That’s the question posed by Seth Godin some time back while contemplating this whole job-interview-thing.

If you’re of sound mind, your answer is, “Absolutely NOT!” Well, at least for most of us.

However, Seth’s take is that’s exactly what many of us do when it comes to the job interview process.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of the interview done well. In fact, I’m a fan of Lou Adler’s performance-based-hiring (posted about it recently) and have implemented this in our hiring practices.

But I just might be interested in following Lou’s advice, and then doing a follow-up with what Seth calls a “measurable event.” Lou’s performance-based hiring is, in my opinion, THE tool for determining job fit based on performance. The past performance should be a strong predictor of how somebody will perform today. In turn, Godin’s real-time-measurable-event should confirm the interviewees convictions about their ability to perform in the past today.

Translation: their ability to get in the cage and tame the lion. Today.

Curious to get your thoughts after you read the post by Godin.

Darth Vader didn’t come up this afternon at NAER but these things did …

Joe McCool, amped about his new book, jokes that specialist recruiters are in such demand nowadays that a generalist recruiter should call themselves a “multispecialist” … McCool also has some interesting stuff (which he goes into more detail about in the book) to say about diversity, namely that the glass ceiling for women and minorities is partly to blame on search firms’ lack of diversity, since they’re the ones who fill so many high-level jobs … Jay Arnold, SVP of HR at DB Schenker Logistics, says he’d like to see third-party recruiters bring him great candidates more often even when there’s no job apparently open for them, as he wants to find a way to pass along good resumes to hiring managers regardless of whether there’s an official opening … Kensington International’s Joel Dant jokes that “race, sex, even disability” are becoming commonplace discussions in politics, “and that’s just the lieutenant governor”  … a couple of healthcare recruiters tell me the physical-therapist shortage is just dreadful, and that PTs are the equivalent of techies about eight years ago…the big search firms get bashed a bit for providing weak service, blowing off candidates who aren’t picked for jobs, and sometimes just riding high on their brand names vs. blood, sweat, and tears.

Not going? You’d better think twice.

Chris Murdock, executive sourcer & knowledge manager, Yahoo!, shared some of his thoughts on popular sourcing tools today at the NAER conference in Redondo Beach (a good place for a weekend afternoon but a pain in the kiester to get to on a work day).

ZoomInfo: Murdock notes that he has seen Darth Vader listed as a VP of marketing for ABC on ZoomInfo. “A lot of people think it’s crap, but it’s a great tool,” he says, particularly in conjunction with LinkedIn; you can sometimes find a name on ZoomInfo, and more information on them from LinkedIn.

Broadlook: Diver is “a good tool for resumes” if used with search strings, says Murdock.

Capital IQ. “Incredibly expensive,” he says. Murdock recommends pooling a few people together to share access. “Capital IQ wants to take care of the independent recruiters as well as the small firms.” Murdock also says of Capital IQ, “they don’t delete information,” so you want to make sure you only search for current companies, if that’s what you’re looking for. The company offers great customer service, he says and is willing to offer free trials.

OneSource: A good tool to find out about compensation packages, particularly related to stock grants. “Nobody else is capturing the stock ownership data,” he says.

LinkedIn: Notes that hiring managers play an interesting mind game with the site. If they see someone with just their current job listed, managers consider that person a passive candidate. If a person lists more jobs, it feels more like a resume, and managers consider them an active candidate. Murdock also showed how people can go to a search engine such as Google, search      site:www.linkedin.com/in      followed by, for example, “chief financial officer” “san francisco bay” to use the power of a search engine to search LinkedIn.

Switchboard.com: “It’s the best website for phone numbers,” he says, noting that it just added work numbers. He suggests searching for “Dav” if searching for the name “David,” because it’ll pick up Dave, Davey, or David.