- Is generally happy but has periods of sadness

- Thinks of yourself as competent but doubts certain parts of yourself

- Feels bad about some decisions you’ve made in life, but you’re not going to let that stop you

- Enjoys being around other people but needs time alone as well

- Enjoys learning new things

Don’t mean to be sarcastic, just want to point out that the Barnum (Forer) effect is alive and well.

Briefly, they recommend a job be professionally analyzed; every hiring tool be tested for validity and reliability; every hiring tool should be based on a rock-solid theory of job performance; and, adverse impact should be continually monitored..

So, I have a few questions for the unbelievers..
1) Which part of these best hiring practices do you disagree with?
2) Given that thousands of scientists have studied personality for over 100 years without agreeing on a common theory, exactly how does examining a personal photograph actually predict job performance?
3) How would you feel if you applied for a job and after examining your picture, the recruiter concluded that you were unqualified?

BTW: Anyone who does not believe in the principles outlined in the two citations above, please send to me your photograph accompanied by a cashier’s check for $100. As soon as the check clears, I will send you a one-page, boilerplate prediction of success as a recruiter. But wait! If you include a non-revocable blank authorization of bank transfer, I promise not to share results with anyone else.

Let’s just go back to hiring on “instinct” and by who has the best handshake.

I think ideas that are unethical or nonsense on their face (literally in this case) should be discarded quickly, at the risk of losing a good one once in a blue moon. The power to discern nonsense and injustice clearly and quickly should be cultivated, not discouraged.

Respectfully, the first line of your post really irks me. How can you defend something you haven’t researched? I took the time to read the article, visit the site (but I stopped before I listened to the video, since I would likely have laughed too hard and disturbed my neighbors) and then reread the article before I commented. Is it really possible to defend an opinion when you haven’t looked at the facts?

More challenging would be a close look at the new crop of “semantic screening” services now emerging. No one tires of seeking the ‘no effort’ solution. Subject great mountains of resumes to artificial intelligence routines that extract the ‘semantic meaning’ (and not, heaven forbid, the literal matches to specific target text strings) and Voila, we have a measure of the fit between the resume (read candidate) and the position.

But does that predict job performance any better than rating the appearance of streaming videos? What does the data tell us? Darned if I can tell from the vendors.

This one sounds out there. And maybe this is just another way to make money. Unfortunately I also see way too much skepticism on things that are none-traditional in our industry.

Marketers spend billions to understand how people make buying decisions. I’ve read many books were marketers took huge leaps of faith on totally new ways of thinking. If I wrote a piece on mirror neurons as a way to get people to apply–this may seem totally out there. Apple leveraged this very thing to get people to buy iPods. Retailers do it all the time with manikins and even some by hiring overly chiseled employees to wear and sell the product. I read a book a few years back about non-verbal communication. I will see if I can dig up the name and author if anybody is interested. In the book it talked about a lawyer in Texas that was one of the best jury selectors in the world, and guess what, he used facial expression to make the choices. And who doesn’t have a least a bit of interest in the new hit TV show “Lie to Me.”

Look—I don’t disagree with you, Dr. Williams, on the application of this in recruiting. I think it’s a huge slippery slope to attempt to do something like this. That being said I don’t think we should go completely overboard to think that there will not be more revolutionary forms of assessment in the future. Let’s face it—government is working on strengthening facial recognition programs to ID terrorists. It won’t be long before these are applied to other areas.

I can see a day where a customer checks out at a retailer store—a camera snaps their picture (opt in by the customer) and the POS tracks their sale. Next time they walk in facial recognition notices—sends a notification to the sales association who walks up and addresses you by name and already has info on your buying preferences. How long before we see this? What about a website that recognizes your return by some sort of facial image or matching sites that utilize this. Sure—something out of the future—but I would never say never.

I like when people have crazy ideas—it makes me think. I say let’s be discerning about it’s application and practicality without being close minded to think there will never, ever be an application for this. I think it’s a dangerous way to think. We also need not be so block and tackle as an industry—let’s think way out of the box. It’s more fun that way. And who knows—maybe an idea will come out that revolutionizes how we do things.

1) People who have graduated from good schools with good GPAs perform their jobs better than those who don’t.

2) It is more effective to have many rounds of interviews and many interviewers when hiring than just a few rounds and interviewers.

3) It is better to have someone physically present on site to perform most recruiting functions, even the ones that should be eliminated, automated, or outsourced at considerable savings.

I fear that the hype will continue as long as there are slick hucksters with high-level connections ready to sell the latest recruiting snake oil panacea to desperate and not-yet insolvent recruiters and their superiors who fail to recognize that in most cases they are futilely “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic”. However, I look forward to the gradual development and implementation of real-world, empirically-based Generally Accepted Recruiting Practices (GARPs) which will send much of this ilk back under the rocks and into the cesspools from which they came…

Cheers,

Keith Halperin keithsrj@sbcglobal.net

Have we stooped so low to think that this kind of witchcraft is better than using proven methods?