Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Who Are You? And What do You Think of Me?


How to make sense of a new hire, a touchy stranger, a potential lover, and other perplexing encounters.
The New Hire: What Do I Need to Know About This Job Candidate—and How Can I Find It Out?

Every Sunday, America's corporate titans share their hiring strategies with The New York Times. "I have a very good antenna about people," Starbucks founder Howard Schultz told the "Corner Office" column. "First off, I want to know what you're reading and then I'll ask you why. Tell me what work-life balance means to you."

Abbe Raven, CEO of A&E Television Network, privileges her "gut reaction." "Number 1, for me, is instinct. It's all about who they are as a person, their chemistry, their charisma, and their gravitas."

The problem with such freewheeling approaches is that qualities like charisma and compassion are faked in job interviews as much as 90 percent of the time, according to one landmark study. Relying on first impressions and stated values is the hiring equivalent of shacking up with your neighbor after a quick curbside chat. Even if your impression is accurate, there's little correlation between personality and job performance. For these reasons, psychologists who study job interviews recommend homing in on aptitude and skills specific to the job

People are hugely overconfident about their ability to judge others in general, and recruiters may be particularly so. The reality, says Allen Huffcutt of Bradley University, is that the interview is a dicey venue in which to get a good read on someone. "You've got a high stakes situation, an interaction between strangers, and a general inability to verify what candidates say," says Huffcutt, who has spent his career parsing job candidates.

Potential employees are in impression-management hyperdrive. Candidates who engage in extensive image creation or image protection—from eliding questions to outright fabrication—see their chances of advancement skyrocket. The problem is that there's little connection between ingratiating, self-promotional statements and on-the-job behavior—or achievement.


Huffcutt recommends dispensing with questions that invite tactical or evasive answers: "Tell me about your strengths and weaknesses" or "Why do you want to work here?" For the vast majority of positions, softball questions don't get to the crux of the matter: Does the person have the aptitude to do the job?

Interviewers are drawn to open-ended inquiries because they think they'll zero in on personality. But that is a doubly flawed strategy. Not only does personality turn out to be a poor predictor of job performance, it interacts with situations such that people behave differently in the workplace than they do in other spheres. "If you have very direct cues and rewards [as most workplaces do], people will follow those regardless of their style outside of work," says Huffcutt, who advises, "focus more on competencies."

To do that, one needs to ask structured questions or, better yet, administer tests of competence. A classic structured question for managers asks, "How would you handle a moody employee whose attitude is beginning to impact performance?" The best answer is to privately inquire about their well-being. The worst is to publicly chastise them or put them on probation. Despite the direct window onto the candidate's approach, employers are loath to ask such "rote" questions—which might not showcase their own originality and critical thinking!

The Civil and Foreign Service may far outstrip the private sector in aptitude-based hiring. The Department of State and other arms of government administer tests that measure knowledge and "core competencies," which scale closely to tests of general intelligence. According to Purdue's Michael Campion, who has worked for decades with federal agencies including the Foreign Service, tests given to Foreign Service candidates predict job performance partly because they are correlated with intelligence.

If intelligence is the "it" factor, then only one recent "Corner Office" CEO has the right approach. Online entrepreneur Kevin O'Connor favors the stress interview, lacing the discussion with non sequiturs such as "How smart are you?"

"You can fool me that you're smart in this interview, but you're not going to fool me three months from now," he reportedly tells candidates. O'Connor's current project is a Web site for objective comparisons, called FindTheBest.com. No app for employee selection, though. —Kaja Perina




The Potential Lover: Is This Person Attracted to Me?

"I was sitting with a male friend at a lecture," says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University and a renowned love researcher. "It was a humid summer day. The woman in front of us shook her hair out and gathered it up into a pony tail. My friend said, 'Did you see that? She's hot for me.' I laughed—I'm pretty certain she was just plain hot and wanted to get her hair off her neck!"

The body language of flirting is elemental, hardwired into us, and yet sometimes it's difficult to know if someone wants you right now, might possibly want you, wants to be your friend, or is just a nice person who could transmit polite interest to a statue. As an expert in mating rituals, Fisher recognized in her friend the male tendency to overestimate overtures: "Men have everything to gain from a sexual encounter and very little to lose," she says. "So they might as well try." Women, on the other hand, have evolved to read potential suitors with a suspicious eye, since the consequences of sex—pregnancy and childbirth—are costly for them indeed
That feminine skepticism, however, is sometimes obscured by a friendly facade that could be misread by anyone. Indiana University researchers had American subjects watch videos of speed-dating events in Germany, focusing on posture, tone of voice, and eye contact as they guessed whether or not the daters were sexually attracted to each other. Male and female viewers were equally good at measuring men's interest but equally bad at judging women's interest. In five of the videos, in fact, 80 percent of the subjects thought the German women pictured were interested when they were just being sociable.

Men and women seeking to improve their hook-up hit rate can start by keeping an eye out for some of the behaviors that people automatically display when they are into each other. Amazingly, humans tend to throw out 70 such signals per hour while chatting up romantic prospects, Fisher says.

Here's a sampling of that extensive repertoire: Men might draw attention to themselves with a loud laugh or by spreading their arms wide. Both men and women might flash a broad grin, showing all their teeth. Once a conversation begins, besotted women slip into sing-songy voices, while men drop theirs an octave. As interest accelerates, flirters tend to mimic each other's stance and movements. And finally, they make physical contact
It's best to hang back until you witness a cluster of gestures, says Marsha Lucas, a neuropsychologist. "A good one to watch for: After making eye contact, she looks down a bit, gathers or otherwise preens her hair, and then looks up at you while her chin is tipped."

If you consistently miss amorous advances, get in tune with your own emotions, says Lucas, who recommends mindfulness exercises. "In as little as two weeks, you can change how well your brain integrates emotional information."


If, after a skillful sizing up of the situation, you still make the wrong call—the woman you thought was falling for you turns red and stumbles away after you invite her to dinner, "be brave and own the error," says Lucas. "If you offer a simple apology instead of getting pissed off at her for 'misleading' you, you might impress her enough to get a connection going after all." —Carlin Flora
.

No comments: