Getting inside the mind of candidates – literally

Interviews are all about getting inside someone’s head. What’s their experience? Their work ethic? Their personality? Will they fit in the team?

Psychometric testing is one common approach, but would you want to literally look at someone’s brainwaves?

Turkish ad agency TBWA/Istanbul did just that in their recent recruiting effort, by hooking up potential interns to a brain scan while watching a presentation on advertising. The goal, according to a video the company posted about the process, was to find those who were “most excited” by advertising.

“We are trying to monitor their passion, love and excitement for this creative area in a scientific way based on numeric data,” the presenter said. “We tried to choose the interns who desired this job the most, who got most excited about it.”

But is it worth it?

“Exactly how useful this information is open to question. Presumably, the subjects could have strong responses for lots of reasons not all of them related to their passion for the job, or their ability to do it,” Fast Company writer Ben Schiller pointed out. “It’s the sort of process that gives the impression of scientific rigor, but ends up possibly measuring the wrong things. Personally, I feel sorry for the out-of-work graduates who have to put up with it.”