There is no shortage of zombies in pop culture today: The Walking Dead, World War Z, Warm Bodies, etc. But think about if an actual zombie apocalypse really came about, and there was just you and your neighborhood to protect yourselves against the “walkers” and sustain your population.
When you’re putting people to work, I have a feeling something would go away pretty quick: your biases. You wouldn’t care if a person is a homosexual, African-American, had a college degree or if they prefer Apple or PC. All you’re going to care about is can that person shoot, can they farm, can they hunt, etc.
That is a truly open hiring process, sort of speak. In other words, there are no biases, there are no artificial prerequisites, there are no other questions being asked but can that person do a job. And, believe it or not, that is a process that all companies should adopt.
Think about what that means in a broader sense: the focus is purely on the person’s skills and their ability to work with others (which really is its own skill), and nothing else. Sports are like this, where the best people play regardless of their background, but few other industries. Unfortunately, most companies, mostly unintentionally, discriminate against a section of people and ultimately hurt their own bottom line.
So What Would An Open Hiring Process Look Like?
An open hiring process, as mentioned, should be completely focused on one question: how well can the person perform the job?
That means less of a focus on a person’s years of experience or their education and more of a focus on their thought process and overall skill level (and yes, there is often little correlation between the former and the latter). And that generally means a hiring process based around screening interviews and aptitude tests rather than resumes and cover letters.
New technologies can help. VoiceGlance can do screening interviews faster than ever before. Gamification can show the person’s intellectual capacity and how they handle pressure. Online personality tests reveal how well that person fits into your culture.
By using the aforementioned tools, you can build a 360-degree profile of each candidate, and answer the one question that needs to be answered: can this person perform the job? And, best of all, other biases – their race, creed, etc. – are left out of it.
