It is that time of 5-year period when you have to make a political choice. The good news is that more people are making this choice. The polling figures so far shows around 20-40% increase in the polling. There is a sense of urgency in the people. However, many people are still struggling to decide who they can vote as the best candidate.

I want to compare how this decision making process is similar to the decision making during hiring process. Hiring process typically involves a panel of 4-5 people with a hiring manager. Many of us have been part of such panels. The outcome of hiring process is a boolean – Yes or No. You either select or reject a candidate.

If you have been on interview panels for long enough, you may not be surprised to know that there is at least one person who actually ends up with a “maybe” vote. And many companies support this “maybe” decision by having a 3-pointer scale or much worse, a 5-pointer scale. The worst is when the entire panel declares a “maybe” decision resulting in “on-hold” candidates.

Now if you are an interviewer who replies with a clear Yes or No, you should not have much trouble in deciding your candidate for this election. It is possible that you have done a detailed research, asked references, attended a campaign or just used your gut.

If you are an interviewer who often replies with a “maybe”, you are in trouble. What do you do when you are the hiring manager and you are forced to select or reject a candidate? Do you try to find more information about the candidate? Do you discuss with other interviewers? Do you search their web presence? Do you do background verification? Do you talk to references to know about their past work? You will probably do anything that will help you to make a firm decision.

There are many things that you can do if you want to make a good choice. The below quote by Jim Collins is applicable to both hiring and voting.

“Get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus”

Note to my international friends and followers – India follows multi-party democracy with 6 national parties, 47 state parties and 1563 other parties.