What sort of process does your company use to recruit new team members?

More and more organisations are outsourcing their recruitment to ‘test centres’ and relying on a raft of psychometric tools to categorise and profile applicants.

Good luck with that.

(A parallel industry comes to life of course to train candidates how to ‘pass’ these tests.)

At a recent team day, we all fell to imagining more helpful ways of recruiting people you would really enjoy working with.

Interestingly, only half the team felt that checking on essential skills was necessary.

This sub group thought that skills could, largely, be taught.

But character traits in certain situations? Hard to change.

Here were some of the suggestions for successful recruitment to a team:

Imagine being trapped next to the candidate in the corner of a large boisterous table at the Christmas party. How does it feel? Want to chat and drink when there’s little chance of escape?

(A build on this idea was to imagine the party on a boat)

From sporty members of the team came the idea of playing any sport where personal performance over time is visible – golf or snooker perhaps – and note temper loss or quick-to-frustration tendencies.

And then the team became quite power mad.

Why not travel together with the candidate on public transport routes that are uncomfortable, crowded, prone to cancellation – under time pressure?

Look, it was all light hearted and during a break.

Yet I can’t get that last idea out of my mind.

If you find yourself asked to an interview on a rush hour station platform….

You heard it here first.