Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

by Liz Wiseman

they are the wrong candidate in the first three minutes of a job interview. But regardless, you feel compelled to proceed with the obligatory sixty-minute interview and the pleasantries of “We’ll get back to you.” The Strüengmann brothers cut right to the chase. When they were looking for a general manager for Hexal in the Netherlands, they began with the normal actions—they engaged an external recruiter, gave her the job requirements, and then waited for a list of candidates. The recruiter brought forward nine candidates. But then they did something quite unusual. They made arrangements to conduct the interviews in a single day in a rented conference room at Schiphol Airport, just outside Amsterdam. The recruiter reviewed their planned interview schedule and was shocked—they had allowed just ten minutes per interview. She called to inform them that it was impossible to interview so quickly! The Strüengmann brothers disagreed. They met with each candidate for just three minutes—every candidate except their final candidate, with whom they spent three hours. They explained their unusual approach: “When we consider each person, we ask one or two questions. If they don’t fit, we simply don’t continue the conversation. If the person is individualistic, we know that he or she won’t fit in our culture. When we find someone who will fit with our company, then we spend a lot of time with this person to make sure we understand their capability and what they would bring to our organi...