WHY WE FAIL IN RECRUITMENT

The example above is just one among many examples of wrong judgement in interviews. If you run interviews for long enough, you w’ll admit at some point that you recruited some suckers that looked amazing in the interview and rejected some brilliant people that under-performed (at the light of your judgement). There is a lot to be told about this subject and although I’m not any expert in the matter, I will share some of my thoughts about it.

“Clearly, it is unrigorous to equate skills at doing with skills at talking..”

— Nassim Taleb

One of the most common mistakes is to confuse specialists knowledge in some subject with expertise on doing it. Taleb coined the term “Green Lumber Fallacy” in his book Antifragile, to describe the difference between theoretical knowledge from “specialists” about a subject and real expertise in its practice. In the book What I Learned Losing One Million Dollars it is narrated at some point the story of one of the most successful traders to ever buy and sell green lumber (fresh cut wood) actually had no idea what he was trading (he thought the wood was painted green). His ignorance of the product had…