Entrepreneur: Hiring for Communications and Social Skills
by Miki Saxon
“I thought the whole process was more geared toward problem-solving than to me talking about who I was as an applicant and I liked that.” Andrew Snyder, 25
Hiring is in the top three, if not number one, of actions that ensure success, because it is having the right people that builds the strong teams that juice creativity and make it possible for the company to pivot as needed.
Hiring well means interviewing well and while there are many approaches to hiring there is nothing that can take the place of a really good interviewing process and well-trained interviewers.
Teams are old hat in some industries, but in others they are considered radically innovative and startup Virginia Tech Carilion Medical School is in that category.
The year-old startup, more than three years in the planning, received 2,700 applications for 42 openings in each class.
The applicants were first screened by traditional methods (grades, SAT scores, etc.) and 239 were invited to interview—and that is where things changed.
Driven by research, Carilion decided that (1) excellent communication and (2) strong social skills were must haves for any candidate they accepted.
The first is a growing catalog of studies that pin the blame for an appalling share of preventable deaths (98,000 deaths each year) on poor communication among doctors, patients and nurses that often results because some doctors, while technically competent, are socially inept.
The second and related trend is that medicine is evolving from an individual to a team sport.
Rather than rely on an interview with one recruiter, Carilion utilized a different approach called Multiple Mini Interviews (M.M.I.)
The system grew out of research that found that interviewers rarely change their scores after the first five minutes, that using multiple interviewers removes random bias and that situational interviews rather than personal ones are more likely to reveal character flaws, said Dr. Harold Reiter, a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who developed the system.
Here’s how it works,
…the school invited candidates to the admissions equivalent of speed-dating: nine brief interviews that forced candidates to show they had the social skills to navigate a health care system in which good communication has become critical.
MMI is used by eight other medical schools including Stanford and UCLA.
It’s a great approach, especially for screening out those who believe their vocation or actions confer god-like status—and the ego to go with it. Those types don’t play well with others and are rarely, if ever, strong team players.
I’ve been a fan of team hiring for years and done correctly the speed interviews bump it to the next level; a far smarter approach than Google’s algorithm or the normal one-on-one, with an introduction to a few team members.
Image credit: Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine
