Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn hit the news a couple of weeks ago, following a comment on The Burnouts Podcast that the company had turned down an otherwise promising candidate for CFO because they had been “mean” to the taxi driver taking them from the airport to their interview. The rationale, von Ahn explained, was that “if they’re going to be mean to the driver, they’re probably going to be mean to other people, particularly people under them.”
Using unorthodox criteria or hidden tests to separate otherwise neck-and-neck candidates is nothing new – the ‘receptionist test’ of secretly watching how an executive candidate treats more junior staff has been around for decades. It’s the same energy that fuels The Undercover Boss, and far too many posts on LinkedIn. But while it is no doubt attractive to believe that there is a secret ‘trick’ to weeding out troublesome candidates (or, on the flipside, to getting hired), might there be danger in relying too heavily on this sort of gimmick?
From a legal perspective, the risk – as is so often the case – is of inadvertently introducing discrimination into the hiring process. While businesses do largely have the leeway to select the candidates they want, giving everyone a fair shot is imperative and bringing in these more ‘maverick’ elements to an interview process could leave cracks for unlawful biases to seep in. Using von Ahn’s taxi test, an autistic candidate, for example, might prefer not to make small talk during their ride and...
CHICAGO — Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, is fighting deportation in a Chicago hearing after being accused of lying on immigration paperwork and supporting terrorism....