Internal Talent Scouting

I went for an “interview” with a corporate HR person yesterday, from a department called Talent Management. Before you think how to yourself, “wow”, allow me to admit that I wasn’t exclusively chosen for it — I was one of the 200-or-so (probably more) marketing people who were. Though I must applaud the company for actually taking the pains of interviewing every single one of us (there were many, many of us), I have to say I didn’t quite understand what it was for.

For one thing, we weren’t briefed at all beforehand what this interview was about — the only information we were given were the time and place, and who we were going to be interviewed by; and so when most of us went in, we had no idea what to expect. And from the few accounts that I heard about, I could surmise that everyone’s interview had a different focus (I had “education”; another colleague seemed to have “culture”; and another appeared to have simply a “tell me about yourself”-type of focus),

Interviewing without letting the interviewee know what it was for? And then interviewing without a common theme (so the later ones would know what it was for)? What was this, a random fact-finding session?

Learn from this — don’t do it. If a group of blind-folded people are asked to walk, without being given any hints on where to go, you can be sure they’ll scatter. And what’s the point in that?