I’m not sure where Apollo 13 (the movie, not the event) sits on my all time favorites list, but its probably in the top ten. I remember receiving the film for Christmas when it first came to VHS at the age of ~10. I was totally gripped during the entire thing, watching a brilliant team of people solve one harrowing problem after another, finally returning home that fateful mid April day in 1970. The work ethic of those on the ground, ingenuity of all those involved and ability to stay calm in the face of life or death problems is something that pokes at the human spirit in a really special way. Space voyages aside, I think we can all agree that we’d consider ourselves in good company if we found ourselves trying to solve a problem sitting next to Jim Lovell or brainstorming a solution with Jack Swigert or Fred Haise Jr. Apparently, I’m not alone in thinking this as is reflected by their post NASA careers:
- Jim became the CEO Fisk Telephone systems and was a director on numerous boards
- Jack was elected to senate.
- Fred become a test pilot and an executive with Grumman Aerospace Corporation.
I posed a hypothetical question to myself the other day: What if the Apollo program never got off the ground? Better, what if the Apollo mission was 100% top secret and out of the public eye? What if all the challenges that showed an entire generation what a young, ambitious group of people were capable of were never discussed in public or, say, with a prospective hiring manager? Would have it been obvious to a future employer this group of people had the “right stuff”? As a silly aside, how would have Jim, Jack or Fred’s resume faired through today’s applicant tracking systems (ATS)? Would have it been clear these men were more than simple aviators? Would any of them had the careers they ended up having? As I contemplated these questions, I wondered if a significant amount of what makes someone great when things go awry or off script is absent from a resume. After all, a person’s CV is a very narrow (highly manipulated) abstraction of ability, not a high fidelity reflection of who they actually are or the value they may be able to provide.
Michael Lewis famously wrote about this problem in the 2011 book Moneyball, where Oakland’s baseball GM (Billy Bean) and an analyst (Paul DePodesta) apply an advanced form of sabermetrics to player acquisition. This form of analysis allowed A’s management to vastly increase the fidelity and bandwidth of the data they were ingesting, identify under valued targets and assemble a “fairy tale” team of sorts despite having 1/3 the budget of a top tier team. Put plainly, the ball club peered beyond the normal ballplayer resume, or scouting report, and increased fidelity (quality of data) and bandwidth (amount of data) in their processes, both of which offered a significant advantage when compared to the way ball clubs were otherwise choosing players…and they damn near went to the World Series.
I argue a similar bandwidth and fidelity mismatch persists throughout much of life, where we rely on very limited amounts of “old school” data paired with large amounts of “story telling” & luck not all that dissimilar from baseball scouting reports. This is perhaps most significant in finding a partner or career, which are arguably the most important markets we all participate at various points in our lives.
Our approach to finding work or a partner has changed as technology has become more ubiquitous, but in both cases bits and bytes have mostly served to widen the funnel, not improve the fidelity, bandwidth or high quality insights we otherwise might miss. For example, you can see more jobs that may be a fit for you on LinkedIn, or find more potential partners in more locations on Hinge, but the fidelity of this information is arguably no better than a decade (or two) ago and the number of attributes (bandwidth) isn’t much improved either. In fact, I’d argue I obtain more information sitting next to a person for 60 seconds at a bar than I do staring at their Hinge profile and/or having some form of text-based small talk.
Before I continue, I think its worth noting that like baseball or stock picking, dating and job markets do function with some level of efficiency. The problem I’m articulating isn’t one of total chaos and disaster but one of optimization. People find jobs all the time that are a great fit. Couples meet everyday who are good for one and other. The system isn’t broken, but its not as good as it could be, especially when one considers the vast improvements we’ve made in technology with respect to gathering large amounts of unstructured data and driving insights from this data.
To add, unlike baseball or financial markets, people don’t have a high quantity of statistics tied to them in meaningful ways. For example, when I’m on Hinge, I can’t see what a person’s “bad breakup ratio” is. On LinkedIn I can’t see the number of times a potential hire has been on a PIP or called into a manager’s office for a “pls fix”. We don’t track simple statistics in dating or the workplace that might be indicative of future performance, which is likely a good thing for our collective mental health and feelings of privacy.
However, in both dating and career, I propose we ought to begin leveraging new systems to ingest all sorts of information about a person that is not found on the CV or dating profile (by choice of course). Stuff that may actually tell an employer or a potential mate you are (or are not) the kind of human that has “the right stuff” (for the role). One (exceptional) recruiter I’ve met aside, I’ve never had anyone in the hiring process ask me something that is actually relevant to my ability to think creatively, improvise when needed, problem solve in true high stress (life or death) or tell a story that pertained to my grit.
For instance, those who know me are well aware how much time I spend outside chasing what most now call “Type II Fun“. The best of these adventures stretch me to my limit, and sometimes involve some kind of high level problem solving to get back to the trailhead. For example, what if you put a stick through a radiator of your dirt bike, have a brake lever failure on a snow machine or come across a stranger who is in dire need of help late in the day? I have hundreds of stories like this, where teamwork, “Apollo 13” like thinking and grit were all required to keep myself from spending a night in the woods (or worse). Where do these stories fit on my CV? After all, I’d argue each one of these can tell a person a lot more about how I think and who I am than how I “reduced engineering cost by 75% within 2 months of starting (at a company)”. This is one very narrow example of a myriad of other potentially interesting data points about who I am, how I think, and a different type of success I’m proud of. Obviously, the only way this data could be ingested without completely overwhelming HR departments is by turning these sorts of stories/data into direct insights. IE, the hiring manager doesn’t have time to read every bit about a person, but a “smart” AI system may be able to correlate these types of stories and character traits to being highly likely (or not) to succeed in a certain role and alert those in charge of the decision to look at a candidate that otherwise might get missed.
With respect to dating, there are similar underpinnings. While I’ll admit an online dating profile is a great first level filter (IE, you have to be attracted to one and other), as anyone who has used Hinge, Tinder, Bumble or similar will attest – the experience leaves a lot to be desired in that most people are unhappy with their online dating experience. In fact, I’ve recently considered launching my own company around this problem in the form of a toolset for those seeking a long term relationship. I’ll leave that Shark Tank/Founders Fund style pitch for another day, but I strongly feel there is fertile ground here. Digressions aside, the current slew of swipe based dating apps do a great job showing people who may be attractive but these systems are very “dumb” with limited feedback loops in place, choking off bandwidth that may be really informative over time. Furthermore, I’d argue high fidelity insights are going to come from understanding values, personality types, love languages, how one spends time day to day, strengths, weaknesses, communication styles and a bazillion other things absent from a dating profile or small talk between two people.
Before I go on, don’t misread, I’m not suggesting we should turn life into an episode of Black Mirror where an AI immediately shows you the best job and best partner for you, and your future is locked in based on a set of weights and probabilities that is pre-determined by all prior experiences, genetic wiring, successes and failures.
What I am suggesting is there is an immense amount of unstructured data out there that could be fed into modern transformer models to drive really powerful and efficient insights that both sides of these networks could utilize with some level of confidence. Giving the person who “throws funny” a spot in the interview queue (esoteric moneyball reference) because data says its a good idea is exactly what I’m talking about. Through these “data abstractions”, bandwidth and fidelity could be immensely improved, and society would be better as a result. There is room for sabermetrics in hiring, and expanding insights more deeply in dating. The costs, though largely hidden, are huge by not doing so. At best an improper hire or short term partner is time and money suck. At worst it turns into a toxic thing that steers a company or a person’s life off a proverbial cliff. Bad career endings and divorce are awful and avoiding those outcomes are more possible than ever – we just have to find a way to look beyond 6 photos or a page or two document known as a person’s resume…
Editor’s Note: Yes, I’m looking for a job and this is a cathartic post…akin to yelling loudly into a void.
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