Candidates are not asked standard questions like, ‘Where do you see yourself in five years time?’, rather thrown curveballs such as ‘If Van Gogh and Mozart had been in the crowd listening to the famous Mark Anthony speech on the death of Julius Caesar (as written by Shakespeare), what would have been their comments?’

If that doesn’t sound mind boggling enough, Essien goes on to explain that the results have led to him hiring people who know little or nothing about the job in question – but that he trusts are so smart they will pick it up in no time. And it looks as though he’s right: his latest hire ‘has increased the efficiency of the department from the low 70% to above 90%’. Essien calls this new recruitment method the ‘Detective and Pattern-Matcher’, and it certainly sounds as though it’s working well for him.

At Recruit Mint, we’re well aware that not everyone has the time or resources to spend on recruitment drives, whether standard or the more exotic ‘Detective and Pattern-Matcher’. However, that needn’t stop anyone getting candidates every bit as fantastic as Mark Essien’s – if you come and chat to us about staffing, we’ll make sure that every potential employee we find for you has been assessed, tested and interviewed before we even pick up the phone to tell you about them. What’s more – and personally, we think this is a plus – the applicant will understand exactly what the job entails, what your company is like, and will have the experience we think is needed to fill the post successfully.

We can ask them what they think William Shakespeare might call a pet aardvark if he had one*, but only if you really, really want us to…

Find out more: recruitingtimes.org

*That would be Bardvark, obviously.