You run a business. You hire people. You may have found some great people, and you may have found a question that you think is fantastic, so you share it on Twitter.
Now, Twitter is, at best, a toss-up. You can post the most brilliant idea ever, and no one will notice it. Or you can go viral and wish people hadn’t seen it. The latter is what happened to Thomas Ince, a Managing Direct at LP First Capital. He tweeted interviewing advice:
Good Interview Question.
How old were you when you got your 1st driver’s license?
If the answer is 19+, do not hire if that role requires a high internal locus of control with a dash of grit.
I like when I hear the day they turned 16. That person is a go-getter.
It went viral, and not the good kind of viral.
To read more, click here: A Business Leader Finds Out the Hard Way Not to Give Advice
I got my license at 16 and I’m assuredly not a go-getter so there goes his theory. Interviews are really only good for one thing and that’s to show how well the applicant interviews. Glib, superficial and manipulative people tend to interview well and that Ince doesn’t realize this causes me to doubt his managerial skills. If that hurts his feelings then he shouldn’t apply those snap judgements to other people.
I love that you reached out! I also appreciate that he listened took the tweet down, but the whole “well, it was never really a question, and it would only have been one data point….” is just the perfect encapsulation of why no one should listen to 99% of “business leaders” posting on the internet.
It’s not just bad advice – it’s completely made up in the first place.
Sheesh —
I understand your pushback on this question being asked, but a couple of thoughts come to mind:
1) It doesn’t appear to be an illegal question. Thus, since we (supposedly) live in “the land of the free,” Ince, in my humble opinion, is free to ask the question all day long. It’s his business, and who am I or anyone else to tell him what questions to ask?
2) Apparently we have come to the point where any question, any comment, any activity at all is subject to scrutiny, evaluation, and criticism. For example:
Interviewer: Takes a breath, looks at the interviewee, and asks, “Did you have any trouble finding our building?”
Interviewee (on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn): “Can you believe it? She / he / them / it actually took a breath when they first saw me, and I could immediately tell that those were prejudiced against me … I mean took a breath for crying out loud. And then the other looked at me … LOOKED at me … I mean, how demeaning is that, to have a perfect stranger look at one. And then, to top it off, human insulted me with the very first question, asking if I had trouble finding their building … how insulting … to assume that I can’t find my way around … I knew from the get-go that this individual was going to discriminate against me no matter how good I am at inner-city navigation.”
I’m sorry, but I’m beginning to think we’ve passed the point of no return, and that not only is the hiring and getting hired process broken, it is completely broken and beyond repair.
Again … sheesh.
Did we read the same post?
EHRL didn’t say the question is illegal, just that:
– some of the potential answers/reasons for not getting a DL at 16 could get you into sticky territory around illegal discrimination,
– it’s a useless datapoint at best, and doesn’t even get at the issue Ince claims to be aiming for, and
– it’s a bad interview question, and the tweet was bad advice.
Of course, Ince is now saying he never actually asked the question, so…
Sheesh, indeed.
LOL. I learned to drive when I was 11. (Grew up on a farm). Course, I didn’t actually get my license until I was 16. I wonder what Ince would make of that??
“Something, something…disruptors…something…gumption!”
How about ‘my mom wouldn’t let me get it at 16, so I drove illegally, but very carefully until I could afford my own car & insurance at 21’ Does that show a high internal locus of control?
(insert eyeroll here)