Is your hiring process able to identify the "pilot" in the haystack?
Posted by Frank Belzer on Fri, Jun 12, 2009 @ 06:08 AM
At the outset of World War 2 the U.S Air Corp was in desperate need of good pilots. With access to powerful industry the new planes were coming off the line faster than pilots or crews could be put together to fly them. The Air Corp started to refine their process to screen out the right people - interestingly everyone that applied wanted to become a pilot but only 10% of those could actually be pilots. The next level was co-pilots, navigators, engineers, bombardiers and gunners.
What determined who could be a pilot? Who was capable of filling that role?
The Air Corp began with a test - to determine capabilities, knowledge, depth perception, color blindness etc.... then there were questionnaires that determined the best match for other reasons and finally they were brought in and spoken with as well as receiving a physical test and final selections were made.
What's the point? The selection process involved more than surface appearance. The selection process was scalable and repeatable over and over again on a large scale - and it worked.
When your company looks to hire sales people do you simply go with the same process you would use to hire an office manager? Does anything change in the way you look for or interview a sales candidate? Do you have a repeatable system? Finally - what are your results? Is it working?
