I’m a fan of American Idol. (Yes, guilty secret and my husband would be thrilled to turn off the TV for every performance past the initial auditions which are often funny. But, I usually get hooked on a great singer – this year, Adam Lambert - and I like to hear them sing.)
Here’s the problem. Despite Simon Cowell’s constant reminder that this is a singing competition – it’s really not. The competition is much more about who the person is as perceived by the Idol audience. Of course, he or she must also be a good singer, but other factors take center stage, including who is willing to spend hours voting and why.
Isn’t this phenomenon the same in hiring? You have a whole lot of good singers – they wouldn’t have made it past initial resume review if they weren’t – but all those other factors, such as perceived cultural fit, determine the hire. In Idol, too, cultural fit, likeability, and perceived connection to America take center stage.
The key is to look past the differences and pick the great singer. So, too, in hiring. And, everyone’s opinion about a great singer will differ – because all of the other factors, consciously or unconsciously, affect our decisions. So, therein lies our challenge.
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The problem with the analogy is that, in a hiring situation, those with more authority and more to gain or lose from the decision get more “votes”. If family and friends were allowed equal say with the potential employer then the less-qualified might be more likely to be hired. So it is with “American Idol”. In the end, it’s the mega-voting viewers, which the common wisdom says are heavily weighted toward young texting females, who decide the winner. Like you, I consider AI a guilty pleasure, which I watch in play-back mode, and, though I’ve watched from the beginning of the series, I’ve never voted. I’m quite sure that I’m a fairly good judge of vocals; my musical abilities have been lab-tested. So, like many other non-voting viewers, I know that, for the past few seasons at least, the winner is neither the best singer nor the most likely to succeed in the music business. Of course, for the “Idol” franchise, it doesn’t matter who actually wins in the end. Their overall success doesn’t depend only on the success of the ultimate “winner”. For a company, on the other hand, there’s really no upside to consistently hiring the less-qualified applicants.
The reason AI is not analogous to the hiring process is that the audience watching the stars are far more informed than the typical hiring manager regarding the true talents and most likely prospects for the potential winners.