I saw a post recently from a corporate leader bragging about his favorite interview tactic. He said he loved to ask a specific, impossible question just to "push candidates into a corner and watch them wiggle their way out."
It was celebrated as a brilliant management strategy.
I left a comment asking a very simple question: How about just treating people like people?
The corporate world has turned interviewing into a gladiator match. We use trick questions about escaping bears with a Cinnabon. We transcribe answers for later analysis. We try to artificially induce stress to see if the candidate breaks. We operate from a place of deep suspicion, constantly trying to prevent a "bad hire."
But look at how we handle the actual, high-stakes relationships in our lives.
When you go on a date, you don't push the other person into a corner to watch them wiggle. You don't interrogate them. You just sit across from them, drop your guard, and see if a connection emerges. You explore the unknown together. Sometimes you get it right, and sometimes you don't, but you don't treat the other person like a hostile witness.
When I was building companies, I eventually stopped interviewing people and just started having conversations with them.
I stopped sitting across the desk and started sitting on the same side. Instead of asking trick questions, I would just hand them a real problem we were stuck on and say, "We can't figure this out. Can you help us?"
When you ask someone to prove their worth, they put their armor on. When you ask someone for help, they take their armor off.
An interview isn't a forensic evaluation of another human being. It is just two people sitting in a room, experiencing their own thinking. If you walk into that room terrified of making a mistake, you will only see their faults. If you walk in knowing there is nothing on the line, you will see exactly who they are.
You don't find the best people by testing them. You find them by creating a space safe enough for them to actually show up.