When Donald Trump recently contracted COVID-19, Warren Harding was briefly in the news as one of the four US Presidents who died of natural causes while in office. Despite a landslide victory when elected, and his huge popularity at the time, he was largely forgotten in the mainstream consciousness until he featured in Chapter 3 of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, ‘Blink’.
Gladwell Warren Harding as a cautionary tale which highlights how the Interview Process can fail.
When hiring senior candidates, most firms focus on Searching for the squarest peg they can find for their square hole. They look for people with the most relevant track record and technical competencies: ideally, someone successfully doing exactly the same job elsewhere for one of their competitors. But evidence shows that this is not the best predictor of future performance.
The problem is that the main reason why hires succeed or fail is usually not due to technical skills. At Godliman, we say that people are usually hired on skills but fired on behaviours…
