TALENT

Why recruiting creative people is the primary difference between a company that thrives and one that merely survives.

Cowen, a professor of economics and bestselling author of The Great Stagnation and other bestsellers, and Gross, a venture capitalist in the tech field, have been consulting on this issue for many years. Establishing the creativity of a job applicant is different than determining technical skills, and the authors provide advice about interview questions. They suggest focusing on what the person does in their nonwork time. Personality, they note, is revealed during weekends. Another good one: “What are the open tabs on your browser right now?” The aim is to assess the applicant’s thought processes and willingness to embrace new thinking. In fact, the interview should be more of a free-flowing discussion then a structured Q&A. In an intriguing chapter on the use of IQ and personality tests, the authors point out that such metrics can be helpful, but their limitations should be understood. Creativity appears in odd places, and Cowen and Gross advise employers to cast a net wide enough to catch candidates from historically marginalized communities. Some creative people can be cantankerous, even anti-social, so there might be a need to design work-from-home or similar arrangements. Fit the person to the job and sometimes the job to the person. Along the way, the authors offer an interesting exploration of how recruiting talented women differs from recruiting talented men—and how male interviewers should allow for their own biases. In the concluding chapters, the authors deal with the issues of retaining creative people. The key is to keep them stimulated and challenged, with rewards and recognition that are appropriate to each individual. All this takes effort and time for the employer, and recruiting and managing creative people can be more art than science. But in the end, as the authors show, the returns are often well worth the investment.

A useful and entertaining map for companies looking toward a creative future.