Dan Crean
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Hire at Random
By Daniel Crean
I did some “seasonal” work for the United States Census a few years ago. I learn something at every place I work, and the realization I had at the Census was about hiring and staffing. To bring in new employees they did exactly the opposite of what high-tech companies in Austin do. While private companies can be extremely picky about who they hire, the Census will hire almost anyone. For these seasonal jobs, the Census hires at random. Applicants’ names are put on a list. A computer randomizes the list and whoever does the hiring starts calling from the top of the list. If the applicant doesn’t answer the phone, we move to the next name. We keep going until we have filled that week’s order for new people.
You might think this is a poor way to run an organization but let me tell you: it worked. I did not see much incompetency or sloughing off. There was some, but those people were let go quickly. I worked there longer than most seasonal employees, and I worked both in the office and in the field so I saw a lot of employees. They weren’t as bad as Human Resources pros would predict.
It might cost a software company $20K or more to hire a person – all that time and energy looking for the right person. By contrast the Census Bureau probably spent about $100 to hire someone because we weren’t picky. I’m not suggesting that the work these seasonal Census workers were doing was as complex as developing enterprise software, but it wasn’t totally simplistic either. It was project work – not assembly line – and the job tasks changed every few weeks (because the Census timeline is so short).
Companies would be better off if they embraced the serendipity generated by random hiring. I know this goes against everything HR people believe, but I have come to the conclusion that HR departments do Corporate America a disservice by imposing detailed specifications on candidates.
Another bonus from random hiring is diversity. The George Floyd incident happened while I was at the Census, triggering an uproar as Corporate America sought to respond. Many of the responses seemed to be “we already have affirmative action/diversity programs, but now we’re really going to start trying.” The Census Bureau may have such a program for their permanent staff in Maryland, but the Decennial Census was a large operation with temporary offices set up in every county. Few people were employed for more than a year. It wasn’t practical to have a formal program to promote diversity. But that office I was in was by far the most diverse workplace I’ve ever spent much time in. We had people in their 70s; we had people in their early 20s. We had Asian people, Black people. We had a guy in a wheelchair and another guy who walked with a cane but who probably should have been in a wheelchair. We had middle-aged ex-military guys with short hair and a buttoned-up demeanor. We had middle-aged hipsters who probably moved to Austin when it was quirkier than it is today. And this diversity was made possible by random hiring. The companies with formal diversity programs = they often struggle to meet their goals. And I think the main reason is that they let the managers choose new employees. And people naturally want to hire people like themselves – a younger version of themselves for sure, but basically the same. No matter how much DEI training they get, many or most of those managers are going to default to hiring someone like them. It’s an unconscious bias.
The Census dodged this pitfall by hiring at random. The manager doesn’t get any say in who becomes his or her subordinates.
I think many organizations would do well to borrow this method, at least in part. The Human Resources profession does a disservice to our society by insisting on detailed requirements.
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