Hire for passion
When he was interviewing for one of his first jobs, Fallon was
asked a tricky question.
“The interviewer asked me, ‘What do you think is more important, intelligence or drive and determination?’” he says.
From what Fallon saw, he was in a no-win situation. If he said
intelligence, that meant he didn’t value drive and determination. If he said drive and determination, did it concede that he didn’t think he was smart? He decided that he’d rather ride out his luck
on his moxy than his brains.
“I didn’t think I was the smartest guy around,” Fallon says. “So I
said drive and determination, and he smiled and said, ‘Ah, you
should have said intelligence.’”
It took him a minute, but he got the joke: The interviewer, looking over Fallon’s impressive resume, knew that the young man was
smart. What he didn’t know was how hard he was willing to work.
Today, Fallon still thinks about that question when he interviews
people.
“Let’s face it, the ante into the game is being intelligent,” he says.
“I’m going to make an assumption, though somewhat tested, that
you are smart enough to be where you are if you’re sitting across the table from me. For me, it is about passion, it’s about desire —
hunger, if you will. If you bring to the table the kind of drive and
determination that I can see, boy, that’s somebody that I can really feel comfortable putting my trust behind to get the job done.”
Fallon uses a basic interviewing technique to find out if employees have the grit to make it: He asks them to spell out how they’ve
been successful.
“It’s about achievement, if someone can walk in and articulate
those examples,” he says. “Those folks that have that false positive, they couldn’t tell you two instances where they’ve taken a situation and turned it around or been the catalyst for making an initiative. It’s those folks who have actually done it that can articulate
it, that’s the litmus test.
“I’ve had people in front of me with great eye contact, great body
language and great personal experiences, but when you really pin
them down and say, ‘Give me an example of where you’ve applied
yourself,’ they can’t. A truly passionate, energized person, you’ll
have to turn them off. Impassioned individuals you generally
have to rein in a little bit because they’ve lived it and breathed it.”
