What Presidential Debates Can Teach Us about Hiring

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I didn’t watch the presidential debate last week, and I don’t plan to watch any future ones. I didn’t watch the debates 4 years ago either. In fact, I haven’t watched a presidential debate, or primary debate, since I was in high school. As we enter debate season in the 2024 election, I think it’s important to understand why, and how this relates to hiring in general.

Consider this. What happened when Ronald Reagan debated Mikhail Gorbachev? For those who don’t remember the 1980s, how about when George W. Bush debated Saddam Hussein on the issue of Iraq. If you don’t recall that, maybe you remember when President Obama went head-to-head in a 90-minute Lincoln-Douglas style debate with Vladimir Putin.

If you don’t recall any of those, you’re not alone. None of them ever happened. At no time has a US president ever debated another world leader in the past century (maybe ever). And while Congress was designed to be a deliberative body using floor debate, these days most of the influencing and decisions happen in meetings, not on the House or Senate floor.

And this is why I don’t care how a candidate does during a debate. I’m not hiring a US president to debate, I’m hiring them to listen to people, spend most of their day in meetings, and making executive decisions based on briefing from an army of support staff.

You might point out that heads of state do “debate” by making speeches on the world stage. Again, I don’t think the speech by the US President (or Russian President or Chinese President) during the United Nations General Assembly is changing anyone’s opinion. The relationship between nations is set by trade, treaties, and other support or interactions. A policy may be announced in a speech, but it could be announced equally well in other ways as well.

Let’s suppose you do believe speeches matter because they influence citizens or others (and again, I’m arguing speeches, like debates aren’t what the president does day to day); then certainly do judge the candidates partially by their speeches. But speeches and debates are two different animals. Speeches are a prepared set of thoughts. Modern political televised debates in the US are short sound bites that are sadly judged almost by playground rules, who had the better line, not who had the better policy.

We often make the same mistake with hiring. We try to judge how someone will perform a job 40-hours a week, working with colleagues from how well they provide 2-minute spontaneous answers to questions. It’s a question of how close a proxy one is for another. For this reason, there are certain brain teasers I like (logical thinking ones) and some I don’t like (you see it, or you don’t). Questions about what work you’ve done in the past have some relevance, but why you made the decisions you did are often more important (unless this new job is exactly like the last one). Some people don't interview well because they are shy or get nervous but are excellent employees (as long as the role doesn’t involve public speaking or meeting with lots of new people). We need to separate the assessment of what they’ll do in the job from their ability to jump through the hoops of the process.

Some of the best workers are those who aren’t great when put on the spot, under the spotlight. But in day-to-day work, decisions, thinking, emails, meetings, they shine. Most office jobs don’t require an instant answer, although unfortunately introverts are often at a disadvantage because we think if someone can’t blurt out an answer on the spot, they might not know the answer. We confuse speed (of response at the level of seconds), which doesn’t matter in most office jobs, with domain competence. Presidents, by the way, never have to make a decision within thirty seconds; they have time to contemplate and get advice from experts. (And for those who are thinking, “What if there’s a nuclear strike?” I certainly hope the President takes more than thirty seconds before making a decision that could end all of humanity.)

When musicians “interview” for an orchestra they do so by playing a piece. There may also be a face-to-face interview, but the performance is key. (They also now have it played behind a screen to prevent seeing who the candidate is, and even using carpeting to prevent the interviewers from perceiving the gender from the footfalls on the floor as the candidate enters and leaves.) About ten years ago Massachusetts began recommending schools hiring teachers have the teacher perform a demonstration lesson. Rather than ask about how they teach, the candidate is asked to teach an actual lesson. Is one lesson a perfect proxy for how they’ll teach for the next 10 years? No. But it’s better than not seeing them teach at all.

Unfortunately, no interview process is perfect. My friends at Menlo Innovations will have a software candidate come in for a day (for which they pay them) and pair program with two different people throughout the day. Again, it’s just two people, on two specific pieces of code (real code that the interviewers are working on in their jobs). It’s not perfect for how someone will be as a team member for the next few years, but it provides another dimension that a conversational interview alone doesn’t, and they find it’s one of the better proxies for candidate performance.

As you interview job candidates, if you see something subpar, try to understand if the root cause is related to the process (the interview process, the contrived problem, etc.) or the underlying capability of the person with respect to what the job actually entails. Hire for the role, not the process.

The same applies when it comes to hiring our political leaders. I don’t care about their debating ability. I don’t even care about their speech making. I evaluate them based on policies, their track record of getting things done, and on what I hear their colleagues say about their capabilities in the actual day to day work (meetings, deal making, interpersonal relationships). Whatever you’re hiring for, hire for the role, not the interview.

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