Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World

The typical interview process is great at finding "least offensive" employees. It helps filter out those that will absolutely fail, but does a poor job of identifying great talent. This book was written by an economist and a tech entrepreneur to identify sources of  transcendental talent. 

For an interview, it is useful to delve into an area that the candidate has not prepared. One question today is to ask "what are your current open browser tabs?" This helps identify what they are interested in. Personality is often defined more with a what a person does on the weekend than while at work. Another question is "What do you believe that everybody else finds irrational?" The goal is to find things that really make the person unique.

A person can't learn charisma from book and list of traits. It is much better to find examples of people that have the desired traits and try to emulate them.

Interviewing is very different in the world of Zoom than it is in person. A video call leaves off many of the cues that we would have in a face to face conversation. An audio call can in some ways be better since it does not provide "false clues". The skills to make a good video call appearance are different than those for an in-person conversation. 

Finding the best talent often involves seeking out diversity. Those from different cultures may appear to be very polite or quiet. This could be just a reflection of being in an unfamiliar surrounding rather than their true personality. Sometimes the best talent will have a different outward appearance, be that gender, race, age, language, or other characteristic. Great talent can be uncovered by being willing to work with people with different neurologies. (One of the author's even states that there is a need to have a degree of neuroticism.) Those on the autism spectrum are an especially overlooked source of talent. (The author's even mention that a number of actors may be on the spectrum. They need to "act" to function in the world, so emulating different characters is a natural extension.) Work needs to be done to accommodate those that are different, but it will often pay off.