One Question

January 15th 2009. New York City. Air craft in distress. The Mayday shout is out, the minutes tick by and ground control is revving up for what could be the city’s worst air disaster. The pilot needs to land his plane with 155 passengers aboard immediately, after suffering bird hits to his engines and as he claims losing engine power and thrust.
Ground control at LaGuardia airport advises him to land at a nearby airport further south, but the pilot negatives the advice and decides to ditch his plane in the Hudson River!
As history tells us Captain.Sullenberger the pilot and chief architect of this amazing story did manage to put down his bird, an A-320 airbus safely down in the Hudson River, nose up, after a risky low level glide over high rises and saved every one of his terrified passengers and crew. The act turned him into a national hero overnight and an inspiration across the rest of the world.
While a careful and detailed enquiry is underway, to determine, with radar data and cockpit audio tapes as to clues to the pilots action in taking a radical and entirely innovative approach in saving his passengers and crew and whether the circumstances warranted such an action, Capt.Sullenberger is as mentioned earlier the man of the moment and a rare role model who seems to think unconventionally and has what it takes to back his judgment.
What has Capt.Sullenberger shown us?
1. Leadership of the highest order.
2. A cool disposition in the face of imminent and immediate danger.
3. An ability to make a calculated and controlled decision in a flash.
4. The strength to take a contrarian approach in the face of diversity and go against the advice of a pilot’s best friend, the ground control.
5. An ability to back his judgment when the stakes are gargantuan.
6. A creative mind under pressure. Remember he was in a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of control!

Would you like to have such a man on your team or such a man who will lead your team? As of now, I guess the univocal shout would be a firm ‘yes’, but while many a organization may not be able to attract a talent as great as that displayed by the hero, it would be a great tragedy if a man turned up at your interview and you let him go or worse you let him go for a lesser talent.
While there are tomes on interviewing skills and staffing procedures, which unfortunately still do not guarantee a candidates great job or organizational fit, what measures might interviewer’s further take to hit upon a right talent or where should the interviewer look to drill deeper to get a man such as our hero Capt.Sullenberger, aboard.
Most ‘well prepared’ interviewers’ would have a well researched job description and position profile in place and during an interview would explore the following key areas:
1. Education.
2. Previous experience.
3. Job Accomplishment.
4. Skills and knowledge.
5. Personal attributes.
6. Previous appraisal or ratings.
7. Discernable competencies.

What are you trying to assess about your candidate? You are checking, if the candidate in front of you meets the requirement of the job description and position profile that you have created in terms of qualification, skills, knowledge and experience.
Significantly you are also assessing the person’s personal qualities such as leadership, communication, problem solving ability, team work, motivation and whether the candidate will provide for a great organizational fit and not rock your boat once selected.
While on paper the above modus operandi looks fool proof and cast iron, where you should land the man or woman of choice, research has shown that it does not work that way and many selections turn out to be poor, leading to enormous tangible costs and if the recruit is a C-Level manager, intangibles like scuppered deals and lost opportunities.
It is also to be remembered that one of the main factors for employee attrition are poor managers.

Why does this happen? While this too has been widely talked about it would not hurt to review a few common evaluation mistakes.
1. Being impressed with a typical Type-A person with a busy beaver personality which you assume to be a sign of great energy and motivation levels and showing the calm, composed candidate the door because you assume he/she lack drive.
2. Mistaking a great communicator to be highly intelligent.
3. The horns and halo syndrome, where the candidate reminds me of my hated physics teacher of years of yore and so is a definite no-no.
4. Assuming that candidates from premier educational institutions are god’s gift to man kind and may be placed on board without further question.
5. Focusing on a key strength while ignoring others.
6. Solely relying on what a candidate says without carrying out any kind of reference to verify the information that he has submitted.

Most people would have little or no acquaintance with a shotgun, and for the uninitiated, a shot gun sprays pellets or shot over a wide arc and you hope to hit something of your target with a blast. Many interviewers follow this approach with rather disastrous results. It would be more fruitful to have a concentrated, drill down kind of approach wherein a candidate’s persona is looked into with care over a wide span of time rather than adopt a scatter or shot gun approach.
Research today indicates that what determines a candidate’s future success is his/her passion for the entailed work and so corresponding motivation levels.
Is your candidate prepared to eat, drink and sleep the job? What is the level of involvement and interest in his/her work? It is the interviewer’s skill that is on show when these parameters are to be determined and determined they have to be because they can be the discerning factor between a good selection and a poor one.
So what is the important query that you cannot miss asking your candidate?
While many of us quiz a candidate about his hobbies a pertinent question would be ‘How do you spend your leisure time’?
After you have knocked down your pool of applicants to those with the skills, experiences, and knowledge to do the job, ask each potential Capt. Sullenberger one last important question ‘How do you spend your leisure time’?
Before pressing on further let’s see how Capt. Sullenberger, spent his.
Sullenberger got his pilot’s license in his teens for the sheer love of flying and that he was an accident investigator for the Air Line Pilots Association in his free time. In short he had a passion for aircraft and flying, from a young age. This, apart from being a US Air force pilot and flying full time with a private airline after he quit the forces. Sullenberger displays an obsession with aircraft and flying and while to some, he may not present himself as a broad based well rounded guy, he comes across as a serious and competent person who will deliver every time, at the work place. Passionate people have a natural motivation to excel and this is what Capt.Sullenberger demonstrated when it mattered.

In determining what determines a correct answer to your missive, would require you to be thorough with the requirements of the job and the position that you are selecting for. The requirements for selection of a faculty member at a B-School would be obviously different than that required for an aircraft pilot.

So, the next time you need to get your hot shot ace pilot on board don’t be afraid to ask-
‘How do you spend your leisure time’?

References:
1. HBR; Hiring and Keeping the Best People.
2. Intercultural Communication for Business: Elizabeth A.Tuleja.
3. Strategic Interviewing: Richard Camp, Mary Vielhaber, Jack Simonetti.