How hot is your Mom?
American football recruitment and other odd global nuggets
Do you think your Mom is hot? And other NFL interview classics
Asking candidates unsettling questions during interviews is de rigueur for hiring managers these days. But recruiters for the American football industry appear to take this to another level with the questions they ask prospective players, a former player has revealed.
Austen Lane, who was a defensive linesman for the Jacksonville Jaguars, shared his insights into the National Football League’s recruitment techniques on his personal Twitter account (@A_Train_92), according to HRMAsia.
In a series of tweets, Lane posted just some of the bizarre questions he was asked at the NFL Scouting Combine – a week-long annual showcase where college players meet with National Football League coaches, managers and scouts – early in his career.
They included:
- Do you think your mother is attractive?
- Boxers or briefs?
- If you had to murder someone, would you use a gun or a knife?
- I see you have dreads. You smoke weed, don’t you?
- If you could kill someone and not get caught, would you?
Who knew American football could be so weird? Actually, don’t answer that.
World’s largest economies trailing in gender parity stakes
The US, China and Japan are lagging behind other countries in the quest to develop female business leaders, recent research shows.
A global study by EY and The Peterson Institute for International Economics collated data on gender parity from almost 22,000 public companies across 91 countries. The findings revealed that companies with at least 30 per cent of women in leadership could achieve up to a six percentage point increase in net margin.
But it also found that women made up more than 30 per cent of senior executives in only five countries, while only one country – Norway – had more than 30 per cent of women on company boards.
The top five countries for female executives were Bulgaria (37 per cent), Latvia (36 per cent), the Philippines (33 per cent), Slovenia (33 per cent) and Romania (32 per cent).
The countries with the most women on boards were Norway (40 per cent), Latvia (35 per cent), Italy (24 per cent), Finland (23 per cent) and Bulgaria (22 per cent).
The US, China and Japan did not make the top 10 in either category.
Really want to test a job candidate’s mettle? Ruin their breakfast
The CEO of a leading US investment services company has a top tip for hiring managers who want to find out what a candidate is really like under pressure: do the interview over breakfast and pay the waiting staff to get their order wrong.
Walt Bettinger of Charles Schwab Corporation told the New York Times: “I’ll get there early, pull the manager of the restaurant aside, and say, ‘I want you to mess up the order of the person who’s going to be joining me. It’ll be OK and I’ll give a good tip, but mess up their order.’
“I do that because I want to see how the person responds. That will help me understand how they deal with adversity. Are they upset, are they frustrated or are they understanding? Life is like that, and business is like that. It’s just another way to get a look inside their heart rather than their head.”
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