By Tom Ryan
Companies are increasingly instituting extensive interview processes to wring through personality quirks and ensure commitment before making initial hires.
At investment banks, applicants have long endured dozens of interviews partly designed to see if new hires will get along with everyone in the office. Whole Foods holds group interviews, in which people who will work under a manager are part of the team that grills candidates and collectively picks hires.
At Rackpace Managed Hosting, job interviews last all day with the aim of outlasting any fake pleasantries.
"They're here for nine or ten hours," Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier, told The Associated Press. "We're very cordial about it. We're not aggressive, but we haven't met a human being yet who has the stamina to BS us all day."
Mr. Napier adds, "We'd rather miss a good one than hire a bad one."
At Lindblad Expeditions, an adventure cruise company, job applicants watch DVDs showing crew members cleaning toilets and washing dishes.
"It's meant to scare you off," admits founder Sven Lindblad, noting that a majority of job applicants do drop out.
Kris Thompson, Linbald's human resources manager, notes that new hires "undergo a drug test, a physical exam, they have to pack up their life, we buy them a plane ticket and outfit them with hundreds of dollars in uniforms...If they get on board and say, 'This is not what I expected,' then shame on us."
At KaBoom, a nonprofit that builds playgrounds, job applicants are observed in the reception area, which is set up as a playground, to see how they act around playground equipment. If they stand gripping their suitcases instead of sitting on the playground equipment, they aren't asked back.
KaBoom also sends prospective project managers to one of its four-day playground building trips, with the actual build on the last day involving 200 to 300 volunteer. If uncomfortable taking questions from volunteers, it's likely not going to work.
Since KaBoom started sending them on the trips four years ago, the average project managers' tenure has increased from one year to two-and-a-half and three years.
"We got more passionate people who stayed longer," co-founder and CEO Darell Hammond told AP. "What was going to be expected of them when they came on board wasn't a stab in the dark."
One possible downside is that people generally like people similar to them, so hiring for congeniality can limit diversity of opinions, according to a Harvard Business Review article, Fool vs. Jerk: Whom Would You Hire?. One venture capitalist told the authors that one capable manager built a team that "had a great time going out for a beer, but the quality of their work was seriously compromised."
Discussion Questions: What are some best practices for interviewing job applicants? What unorthodox methods have you seen work? Given the turnover rate and skill levels required, should the interviewing process for retail positions differ from corporate hires?