169. How Great Companies Interview Prospects, Part 1
Every human life has a value. I’m not talking about common decency and respect for each other. What I’m saying is that there is an actual monetary value placed on every human life.
Specifically, your life is worth $9.6 million. At least according to the US Government.
Actually, you could be only worth $7.5m. It really depends on which government agency you are talking to.
(Expert Tip: the Department of Transportation places the highest value on human life. FEMA has nearly the lowest value. Hashtag Katrina.)
I won’t go into the specifics of how the agencies calculate the monetary value of a human because it’s pretty complicated and is based on the quantity of workers who die every year. That said, here’s the equation of how to adjust the value each year, in case you want to get it tattooed on your arm, which I think would be a really cool story but that’s just my opinion and I’m not running over to the ink shop.
Your Life In Basic Algebra
It is pretty much a global standard for health insurance plans to value one year of quality life at $50,000. That’s how they determine whether or not they will cover a new medical procedure. Your life is based on basic algebra.
If the procedure costs $30,000 and will give you at least one extra year of quality life… well, they’ll let you live. The value of you being alive ($50k) is a greater return than the cost of the procedure ($30k). Yay you.
COVID decisions are also partly made with basic algebra. Take the economic shutdown as an example.
If a shutdown would save 1 million lives over three months, at a value of $10 million per life, that comes to $10 trillion saved in human lives in three months. As long as the expected loss in GDP is less than $10 trillion in that same time period, then it would make economic sense to shut down the economy.
It’s all numbers.
And ball bearings. But mostly numbers.
The Rules of Interviewing
Do me a favor - do not use the government’s human value methodology when it comes to decisions about employees at your company. In terms of company culture, it doesn’t benefit anybody to quantify the value of a person’s life.
People are the most important commodity of any company. Hands down. It is people that define the quality of your product, people who influence the power of your brand, and people who represent your company’s voice to the consumers.
Companies succeed - or fail - because of their people. Period. Full stop.
Recruiting the right type of people is critical for every single company. As I’ve ranted on before, it muddles my mind why most companies don’t teach employees how to conduct interviews. Properly assessing candidates is one of the most important roles a leader can have.
Most interviewing processes I’ve seen go down like this:
Step 1. HR posts a job opportunity and narrows down submitted resumes to people who display the desired skillset.
Step 2. HR conducts a preliminary interview to ensure the candidate is not completely insane.
Step 3. The hiring manager conducts an interview to assess whatever the heck they are assessing.
Step 4. Maybe another person interviews to assess whatever they are assessing too, which might be the same assessment as was already assessed.
Step 5. The person receives an offer or not.
Step 6. Everybody crosses their fingers that it’ll work out. If not, see Step 1.
Sound familiar?
If so, I hate to be the bearer of bad news: there’s a better way. Especially if you’re interested in long-term growth.
But lookie here, I’ve run out of space and time. I will continue with Part 2 in a different space-time continuum, commonly referred to as “Thursday”.
In the meantime, think of your current hiring and recruiting practices - because I’m about to reveal to you why it’s wrong.
Quote
“Nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day, you bet on people, not on strategies."
- Lawrence Bossidy (former COO, GE)
Tidbits
Pigs Fly. Mountain Dew Flamin’ Hot is now the official drink of Hell (freezing over)
Inspiration. 102 marathons in 102 days… with one leg (get off the couch)
A Gold Watch. Imagine working for the same company for 84 years (time to leave)
Another Useless Website. Do we really need to watch 1970s TV? (pointless)
This Week’s Book Review
Greenlights
by Matthew McConaughey
My rating: 8 of 10
For fans of: Matthew McConaughey, Bruce Springsteen, Celebrity biographies
I’m not an enormously large fan of Matthew McConaughy’s work. I mean he was awesome in Dallas Buyers Club and he has had a bunch of hugely iconic roles, but him in a movie doesn’t alone get me watching.
I didn’t expect a lot of depth from the guy. But since I was given the audio version of this book, and since I enjoy listening to celebrities recite their own life stories, and since it’s relatively short, I decided to give it a shot.
From the get-go, I wasn’t disappointed. Meaning, I expected to be… read more
