Your resume looks great, but how’s your Jenga game?
How do you uncover a person’s true character in a job interview? When people know they’re being evaluated, they of course put on their best behavior and play nice. But are they really? You can ask them what they’re like, but will they tell the truth?
Here’s a fun way to uncover an applicant’s character that I found in a comment thread over on reddit.com. It involves a serious game of Jenga:
Where I work, we do our best to weed out the unhappy and cynical employees before they even get hired. Coworkers who are constantly cynical and unhappy are absolutely terrible for morale, and we do whatever we can to avoid it both before and after hiring.
After each candidate goes through his/her well-rehearsed and pre-meditated interviews with HR and management, the entire engineering team (small company) comes into the room, closes the door, and starts a game of Jenga like it’s no big deal. Meanwhile, we strike up a casual conversation with the candidate and insist s/he play with us.
Without fail, the candidates true colors are almost immediately revealed. Candidate scoffs at the idea of playing a game in an interview? Obviously too uptight for our group and not capable of handling rapidly changing situations. Focusing on Jenga also takes the candidate’s mind off of all of the pre-meditated answers and pages of ‘interview tips’ articles that we’ve all read at one point or another. The trick is to treat the game of Jenga like it’s serious business so the candidate follows suit and forgets about the formalities of the interview and whatever persona s/he is trying to craft for the interviewers. If the person can discuss intense technical topics without breaking a sweat while playing Jenga, then s/he likely knows the subject matter pretty well.
Works every time. We end up with engineers who get along, think on their feet, are laid back, and known their stuff.
I like it. It reminds me of this great story from Hal Rosenbluth’s book The Customer Comes Second:
CEO Hal Rosenbluth was once about to hire an executive with all the right skills, the right personality and the perfect CV. His interviews went swimmingly and he’d said all the right things, but something about him still made Rosenbluth nervous, though he couldn’t put his finger on just what it was.
His solution was brilliant: He invited the applicant to a company softball game, and here he showed his true colors. He was competitive to the point of being manic. He abused and yelled at both the opponents and his own team. He cursed the referees and kicked up dirt like a major league player.
And he did not get the job.
I absolutely agree that no workplace should tolerate jerks and the best time to weed them out is before they’re ever hired. Playing games is just one way to make people forget themselves enough to show who they really are.
Your take
What do you think? Does your workplace do something similar? Have you tried something like this in a job interview?
Related posts
- The No Asshole Rule.
- How do you hire happy managers?
- Top 5 reasons why most team building events are a waste of time.
Dan (Leadership Freak) Said,
March 17, 2010 @ 4:00 pm
Alexander,
Thanks again for a useful, happy post. My leadership needs some fun and it’s time I took the bull by the horns! We have a meeting tonight.
On another note. You posted about getting up every 30 minutes to move around. My timer has 2 minutes before I’m up and out for 2.5 minutes.
So you can see I took it to heart. Wrote a blog about it and then a follow up blog. You’re influencing me and I’m influencing others. How fun is that?
If you are interested the blogs begin with “2.5 minutes that changed my day.”
at http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com
You’re rocking!
Leadership Freak
Dan Rockwell
rack Said,
March 18, 2010 @ 9:00 am
Thanks for your useful post.
thorbjørn andersen Said,
March 18, 2010 @ 10:57 am
yaaaa, loving it, jenga for the waY!
Jesper Said,
March 18, 2010 @ 11:32 am
This excellent advice is equally useful the other way around … to weed out uptight and selfimportant employers.
Izzy Samaluk Said,
March 18, 2010 @ 3:20 pm
Love the post!!! I had an interview for a job, and my babysitter didn’t show up, when I called to reschedule the interview I was told to come and bring the kids with me. I interviewed with a 4 year old and 1 1/2 year old….maintained my composure… and got the job!! My new boss said he figured if I could do that I could handle whatever the job would throw my way.
Laura Galindo Said,
March 18, 2010 @ 8:38 pm
this is a very clever idea, I got a Jenga set once at a holiday party hosted by Pointroll. I brought it in to work the next day and it immediately became “the” lunch activity. You could hear the whole team laughing away in the kitchen every time those pieces came down. Truly an icebreaker game.
Annie Said,
March 18, 2010 @ 10:37 pm
I think any unique way of seeing how well someone can multi-task is a great HR tool!
ChrisFizik Said,
March 19, 2010 @ 4:57 am
great idea of course. Things like this in interviews are super useful. Another one, minus the ‘prop’ of the game, the my boss, and I guess I as well, like to use is conversing with the applicant about their taste in music. That sort of highly opinionated/personal aspect of one’s life tells alot about them (of course, you kind of have to be a big music fan to use this tactic)
Another note — getting a Jenga set for the office is a great idea — think I’m gonna get on that.
Johnnie Moore Said,
March 19, 2010 @ 8:37 am
As Plato said “You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than you can from a lifetime of conversation”
rantersparadise Said,
March 19, 2010 @ 12:04 pm
Agree.
This would struggle in the UK were I am based because people are inherently uptight and reserved but nevertheless it is something I have always done in all previous projects I have started or business.
I don’t do uptight. Life is miserable enough as it is and life is too short to now want to sustain a happy atmosphere at work or online.
I’m starting up a new company and it’s hard trying to communicate this to business advisors who just don’t get that I am making this type of people management theory, intergral to my business model!
Won’t stop trying though!
David Gruber Said,
March 19, 2010 @ 1:03 pm
I love this. My question is how to do it on the flip side. I am currently looking for my next day job (my business, which operates on weekends brings in half of my income), and companies try to put on their best face too. I have worked for companies that once you are in there you discover they have all the bad attributes we know many companies have. How do you as a potential employee discover the true character of a company?
Carla Said,
March 19, 2010 @ 2:13 pm
I love Jenga!! This is a great idea, throwing a curve ball at an interviewee is going to really cause them to open up and show their true colors.
Alex Said,
March 23, 2010 @ 9:09 pm
This is a great idea. It’s very hard to break through someone’s hardened interview shell.
@Johnnie: love that quote!
James Schneider Said,
March 25, 2010 @ 4:43 pm
Great idea. I used a logic test as part of the hiring process in a past career. Helped me evaluate if applicants were capable and willing to think on their own which was essential in our office. Some people thought it was weird but those were the people we didn’t want to hire (or be around) anyway.
Maybe I should buy stock in the company that makes Jenga. I have a feeling they’re about to have a jump in sales.
Scott M Said,
January 21, 2011 @ 10:20 pm
What a silly manipulative interview technique.
I hate jenga. It’s a silly game. Every time my turn would come I would deliberately remove a piece to knock the pile over just so I could take solace in the amount of time it took to reset the game, during which perhaps I could get some real interviewing in.