How to Hire a Winner? Try a Game of Ping Pong

At this point I can't even tell anymore if this is some subtle sarcastic commentary on how ridiculous interviews can get or a real way to hire employees. I no longer care. When I'm looking for work I'm game for anything. I'll perform interpretative dance if you happen to think this reveals my true personality, I don't see the harm (at least to me). Any judgements you make based on it will be purely justifications you come up with for the decision you have already made based on other things - probably whether or not you like or trust me. I'm all right with that.

"Afterward, Bellenfant watches and evaluates, along with a statistician from Vanderbilt, a psychologist from Vanderbilt, and the president of the Nashville Table Tennis Club."

Seems a little overkill, but I like the idea in general.

"One young woman recently interviewed for an intern position. 'During the recruiting process she displayed a high level of confidence and enjoyed making people laugh,' Bellenfant says. In the original questionnaire, she rated her excitement level at the prospect of playing at 13 (on the scale of 1-10), and her ping pong skill level at seven.

When she played, it became obvious that she'd overestimated her abilities. 'We would have put her at two or three,' he says. Yet in the questionnaire after the game, she rated her skill level at six. 'She maintained that high level of confidence, which we think is a positive thing,' Bellenfant says. The company hired her, and he predicts she will be a strong performer."

Wouldn't being ridiculously over confident like this player be a negative sign? That seems like the kind of person who would power through things by themselves and do it completely wrong while being convinced it's right.

Reminds me of Gulliver's Travels where the Emperor of Lilliput appoints court officials by their rope dancing skills.

http://www.shmoop.com/gullivers-travels/the-lilliputians.htm...

"If they rated themselves a seven in skill level before the games and now they see themselves as a three, maybe they learned something ... On the other hand, a candidate who rated him or herself as a three originally and a seven after the game may show hard self-judgment."

"We would have put her at two or three," he says. Yet in the questionnaire after the game, she rated her skill level at six. "She maintained that high level of confidence, which we think is a positive thing," Bellenfant says. The company hired her, and he predicts she will be a strong performer."

What? Overrating your skill shows that you lack self-judgement, this girl overrated her own skill so they hired her. This whole thing seems ludacris. I mean, yeah I'm game for whatever to get a job, but this article just defies reason to the point of seeming delusional.

Any company that demonstrates this kind of thinking is actually only interested in drones willing to follow whatever orders are at the table.

"We don't know what data we're getting but it is interesting"? Dance my minions!

Reminds me on that "It's fucking startup" quasi enthusiastic story from the other day https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7619439

Is this April 1st? No?

The simple truth is this: people have no idea how to hire good people, or even how to evaluate their existing employees to see who is good and who is not.

And it is especially difficult when the prospective employees know the stakes. If they don't present a particular image well enough, they won't get the job. Every single person that comes in for an interview is acting out a role--the person they think you want to hire. If you invent a tactic to see the real person behind the role, it only works for a short time, until people know you use it and adapt accordingly.

This is why the Monty Python sketch with the job interviewer ringing the bell and counting down loudly still holds up. That was from 1969. Nineteen sixty-nine. If you re-made it today, you could even keep the same punchline!

This is a great way to make sure you only hire people who are just like you.

I'm not a fan.

What kind of weird world do you people live in? This is obnoxious. Only one person has ever said no? I'd have made it two.

"We found we were just too likely to positively evaluate disabled people, offer them a job and then find they had all sorts of costly health problems", said the study author. "As a small growing company we can't afford that sort of drain, so this roots them out before we get to that stage".

Amusing. I think driving would be a terrible activity to practice this with. Ping pong works because it's generally a neutral activity in life like any sport. Ping pong does not present imminent, potentially-fatal dangers or anything even close. Also, most people do not have strong preexisting opinions about it. On the other hand, driving is an intense activity where the consequences are life or death and any driver will have strong preexisting opinions about it. Would it be fair to say I'm an aggressive person who can't keep their cool if I yell profanities at the person who almost killed me a moment ago? That's ridiculous. The activities are definitely not interchangeable. Finally, what would they make of my skill rating of one both before and after the game? Would it be interpreted as a lack of confidence or will my failure to score be redeeming (Yes, I suck that much)?

Wanna hire a real stud? I mean, someone who will really perform?

Hire a hooker, and REALLY get to know your potential employee.

Haven't you ever heard of a nerd? False positives on this test could lead you to hire the wrong nerd after all. I've heard there are people more interested in the obfuscated C competition than anything in the physical world including filling out surveys etc.

I guess if they published their interview technique it becomes useless.

I'd flunk that job interview.

I dislike ping pong in particular. I find it dull. I long ago lost interest in winning at dull, pointless games.

Forrest Gump?

Bruce Lee (with numchucks--look it up on youtube, it's freaking amazing)