Malcolm Gladwell, author of best selling books such as “Blink” and “The Tipping Point” recently spoke at the 2008 New Yorker Conference with a presentation titled “Stories of the near future.” He’s apparently working on a new book that focuses on the frequent mismatches that occur when we try to measure and classify human performance to make informed hiring and recruitment decisions. According to Malcolm, the mismatch problem occurs when, “the criteria we use to prepare to assess someone’s ability to do a job, is radically out of step with the actual demands of the job itself.”

Besides the fun opportunity of watching an avid speaker as Malcolm is, the talk crystallizes the challenges we are faced with when we have to rely on traditional methods and metrics to assess the qualities people we consider hiring.