Job Interviews Should Be Used To Sell The Job, Not Judge The Candidate

I am researching talent acquisition topics these days and read about the research of Dr. Allen Huffcutt via the book Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. It turns out job interviews are quite useless. The best way to judge a candidate is to find out what they have done in the past and how they behaved in the past.

This makes a lot of sense. I never understood what vague questions such as "What is your greatest strength?" or "What is your big weakness?" revealed anything about a person. Every candidate has a canned answer for these questions which revealed close to nothing about him or her.

Also, most managers are not trained on how to interview a candidate.So why do we place such a big emphasis on such phony questions. Would it not be time well spent if we explore the past of a person and ask them to provide factual answers about their past experience and behavior.

An even better way to hire a person would be to rely on the opinion of someone who already knows the person and to examine the past work of the candidate. Huffcutt argues that job interviews should be used to sell the job to the chosen candidate, not to judge the candidate. It makes a lot of sense.

Touch Interfaces Are A Natural Way To Interact With Work Related Content

Yesterday I was watching waiters at the Old Post Office Cafe in Lake Tahoe interact with their Point Of Sale system. I watched multiple waiters walk up to the system and interact with it efficiently and quickly with one finger. I wondered why enterprise software can't be like that. Is it because enterprise software is designed for occasional users. That can't be an excuse. Air line self check-in systems, ATMs and grocery store self checkout systems are designed for occasional users and they work well. In fact such systems are very popular with users.

Touch Interfaces are an intuitive way to interact with content and even get routine things done. Touching something to grab it, move it or interact with it comes  naturally to human beings. That is one of the reasons why computing systems using the touch interface are very popular. Moreover, people today in most parts of the world are familiar with touch interfaces at the airport, bank ATMs, and supermarket. Store clerks have been using machines with touch interfaces to do their job for more than ten years now.

With the advent of tablet devices and smart phones with touch screens, product designers and user experience designers may have to think about touch interfaces first and point and click next.

Designers of enterprise software can learn a lot from the day to day touch interfaces that regular people use.

No PowerPoint Does Not Mean Never User PowerPoint

Although I almost always use prototypes for my sessions with customers, I do have PowerPoint slides to gather content. After the initial discussion, during the Q&A, I bring single slides that have relevant information, purely to respond to a question with rich content. I have noticed that the audience sees the slides carefully when a slide is presented in response to a question they posed.

Prototyping Is Not About Picking A Tool

Prototyping is about making something tangible that triggers the imagination of those who see it.

My colleagues and I  use different tools to create prototypes. I use Axure to convey the concepts we come up with to customers. I have seen CEOs, Heads of Human Resources and IT leaders get excited and participate enthusiastically when I show them a prototype to convey my ideas. Recently, I convinced the CEOs of two companies and the HR leadership of another company to pilot our product just by showing a prototype and painting the vision. It was fascinating to see senior executives connecting with the vision and building on it, just by looking at the prototype.

My user experience colleagues use ForeUI to create prototypes that convey the look and flow of our products to development colleagues. Some product design colleagues use PowerPoint to convey the look and flow of their features.

All the above tools work well, when the person making the prototype is clear about what they want to convey. It is not about the tool you use. It is the process of making to think and showing something to trigger imagination rather than just talking about it.

When You Design A Great Product That Customers Love, You Create Jobs

As a product designer or product manager you can make a great contribution to the economy. When you create a compelling product that customers love, you create jobs for people. Your partners will hire people to implement or extend your product. Your sales team will hire more people to sell or support your product. Your service team will hire more people to service your product. Even your customers may hire more people to build on your product. If your product is a run away hit, you might even create a few jobs on Wall Street.

As a product designer, you need to focus on expanding the pie, not just grabbing a bigger piece of the pie. You are a creator. You have the power to give. That is the greatest of all powers.

So when you design a product, think about how you can put people on the job. Not just how you can automate processes and eliminate jobs. Designers who focus on automation alone, like CEOs who focus on cost cutting alone, don't last long.