Interviewing - the Texas Holdem of Staffing

When is staffing like Poker? The answer is when you are interviewing. In poker, and especially Texas holdem, you are always looking, and listening for insights into other players hands. These are called tells. Sometimes they come as non-verbal communications, a twitch, or a blink of the eyes. Other times it comes as nervous talk, sometimes you are talking to them asking them questions, throwing out guesses of what they have, all the while hoping they will provide you with a tell. This is very much like what you do when you interview. When you interview someone, you are asking a bunch of questions, trying to discover information. You are listening to what they say, what they do not say, how they say it, their non-verbal communication, their mannerism etc. All this to try to find some more information about them and their background. Think of the candidate as the other players and their background as the player’s hand, and you can easily see the correlation.