Tyler Cowen: evaluation

Transcript context

…That seems to make a lot of sense. It does seem like, at least now, from where we sit, the winds of COVID have slowed a little bit, but let’s assume remote work is here to stay. Let’s buy that narrative for a moment. Does that change how you think of what to look for in interviews at all? I think there’s a whole class of people who feel more confident when they’re over Zoom. There’s no actual physical confrontation. It’s much easier to turn away your eyes. It’s, in general, not clear where you’re looking. Obviously, there’s a kind of excuse built in for certain types of poor performance. “Well, you weren’t fully charismatic.” “Well, it was over Zoom.” Those people can become more charismatic. They might confide more, share more of themselves, be more open, be more creative. Just to think through, when you’ve discovered one of those people, maybe it’s a bit like being in confession with the priest, where you don’t see the priest and the priest doesn’t see you. Therapist’s couch — you don’t look the therapist straight in the eye in a lot of cases. That sometimes fosters more openness. To realize that the distance of the medium can be your friend. You also learn just how much some people — and a lot of them are truly talented — but they rely so much on the physical presence of their body to generate charisma. That is itself a valuable skill, but I’ve learned how much I used to confuse that skill with skill in general, and it’s quite different. These people can’t do that over Zoom. They just have to say something that’s pretty good, and they’re not all that great at it. That’s a big thing I’ve learned, how to think better about charisma. Very interesting. Yes, you could imagine the perfect person for Zoom sales, the salesman with the highest conversion rate, and the salesman for real-world highest conversion rate. There’s a Venn diagram there of attributes that definitely are overlapped, but there are things that are distinct that are interesting. Obviously, it might not be that simple.…

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