Range Finders on the Golf Course

Someone recently asked me why anyone would want Pythia Cyber's talent-assessing services. This question was not academic or objective: this person is deeply entrenched in the current recruiting culture of credential or experience first, then personal assessment. I cannot believe that anyone would say "what role does talent have in hiring?"

Note that this person did not say "I am unconvinced that you can assess particular talents" which we would have been happy to refute.

This person also did not say "I think that I can judge talent as well or better than the assessment" which we would have been happy to put to the test.

Instead, this person claimed that "no one" would want to use this service which is awkward because we can demonstrate that at least some people do want to use this service.

This recent interaction has made me nostalgic because it is so similar to an interaction that I had lo! these many years ago. Once upon a time, I was a caddie at a gold course. Being a caddie is quite the education in (mostly male) adult behaviors that are not very adult. One trigger of childish behavior was the range finder, which was then a new-fangled device.

Just as you would expect, the range finder told you how far away you were from the pin. Legal to use only if all the players had access to them or all the other players agreed to their use by one or more players in the group, the range finders were met with only three kinds of reaction.

(1) Scorn: some players were confident in their ability to assess the distance to the pin and then choose their club and percentage of back swing accordingly. Therefore anyone who needed a tool to do this was a loser.

(2) Indifference: some players did not feel the need for such a tool but didn't much care if any member of group used them.

(3) Interest: some players were intrigued by the possibilities and were happy to see them in action and perhaps even to try using the range finders for themselves.

As a caddie I had a front row seat to the actual outcome of each of these reactions. Scorn sometimes meant that a good player had learned the skill and therefore did not need the tool; it also sometimes meant that the player was the golfing version of the Dunning Kruger effect as they confidently fell short or overshot the pin while sneering at the "crutch."

Indifference was a pretty reliable indicator of a solid golfer who did not need this help themselves and were unconvinced that most mediocre players would play better given a reliable estimation of the number of yards to the pin. In my experience, this prediction was correct: a mediocre player is not mediocre because they lack an accurate estimation of the number of yards to the pin.

Interest was also a pretty reliable indicator of a golfer who wanted to be more consistent and a more consistent golfer is almost always a better golfer. In the hands of an interested and excellent golfer the range finder took them from excellent to truly exceptional.

Where this analogy breaks down is that consistent golfers who dial in their back swings are hitting essentially identical golf balls with the same club on the same courses and so getting dialed in is truly possible. Alas, even the most dedicated hiring professionals cannot lay claim to this kind of repeatability. Where this analogy holds up is that if you are good at hiring but know that you can do better this tool will help. Like golf, hiring rewards consistency. You are not good at hiring if you get the occasional hole in one while going way over par on most holes.

Hiring is hard, especially for roles you yourself cannot perform. You still need to enforce minimum competency screening and toxic personality detection. Adding talent assessment to that check list is hard. We can help. Ask us how.