The World around Us. Любинская Н.А. - 11 стр.

        They may, for example, have to describe in great detail not one career ac-
complishment but many – so that patterns of behavior emerge. They may face
questions such as “Who is the best manager you ever worked for and why?” or
“What is your best friend like?” The answers, psychologists say, reveal much
about a candidate’s management style and about himself or herself.
        The reason for the interrogations is clear: many hires * work out badly.
About 35 percent of recently hired senior executives are judged failures, accord-
ing to the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina, which
surveyed nearly 500 chief executives.
        The cost of brining the wrong person on board is sometimes huge. Search-
ing and training can cost from $5000 for a lower-level manager to $250,000 for
a top executive. Years of corporate downsizing, a trend that has slashed * layers
of management, has also increased the potential damage that one bad executive
can do. With the pace of change accelerating in markets and technology, com-
panies want to know how an executive will perform, not just how he or she has
performed.
        “Years ago, employers looked for experience – has a candidate done this
before?” said Harold P. Weinstein, executive vice-president of Caliper, a per-
sonnel testing and consulting firm in Princeton, New Jersey. “But having ex-
perience in a job does not guarantee that you can do it in a different environ-
ment.”
        At this point most companies have not shifted to this practice. Some do
not see the need or remain unconvinced that such testing is worth the cost. But
human-resource specialists say anecdotal * evidence suggests that white-collar
testing is growing in popularity. What has brought so many employers around *
to testing is a sense of the limitations in the usual job interview. With so little in-
formation on which to base a decision, “most people hire people they like, rather
than the most competent person,” said Orv Owens, a psychologist in Snohomish,
Washington, who sized up executive candidates. Research has shown, he said,
that “most decision makers make their hiring decisions in the first five minutes
of an interview and spend the rest of the time rationalizing their choice.”
        Besides, with advice on how to land a better job about as common as a
ten-dollar bill, many people are learning to play the interview game.
        Even companies that have not started extensive testing have toughened
their hiring practices. Many now do background checks, for example, looking
for signs of drug use, violence or sexual harassment. But the more comprehen-
sive testing aims to measure skills in communications, analysis and organiza-



*
  A hire (US); a recruit (GB): someone who starts to work for a company.
*
  To slash: to cut.
*
  Anecdotal: based on personal experience
*
  To bring around: to persuade s.b. to agree with s.th.
                                              11