If you’re looking for a job, or have ever looked for one, you know it can be a trying time. Depending on your situation and whether you’re forced to look because you’re out of a job or in a job you dislike, the timing and anxiety of the search can be drastically different. Couple that with the scads of places you need to look, opinions from family and friends, and the whole interview process and you may feel like you’re in a pressure cooker about to explode.
But what if you had experts working to match a group of candidates to a group of companies and appropriate jobs that then have to work together–at first sight? Would you do it?
Here’s the pitch:
- You’d never have to interview with the company or your future boss.
- You would sit down with a group of talent experts who would ask you for all the details of your “perfect” job from location and salary to preferred work styles and career development.
- The talent experts would talk with companies about their needs.
- Based on all the information, the expert would match you to a job. You would report to work on your first day without ever talking to the company first. The hitch is you’d have to agree in advance to take the job and keep it for 6 months.
- At the end of 6 months, both you and your boss would determine if you were going to keep the job or part ways.
I got the idea when I stumbled on a new show called Married at First Sight. According to the FYI channel, this show is, “an extreme social experiment following six brave souls who are yearning for a life-long partnership as they agree to a provocative proposal: getting legally married the moment they first meet.
Four specialists – sexologist Dr. Logan Levkoff; spiritualist Greg Epstein; psychologist Dr. Joseph Cilona; and sociologist Dr. Pepper Schwartz – will create what they believe are three perfect couples, based on scientific matchmaking. The couples will never meet or know each other until they walk down the aisle and see each other face to face, for the first time, when they get married.”
As it turns out, two of the three couples matched are still married. Would a similar experiment work in the HR world? We may never know, but I’m guessing that it would be worth the effort to find out. Having people who know what’s important to you make decisions that are not emotionally led may be the next great way to hire.
What do you think? Would you agree to be hired at first sight? Share with me in the comments.
–Trish McFarlane, VP and Principal Analyst,
Human Resources Practice, Brandon Hall Group
@TrishMcFarlane
