Skepticism and Recruiting

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Inherently, picking out candidates requires the use of judgment with limited input. Recruiters must be skeptical to succeed in their position. Ultimately, recruiters must make dogmatic judgments to hire, for the recruiter has to make decisions with very limited input that is well beyond the facts.

A resume, preliminary phone interview, and 45 minute in-person interview (that is if the person succeeds at captivating the interviewer for 45 minutes) is a very brief snapshot of someone’s life. At best, this ”candidate sequence [CS]” provides a summary of responsibilities, talents, and accomplishments. At worst, it represents nothing – every sentence is a lie. In reality, the CS is an amalgam of truth and lies. A conservative conclusion is that the CS is a very flawed method for hiring individuals. Relying on CS alone is bound to lead to a higher number of failures.

Drug testing, background checks, and other means of discovering people’s personal history represent facts, but come short in that they can’t capture motivation and personality, not to mention these tests don’t measure professional competence, change of behavior, or incidental occurrences.

Skills testing is yet another tool to assess candidate viability. It may be the case that a candidate can write well or know how to use office software. This does not mean, however, that the candidate possesses will-power, drive, focus, or any other intangible elements.

Sextus has a view that may help here:

By “dogma” Sextus means “assent to something non-evident.
By “non-evident” he means things which lie beyond appearances (and thus beyond proof or disproof), such as the existence and/or nature of causality, time, motion, or even proof itself.

These tenets are the underpinnings of skepticism.

Basically, my argument is that hiring someone is making an assertive judgment on something non-evident. There is nothing concrete about the recruiting and hiring process. Therefore, we must be skeptical in our approach.

Where we may fail is in turning unverified information such as statements made in person and on the resume as truth. Likewise, it is a failure of reason to base absolute judgments on testing – behavioral, skills-based, or biological. From every angle, recruiting has large holes in its procedure, all of which are impossible to fill. The best that can be done is assenting to a dogmatic position. As with all dogmas, they are susceptible to failure and breakdown.

What can be done? The best recruiter should gather as many facts as possible. The more detailed something is, the more likely it is to be true. A background check of one county is going to produce more suspect results than one run for the entire country. A cliché statement by a candidate should be followed up with an example to make sure this cliche scenario is truthful. Testing someone's writing skills is not a great indicator for more than half of the tasks on the job.

Recruiting is like putting together a puzzle without all of the pieces. A complete picture can be seen in the imagination, but the actual complete picture can never be pieced together.