Elections and Job Interviews: more alike than not.

My little slice of the world is full of happiness... We'll call that micro-world. But macro-world (the collection of all the micro-worlds out there and how they react) is pretty screwed up right now.

This post aims to explain how job interviews and elections are very much alike. Surprisingly (or maybe not), people apply fundamentally different rule sets to political races than they do to job interviews. This troubles me. I'm troubled.

When you are interviewing a candidate for a position, you stick your neck out a little bit. You will be providing them with at least some financial commitment. Salary, benefits, and the huge opportunity cost of screwing up can be daunting (opportunity cost is the cost of not doing something other than what you chose to do). This high risk turns into high anxiety when interviewers are tasked to hire an employee based on 3-7 pages of information and a 15-30 minute interview. Unsurprisingly, interviewers screw it up all the time and cost the company money. However, one productive employee hired can compensate for a few unproductive hires if the company is healthy enough.

So how do you combat this problem? Several companies have concluded that the solution is to do intense research into which questions illicit truthful or telling responses. Others, like most busy entrepreneurs and managers without huge HR departments, decide to use basic filters that separate the wheat from the tares. For example, one employer told me that since interviews were not effective for him, he generally used an arbitrary GPA cutoff to reduce the number of resumes he was required to analyze.

Of course, those applicants on the outside looking in are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to prove themselves in an interview. "Who cares if I'm not in the top 25% of my class, I'll wow them with my sales pitch." These candidates believe that the arbitrary line causes companies to overlook qualified applicants (this might be true), but I believe that the causality is skewed. Look at it from the employer's perspective: if you interview people, many of them are going to sound better than they actually are. They will answer questions based on what they think you want. They will say they can take on more pressure than they can. They will commit to working more hours than they wish. Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. The fact that applicants are so eager to please is the reason why interviewers use arbitrary lines, and arbitrary lines are at least indicative of a long-term performance (or short-term high stress performance). I'm sure companies would interview more job-seekers if they knew they could get an honest and accurate picture of who that person really was.

As an interviewer in a former life, I realized quickly that when there was conflict between an interview performance and what was on the page of a resume, the smart money went to the resume. I admit that a clever questioner, or perhaps tester, can break through the fake and find the real, but that's beyond the scope of my point.

This applies to politics because voters are idiots.

I'm not going to analyze Michele Bachmann because I don't know that much about her. She may be the most qualified candidate for president, but its not very likely. It is however, insanely troubling to me that voters are showing signs of voting for who tells them exactly what they want to hear, as if they actually believe the politician is telling them the truth. Nobody believes everything along party lines all the time, and its ridiculous to assume they do. The faulty assumption is bad, but whats worse is they fault other candidates for taking positions that they (the voter) does not agree with. In this particular race, the positions generally deal with civil unions, climate change, health care, or taxes.

Can anyone honestly look at Michelle Bachman's resume and compare it to Jon Huntsman and tell me that Ms. Bachman is the more qualified candidate? "She sticks to her guns. She fights Washington. She stands for what I believe in." Those tag-lines may be true, but are they accurate predictions of her future success in office? I'm not insane enough to assume that past behavior is always a predictor of future success, but its much more accurate than a politicians promise. Mr. Huntsman is just an example, but he's been a successful government by most any rational measurement, he has experience with small and large businesses, and he was an ambassador, twice. On the precipice of an economic war with China (and hopefully not any other kind of war) wouldn't that be more attractive than Ms. Bachmann's background? The fact that he admitted he disagrees with his party on civil unions and perhaps global warming makes him less credible? But she speaks with a honey coated tongue and you eat it right up?

If a manager employs these tactics when hiring a new employee they should be deemed too incompetent to continue. Some might say that its important to see how a person presents himself, to get a picture of how he'll be viewed by customers. This is a great argument in a relevant position, but this logic still passes by most primary voters. "how he'll look to the other voters" is apparently unimportant to many of those currently polled by the media.

I suggest a new measurement to use when dealing with politicians. It's one adopted from nearly every legal rule: reasonableness. If a politician is reasonable (almost a dirty word these days) many people will refuse to vote for them. People want to play in the land of ideals, but forget that the other sides ideals are just as ideal, because they aren't real.

A liberal may say that they want to feed the sick and educate everyone to become great contributors to society. This requires government programs and initiatives to build people up and make the country great.

A conservative might say he wants to get out of the way of the free market that will provide plenty of jobs for everyone if we all just work hard and work together. If people are charitable those sick and needy people will have plenty of money. Freedom (plus hard work and honesty) leads to prosperity.

Both of those things are fantastic, but completely unrealistic. If we continue to elect politicians based on those ideals, we'll have lip service and empty wallets. Either extreme will bankrupt the country unless we have perfect leaders and perfect citizens. Anyone honestly think that's going to happen in the near future?

My hope is that people use their heads to analyze a politicians record. Try to determine if that person was successful in the past and if you liked her results. Try to determine if they have any potential to make any useful change (whether expansive or contractive) in Washington. Don't just assume that any job candidate who speaks well and tells you what you want to hear is qualified for the job. I'm afraid if you build on the sandy foundation of promises you'll end up drowning in idealistic regret.

What if we all said no to college?

(Disclaimer: Despite my comments below, I am pro-education. I have gone to school for 20 years, and I believe college education is important for many different reasons, but that's not what this post is about)

There has been a lot of buzz lately about a study claiming 45% of college students sampled showed no significant improvement in knowledge between high school graduation and completing their sophomore year of college.

This leads me a key question that has haunts me: Does education help you get a job and make you more money in life simply because employers are looking for educated employees? Or do college graduates actually possess more skills?

The next logical question is what would happen if a large group of smart college bound kids just decided not to go?

College is inefficient, but it has to be. One-on-one instruction would be much more effective, but that option cannot be available to every student. I think it's very possible that a bright young student could learn more on their own in four years than they could in the classroom, but it's preposterous to believe they actually would. The university setting provides structure and motivation that most young adults are not capable of generating on their own.

Nevertheless, it's still interesting to think about what a bright young man or woman could accomplish in four years if they weren't busy studying (drinking) and finding themselves (sleeping) in college.

A decent college is probably going to charge something like 40,000 in tuition for a college degree. If the student does not work they are giving up somewhere around 100,000 in income that they could have otherwise made in an entry-level job over the course of 4 years.

So my non-student will start with $140,000 more than your student will have. If he invests all of that money when he is 25 years old and averages a 6% return, he will have $1,534,000 when he reaches 65. (If he averages 8% that retirement pops up to more than 3 million)

Or, if working for money isn't his thing, he could just enter into internships. In four years he could intern with 8 banks or with 8 different types of employers. He could work in different cities and states, or even different countries. He could expand his professional network. He might even know what he wants to do with his life. (assuming the parents/loans would still fund his activities like they do in college)

Or he could work hard for 4 years and save up $140,000 and start a business before he's 25. Imagine the innovation we would see if hundreds of thousands of bright young people had $140,000 to invest in business ideas, especially after these kids had four years of work experience and business relationships.

Or, if college were reserved for those with more experience, he could work for ten years or build a business for ten years, and then go to college after he has learned where he wants to go in life. Those first two years of school could be spent on subjects that will benefit him in his career.

He could join the military, travel, or write a novel. He could play a sport, learn three foreign languages, or work for a charity.

These are all opportunity costs of going to college, and they are real. Now I'm not stupid enough to suggest that all 18 year-olds are prepared to take on this type of responsibility, but are our schools really the best place to put our young adults while they "get it out of their system?" What if there was a bright young person who determined that school wasn't for them. What if he watched all of the free MIT classes on academicearth.org. What if he received advanced specialized training in several different fields, and worked hundreds of hours to amass $100,000+ in savings? Would the lack of degree stop you from hiring him?

Most people would say that this just doesn't happen, but I propose that it would happen much more often if the extremely dedicated young people who excel in schools decided not to go. If those people with motivation and drive to dominate in the classroom decided to instead point their ship toward the workforce and self educate, there's no telling what they could accomplish.

I'm not trying to be nasty to educators. My education has been a brilliant addition to my life, and I am so glad that I have pursued it. But isn't it possible, maybe just a little bit, that some times, for some people, the answer might be less education rather than more?

Even if you agree with my proposition, it does not mean anything unless we live in a world where employers have the capability and insight to see beyond the lack of a college degree. College performance is measurable, college graduates are often quite dependable, and employers need a way to separate applicants. The problem with this blog post is that I pose a lot of questions that simply will not ever be answered because our system won't allow them to be.

So as we move forward to win the future, it is highly likely that our best and brightest minds will be prevented from entering the workforce for four, six, or 8 years as they attack the classroom. Are the benefits worth it? I argue that we can never know for sure.

I'd recommend that you students and graduates look back on your life and wonder what you could have accomplished with those prime years... you might surprise yourself.