I was a contract away to hire someone who is right like me.

I was in my office selecting candidates for a management position in my company. This candidate seems perfect, fitting very well our company values. I remember how frictionless the interview was. So we decided to hire.

Fortunately, we finally decided to carry out that final test.

When hiring people, avoid people who resonate too much.

A candidate precisely like you is akin to falling in love, but it adds nothing.

You don't want a double. You want someone different to solve problems from another perspective. In our case, we don't need other visionaries like me but to facilitate execution. We wanted someone resonating but divergent in helping team consistency.

Here is what we did to avoid the doubling error:

#1. Ask divergent people to assess

When the interviews are emotionally frictionless, you risk confirmation bias.

Ask for different POVs. Ask someone who has a different perspective than yours to assess separately. Compare your takeaways.

#2. Go slower to go faster: create a game

Create a real-life situation to spot behaviors. You will get a faster onboarding.

Create a business game as a final interview. Choose 3 or more candidates to work on a case. Split the activity in both an individual and a group stage.

#3. Extract behaviors from uncomfortable situations

Force the emergency mode of candidates. You will anticipate disillusion.

Make the game uncomfortable. For example, people could ask clarification questions, but only in closed form (yes/no) and in the individual play. Create a conflictual moment when in the group. They should negotiate, name a leader, favor feedback moments.

The position required diagnostic skills and specificity in new. In strange situations, people dig into their characteristics. The candidate has never shown the required aptitudes. It resonated so much with me in the vision that I was blind to spot this risk.

Indeed, the game was fun, and we learned a lot from our errors.