Koch Center for Family Business Associate Director Alex Haimann was recently published in the Harvard Business Review. His article, “How to Design a Better Hiring Process,” suggests a number of innovative alternatives to the standard “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” approach to evaluating prospective hires.

Better methods, he says, might be to “immerse job candidates in unconventional scenarios to gather the most useful insights about their critical-thinking abilities, tech savviness, and interpersonal skills,” for example, testing technical skills by observing the candidate’s real-time problem-solving process.

Haimann reports success since implementing this approach in his own business, seeing significant increases in retention and quality of new hires.

In addition to his work with the Koch Center, Alex is a partner and the head of business development at Less Annoying CRM, a simple CRM built from the ground up for small businesses. More than 10,000 small businesses worldwide use LACRM to manage contacts, track leads, and stay on top of follow-ups. LACRM continues to grow by engaging customers and finding new opportunities for mutually beneficial partnerships.