The Talgo Blog

One of the main things we do in our Talgo workshops is systematically show teams how to gather and use predictive data to make more accurate hiring decisions. Data being the operative word—in contrast to more subjective "gut" decisions which are the primary driver of most hiring...

Why not just create an interviewing scorecard based entirely on competencies—why bother listing the results expected at all?

We got (a variant of) this question recently in a consulting call, and I think it’s a good one.

To be clear, a purely competency based framework alongside the...

"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the result," is among my favorite Charlie Munger quotes.

How does this apply to interviewing? Unlike other parts of the talent pipeline, you often have people performing interviewing in a more-or-less "volunteer" capacity. They aren't an HR professional...

Most of us know the Segway. A supposedly "cool" innovation that was received by the general public as decidedly... uncool.

Keep that image in mind the next time you are tempted to "segue" your interview from one topic to the next. Most interviewers attempt to do this to make the conversation more...

In interviews, the questions we ask should serve two goals. First, they must have a high probability of gathering relevant, predictive information about the candidate. Second, they should avoid telegraphing exactly what we’re looking for or what the “right” answer might be.

When...

Most interviewers are either afraid of asking for negative information from candidates (weaknesses, mistakes). Or they are simply unskilled in doing so. Often both.

Why do we insist that asking for negative information is such an important part of a well conducted interview process? Three...

There’s no shortage of leadership gurus who talk about the importance of hiring people with specialized skills and expertise. “Specialists over generalists” was a common refrain at my former employer, the renowned leadership advisory firm ghSMART. Peter Drucker has written...

You may be familiar with the classic airport test: "Is this the type of person I could stand to be around while waiting for a flight?" Etc.

I was recently talking to a friend at a NYC VC about the recent CrowdStrike outage and the ensuring debacle with Delta Airlines at Atlanta airport.

That...

Interview questions play a crucial role in the hiring process, but some common ones don't quite hit the mark. In this post, I'll explain why certain popular interview questions fall short and share some underrated alternatives that can help you find the right candidate more effectively.

Let's...