KILLER QUESTIONS

My good friend, the HRD, has written a cracking post on his excellent blog - www.myhellisotherpeople.com - advocating (very sensibly) choice of pizza topping as talent indicator. Mine's tuna, onion, peppers and plenty of chilli oil, by the way.
His post set me in mind of a killer question I once asked. At the time I was a Brand manager and the brand under my care was looking for a new advertising agency. We did the rounds of a shortlist of London ad agencies and were treated to a few good lunches - tuna and onion pizza, maybe. The agencies were a mix of the established large shops, and some new, rather more creative boutique outfits.One of the latter were presenting to us, and in my book were well ahead on points. They described their approach as absolutely focused in searching for a brand's benefit and unique proposition. So focused, in fact, that they made it a discipline always to hone their brand benefits down to a single word. "And what," I asked, "is the single word for your agency?".
Sadly, they blew it, looking at me silently with a mix of loathing and disbelief.
Another friend of mine, also an HR Director, claims to use two killer questions in recruitment interviews:
- which battles do you fight?
and:
- what's your favourite porn category?
They should sort the men from the boys.