BrightMove ain’t that bright

Please say it ain’t so.  I didn’t really just read an article about screening qualified candidates by asking unconventional interview questions, including, Where’s your peanut butter? That didn’t really happen, right? When you go to this link, something so stupid isn’t actually published online by a vendor who purports to be an expert HR service provider?  E-gads, I just looked again, and it’s still there—it is real! BrightMove.com had the impudence to post it in the blogosphere for all to see.  BrightMove, in case you haven’t heard of them, is a provider of software as a service (SaaS) for the employment and recruiting market.  BrightMove, according to their own spinsters, is a leading provider of cutting edge recruiting software and applicant tracking systems for Executive Search, Staffing, Corporate HR, and RPO Recruitment Outsourcing. That sounds pretty impressive, don’t it?  RPO, by the way, stands for Recruitment Process Outsourcing where an employer transfers all or part of its recruitment processes to an external service provider.  So BrightMove, among other things, purports to help those of us in HR-HR who do, and I again quote, RPO Recruitment Outsourcing aka “Recruitment Process Outsourcing Recruitment Outsourcing” for a redundant-living.  Who is in charge over there, anyway?

But I digress.  It is the article that blows my mind.  In fact, I stumbled on the preposterous  “peanut butter” thing, after shaking off BrightMove’s insights on another voodoo piece about the value of hand writing analysis to help screen job candidates.  Here you have a company using a blog in an attempt to engage adult, presumably rational, human resources professionals and employment experts to buy their web-software product. And what do they do?  They add ludicrous to their marketing pitch. But the more interesting question is, Why did they do it? Sad to say, the answer is in the audience, not the writer.  As incredible as this might sound to the normal earthling, some Human Resource professionals–including some in leading companies—think hand writing analysis and peanut butter questions help screen and select better qualified candidates vs. if you don’t practice such silly putty.

Yep, kind of embarrassing, ain’t it. Let’s see if I have this right, because I still, can’t quite, you know, grasp the absurd. To save you, dear reader, the head-explosive agony of going back to it, here’s what the dumb-dumb post says:

Many years ago, a good friend who manages a fair-sized CSM team shared his favorite interview question with me, and its simplicity is only surpassed by its brilliance. The question is, “Your client needs a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Pretend I’m your client, and role-play with me as you take me through your conversation.”

First of all, I’m not sure there is even an actual question there. But that English-language misstep aside, it pales in comparison to the utter folly of broaching such psychobabble in a serious job interview.  The author is Nanci Lamborn, a “Writer/Blogger/HR Practitioner” for BrightMove. Obviously no slouch, Nanci is well aware that some readers may not at first appreciate why the question’s simplicity is only surpassed by its brilliance. Sooo… Nanci explains herself that the peanut butter question some how ferrets out technical jargon that she admittedly wouldn’t understand anyway while testing the candidate’s communication skills:

…you’ll see where this question begins to uncover the presence or the absence of critical process communication ability.

Anyone out there know what “critical process communication ability” looks like?  Assuming that’s the bona fide name of an actual human skill, I’m entirely baffled as to how one will demonstrate such baloney (pun intended) by explaining how to pull together all the complex elements of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (Man, I can’t believe I’m writing about this).

Well, at least thank goodness Nanci keeps it short and in the end candidly admits that the silly peanut butter question is born from her own lack of knowledge about the actual job specifications; in this case a Client Service Manager (CSM) job. Now she is screening candidates mind you for a job that she plainly does not understand and so using the peanut butter thing to accommodate:

So since I know my gifts and abilities are not the same as those on the list of required essentials for the CSM, if that means I have to be unconventional in my recruiting techniques in order to find the very best, so be it. When the first response from a candidate is, “Wow, I’ve never had that question before,” then I know that I’m getting ready to see underneath the façade, and that’s where all the good stuff is. So where’s your peanut butter?

Actually, I think poor Nanci is misinterpreting events during her own interviews because, everything happening in those moments, are so, you know, indescribably ridiculous and all. When the candidate observed, “Wow, I’ve never had that question before,” what he was far more likely thinking was, “Wow that’s the stupidest, most irrelevant,  outrageous moronic question that anyone ever asked me in a job interview—you must be crazy or on drugs or in the personnel profession.”  And perhaps the skills “underneath the facade” that are being tested and demonstrated in those moments are things like a) not laughing out loud at silly people until you know whether they are kidding or not; or b) patience with HR psycho babblers who don’t understand the job being screened and yet make judgments about your competency as they  actually believe in their own dribble; or c) courtesy and concern for fellow humans who my need to go to the hospital after work today to get their head examined.

Granted these skills may be relevant to a CSM job, so maybe Nanci and BrightMove have their own form of brilliance after all! Let’s check underneath the facade:  So Nanci, BrightMove, tell us—where’s your peanut butter?