You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
– Plato
Is it such a preposterous idea to arrange a game of sport for fresh recruits? Especially in college campuses where there are grounds available. Of course, not.
A carefully chosen sport easy for anyone to play, difficult for the solitary star to win all alone, and requiring total team participation at all times.
When we play, we cannot but be our true selves. And here for the HR recruiter, the wisdom of another age-old saying is a very good parameter to go by – “And it does not matter whether you win or lose, but how you play the game” And God help the ‘smart’ recruiter who goes about publicizing that!
How many companies make the effort to get it right the first time? From the immune system in our body to the immigration counter at the airport, we can learn how critical it is to allow only the positive, healthy entity to get inside. Once they get in, it is so difficult to restrain their activity and influence. Companies are not that sanguine about the consequences of who they let in.
And this can be extended beyond the campus to the recruitment of regular employees too. Why not?! A company that has frustrating experiences with attrition, vague back-ground checks, dubious resume credentials, indecisive reference checks, repeated misfits, rigid recruitment consultants, intractable retention issues has extra-motivation to go in for this.
A carpenter remains bad because he refuses to change his tools. Try something new!