Last week, my wife and I celebrated our one year anniversary by taking a trip to San Francisco. We spent a couple of days in the Napa/Sonoma Valley area tasting and learning about wine. Being wine novices, we were pretty fascinated by all the factors that go into the taste and quality of each of wine. It turns out there’s more to making wine than just fermenting some grapes. Not only are there the grapes themselves to consider, but the soil they’re grown in, the amount of moisture where they are grown, and even the elevation. Another major factor we learned was the importance of the type of barrel used. It was interesting to learn how a barrel made from an oak tree in France leads to a different taste than a barrel made from an oak tree in Missouri. This multitude of factors made what seemed to be a fairly straightforward process into something very complex and interesting.

Being the I/Oish person that I am, I found the complexity of factors that go into making a good wine to be not so different from the complexity of factors that go into finding a good job candidate. Now of course I’m not talking about storing candidates in barrels to see how well they age, but often times searching for a quality job candidate is mistaken as a fairly straightforward and obvious process. The truth is that most of the time there are a number of factors that go into what it takes to be successful on a job. As a result, it is important to use appropriate selection tools available to ensure that we’re accounting for these critical factors. This can include assessments, behavioral interviews, job simulations, and other kinds of job related tools. The key is to take the due diligence to appreciate the complexity of truly finding quality job candidates. Without accounting for this complexity we can be left with sour grapes.

Nate Studebaker