In the book, Good to Great, author Jim Collins talks about leaders being bus drivers. Great leaders preoccupy themselves first with making sure they get the right people on the bus before they determine where the bus is going.
This week, Promotional Consultant Today has been about the role and advantages of cultivating curiosity in the workplace. Yesterday, we uncovered why curious employees are valuable to an organization. Today, we talk about how to get curious employees “on the bus,” as explained by business writer Kelsey Meyer in her Forbes.com article “How to Hire Curious People and Keep Curiosity Alive.”
Meyer shares three specific tips on how to ensure you are hiring curious employees.
Ask the curiosity question. In the interview ask a question specifically designed to get to whether the potential employee is naturally curious. Questions such as “Tell me something you have taught yourself in the past six months” or “How did you go about teaching yourself a new skill or idea?” might do the trick.
Give them a task. Ahead of the interview, Meyer suggests, give the interviewee a simple task that will require some research on your company or product or competitors in order to uncover how deeply they will dive into the topic. Then ask not only for the answer to the task, but have them walk you through how they came up with the answer.
Ask what questions they have for you. Then listen to the questions not just to answer them but also to evaluate how original the questions are. According to Meyer, “Curious people will ask original questions. Period.” When they ask stock questions like “What do you like about your job,” that should be a red flag.
How do you cultivate curiosity in your office? Learn in tomorrow’s issue of PCT.
Source: Kelsey Meyer is the co-founder of Influence & Co., a firm that helps establish key employees as industry leaders by getting bylined articles published online.