When Hiring, Look For Native Intelligence: That Doesn’t Just Mean Math, Stupid!

The Gates Foundation’s Global Health President Tachi Yamada offers great management advice in an interview in today’s New York Times. Asked what he looks for in a hire he makes two recommendations: 1) Hire someone who is willing to embrace change. Often that means hiriing someone who has been through a lot of change in his or her life. 2) Look for native intelligence. But rather than judge native intelligence the ways Microsoft tends to do: by the ability to program or do complex math equations (an approach that has failed the company in the past decade by creating a mono-culture of of employees with a narrow, tech-vew of the world who can’t seem to understand some of the most funamental needs and desires of their consumers), Yamada points out that intelligence is displayed in abstract thinkiing and that “there’s nothing more complex and abstract than human relationships. And if they can work their way through a human relationship problem intelligently, my guess is that they’re very smart people.” I guess the challenge is determining, in an interview setting, how effective a person is at dealing with human relationships.