Work Acting
By Peter LloydQ: What are your strong points?
A: I'm very creative, hard working, full of ideas, extremely well organized. And I like to work with people.
Q: In what areas do you see a need for improvement?
A: You know, I've just got to learn not to give myself so utterly and entirely to my job.
Q: All right, then. Where do you see yourself in five years?
A: I see myself in a position where I'm able to apply my unique skills to an ever-increasing range of new opportunities which challenge me to consistently exceed your reasonable expectations with innovative solutions...
Q: Come on now, level with me. You've obviously been through this before, you've heard all these questions, and you're giving me a well rehearsed version of scripted answers. Honestly, would you hire someone who gave you such obviously programmed answers?
A: Okay, as long as you do the same for me.
Q: What do you mean?
A: Would you want to work for someone limited to such obviously scripted questions?
And so goes the course of innovation. Somebody comes up with what were once, maybe, probing questions that actually revealed something about a prospective employee. Most employers started using them and most prospects were soon on top of them.
It goes the full circle of innovation when someone invents a better way--like asking prospective employees to act. Yes, like in the movies. Some human resource people put job candidates in a scene and ask them to play out they way they would respond to a typical office problem.
Others show candidates a video of an on-the-job problem and ask them to describe how they would react to the situation.
Now if this sounds even more dreadful than the traditional interview, the results might change your mind. At one plant where play acting has been used, the job-promotion rate went up three times. Turnover dropped from as high as 25-percent down to as low as 5-percent.
Obviously the more you put into any process, the more you get out of it. You can research interview acting, imitate the best, and practice it, until well prepared candidates start coming in from job-interview-acting seminars.
Or you could put even more into the search process and invent an even better process. It all depends on what you want to come out the other end. Innovation always trumps imitation.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.