The New Employee for the New Economy: How Job Interviews are Changing

Laughter erupts on a regular basis from the group of 30 or so Starbucks-clutching twenty-to-fifty-somethings assembled in the basement of the Apollo Theater in Chicago’s Lincoln Park on this particular Saturday morning. The back and forth good-natured banter, coupled with “did-you-see-Mariah-Carey’s-disaster-on-Letterman” gossip is something you’d expect from a group of pals waiting for the start of a movie or play.

But these people aren’t waiting for theatrical entertainment. They’re in the second phase of a job interview.

It’s serious business for these aspiring and professional actors who are lucky enough to be here for a call-back audition for a part that’s not even an acting job. This “acting audition” is for a corporate job. (Or, as the parents and spouses of these actors might say, a “real” job.)

“This isn’t an acting job, but it is something where actors excel, which is why we like to hire actors,” according to the pretty blonde HR manager for U.S. Jesco – a “retail-tainment” company that promises to take the least profitable square footage of a store and turn it into a profit center. “This is a job where you can excel, make money, work as much as you want, and still have a flexible schedule where you can go on auditions if you still want to pursue your acting dreams” she tells the group assembled before her. “Ed McMahan started working at U.S. Jesco,” she adds.

Even though the company solicited only actors for this audition/job interview, and asked each candidate to come with a prepared monologue, head shot, and to be ready to read a prepared script, this isn’t an acting audition at all. It’s a job interview for a sales position.

This isn’t your mother-or-father’s job interview.

After an initial screening where candidates are asked to deliver a prepared monologue, and then read a script, those who are deemed appropriate are called back for a two-minute maximum interview. That’s right: two-minute MAXIMUM. Call it the business equivalent of speed dating.

“We know within two minutes if someone is a good fit,” the HR Manager tells the group. “That’s why we don’t need more than two minutes of your time, and we don’t need to waste more than two minutes of our time on the interview.”

They’re serious about the time limit. A stopwatch-clutching time keeper from the company sits outside the interview room and yells “time!” when the interview time is up. (Except on the few occasions where she got caught up in the gossip that the rest of the group was talking about and forgot to keep her eye on the stopwatch.)

What’s going on here? What happened to the tried-and-true method of employee recruitment: solicit resumes, look for candidates with relevant job experience and education, conduct one, two or three in-depth interviews, do a background check and then make a job offer? Why wouldn’t they look for seasoned sales people with exceptional presentation skills?

The answer: that old tried-and-true method is out of date for the type of worker needed in today’s economy. U.S. Jesco has been hiring actors and TV hosts for decades, with exceptional results.

“They start as sales people, but very quickly move to management jobs and on to upper management. We just find actors have the skills that make for better leaders,” according to one of the interviewers, who introduced herself only as “Jessica.”

More and more companies are realizing that the old method of recruiting is getting “old mindset” employees (regardless of the employee’s age—even 20-somethings can have an “old-way” mentality) that simply don’t work in the current economy. It’s not about getting the most skilled candidates or the most highly educated or the ones with the most experience; rather, it’s about getting candidates with the right mental inclination. In other words, companies are looking for “right brainers” over “left brainers.” But why?



New economic forces creating a need for a new type of employee.

Let’s look at a few reasons why companies are seeking our creative people--rather than linear, logical thinkers—even in traditional businesses like manufacturing, banking, health care, and finance. Daniel Pink, in his fantastic book, “A Whole New Mind,” says MBAs and computer programmers no longer “rule” the business world because we are making a shift from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. He maintains that if people and businesses are going to thrive (not to mention just survive), then they are going to have to make the shift from having logical/linear employees to creative/conceptual employees.

Pink may be right. Even the U.S. government has recognized and jumped on board with the movement to creative/conceptual thinkers. When Department of Homeland Security’s Analytic Red Cell Program wanted to try to come up with possible terrorist scenarios and ways to counter such attacks, they didn’t turn to logical, analytical, strategic war generals or even chemists or engineers. They turned to fiction writers –mostly novelists who wrote storylines around terrorist plots. (Brad Thor, a Chicago-based New York Times Best Selling Author, was among them. Thor’s gripping novels pose and play out “what if” scenarios that are so frighteningly realistic they seem as if they could have been ripped from the Times news section!)

But why did the government go with novelists over more classically trained logical thinkers and strategists? Simple. The Department of Homeland Security realized that it takes a creative mind – not necessarily a strategic mind – to out-think the terrorists. It’s the same quality that’s needed in the war against competition, foreign markets and economic forces in businesses across the country. More and more companies are finding it is the creative, right-brained person who is better not only at solving existing problems, but anticipating future problems.

How to Conduct a “Conceptual” Job Interview Three steps to the Conceptual Job Interview:

(1) Hold the interview “off site”

(2) Ask right-brained questions

(3) Have the candidate perform right-brained activities


Off-site interviews and changing the format

You don’t have to go as far as holding auditions, as U.S. Jesco did. And maybe you don’t even need “speed interviewing.” But stop relying on linear activities like reviewing resumes and holding interviews where you ask the same old questions that employees have rehearsed their answers to a half dozen times. And don’t hold the interview in the office. Get out of the box – literally and figuratively. A different environment will allow the interviewee’s personality to show through much more than the staid-and-stodgy office setting. Go for a walk. Play a quick game relevant to the job. Also, don’t be afraid to shake up the interview format. Instead of reviewing the resume and asking questions based on someone’s experience, turn the tables and say you are going to have the candidate interview YOU. The types of questions someone asks and how they ask them often speaks more about the person than how they answer questions. Now of course you will still want to ask the candidate some questions, but by starting off with a role reversal will force the candidate to use some of those “right brained” skills.

Ask right-brained questions. Sure, go ahead and ask some of those traditional questions, but also ask questions that require the right brain to work in order to answer. Have candidates solve a fictitious problem based on relationships or cause-and-effect scenarios, as opposed to analyzing data and facts. Require right-brained activities such as having the candidate write a short fictionalized story around one of your products. Ask questions that require the person to use all (or at least most) of his senses. Ask them to solve an imaginary, completely fictitious, fantastical problem – the kind found in fairy tales.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. You still need to ask questions relevant to the job, and the person still has to have the necessary skills for the job. (For example, you wouldn’t want to hire a computer programmer who had no programming experience or knowledge.) But when you hire candidates you demonstrate both –right and left brain strengths, you are strengthening your business.

Job Seekers Also Need to Adjust to Become “Conceptual” Talents Two ways to increase your “right brain” power:

(1) Master the six skills of conceptual employees

(2) Incorporate more right-brained act ivies into your daily life



What can you do if you’re a left-brained, logical/linear thinker whose idea of being creative is painting the walls in your den beige instead of white? Are your prospects for a lucrative position dimming?

Not necessarily.

In his book, Pink outlines six skills that employers look for in a conceptual employee: design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. (His book also goes on to outline how you can develop those qualities, if you’re interested in learning more.)

But beyond what Pink advises, just start incorporating right-brained activities into your daily life. Read more fiction. (Or start to read any fiction if your current reading is limited to trade pubs and the newspaper.) Go to an art gallery. Take a pottery class. Take an improv class. Try your hand at writing short fictional stories. Take an art class.

When you successfully mesh right and left brain skills, you will have become the new, Conceptual Employee that who is so highly sought after in today’s market.

And if you’re a business owner and start to hire more Conceptual Employees, you’ll realize a benefit that U.S. Jesco found.

“Our turnover is virtually zero,” according to Jessica. “Our employees stay with us a long time and they rise to the top of this organization very quickly. That saves us a lot of time and money in hiring, recruiting and training.”







The New Employee for the New Economy: How Job Interviews are Changing - To learn more about this author, visit Vicki Kunkel's Website.

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