts' snap judgements are actually good.
- davidgerard 13y agoThis selects for good actors, not capable people who aren't good at the face thing. This is a subset of the fact that the employment paradigm, with its multiple perverse incentives for all players, requires us to be liars. If we're very lucky, we just have to know how to be a liar.
- danmaz74 13y agoYou would need to be a VERY good actor, and you would also need to have studied a REALLY good script that covers all the details I'm going to ask you about your project. Possible, but not very likely.