Storytelling How to choose the best candidate

Eran Goldman-Malka · March 6, 2020

I have a simple trick to help me when I interview for a position, I change the story.

It’s not easy to choose which candidate will do the best in the position, so to make it easy I choose the Characteristics that are more needed for this position and make a story about it.

Instead of searching for an employee that thinks out of the box, a team player, that can be Froogle and yet respectful. With a client-centric approach, I built a short story about this epic quest:

We are the king advisory committee and we need the help to choose the best prince for the princess, we know the princess and she’s not expected, the price will have to adapt and change, he’ll need to think outside of the box to solve her needs, he might not have to fight dragons, so we don’t need Alon Musk size of a prince, and he’ll need to move in peace with the other kingdoms around him while never forgetting the princess.

Which prince will you choose -

Sir solve a lot, he’s about 40, and he started his journey younger than the average prince, he’s curious, and haven’t chosen the easy path, Solve a lot change his kingdom few time, rode out of the road to find adventures, and learn from any side move.

Sir bore a lot, he’s also about 40, and he did the same path as all the other princes, he’s riding the main road for all of his careers, studied in the same average path as the rest, and never learned from adventure.

With which prince we’ll have more fun time at lunchtime?

Now if you have a candidate that was doing the “correct” path, it sounds like more of the same and the candidate that can adapt and have a less straightforward career sound better.

I always prefer to work with a more interesting person.

What will you choose?

This post is backed up by the research -

Creative Cognition, Conceptual Combination, and the

Creative Writing of Stephen R. Donaldson

Thomas B. Ward

Texas A&M University

Twitter, Facebook