The Consumerist: Ready to impress a hiring manager with a list of your past accomplishments? That may be a flawed approach. According to studies conducted by Stanford's Zakary Tormala and Jayson Jia, and Harvard Business School's Michael Norton, people prefer potential rather than achievement when evaluating others.
5 comments:
I think this study might be a tad flawed, as it all comes down to how the interviewee markets themselves. They could have zero relevant experience but also be really good at buttering up the interviewer as well.
Also, for those people with actual real-world achievement, I feel as though they rely somewhat less heavily on trying to convince their interviewer that they are competent in what they do because, well, it's on their resume. Those people that don't have awards or direct experience with the job their trying to get will push a bit harder in the room to emphasize how good they're going to be since they've never actually done whatever job before.
Perhaps the moral is to be careful how you phrase things, and to not sound like your trophy shelf of achievements will get you everywhere? I like that better than the base assertion of the study.
I slightly agree with Kael, but I can see how this study shows some "potential".
Every interview is about selling yourself. Every person needs to butter up the interviewer and market themselves accordingly. Show what you got, and tell them how you will use it, and what you want. Seems simple, right?
More and more I am seeing in my interviews that they want the eager person. They want the person with the skills and the knowledge, but they know they can teach you a lot of it. For me, its all about showing them you have the potential. How do you sell youre potential? Well, thats something we all need to work on. But if you find out. Thats apparently how you get the job.
You can be the smartest person in the world, but if no one likes you, they wont want to work with you, and youre potential goes down, so does your hiring rate.
Where I worked this summer had an interesting montra: "We hire people for their values and abilities rather than their skills. We can teach them those." I think they embrace exactly what this article is talking about, and with their track record of success, might be onto something.
I see a lot of benefit to this interview technique. In fact, I am using it when interviewing people for the joint funding committee. I really don't care what they have done in past roles...I need people who will perform a certain way in this role, and I believe that my interview process (that is very in line with this article) is going to help me accomplish that.
I also think "potential" is what makes a interviewer exceptional and notable, but it also has to be based with some skills. I don't mean that the proof has to be extraordinary as long as it can prove one has potential to be highly improved. Without any proof of experience or skills, how could a person prove himself to be potential for the work?
I find this very hard to believe. Some interviewers almost have their decisions entirely made before they even meet a potential employee, simply based on their resume. Of course it's nice to know that a job applicant has room for learning, can still be shaped and molded into exactly what the company needs, but what company wouldn't want to brag about its award-winning employees? Potential is a wonderful thing, but it is not an entire basis for employment.
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