Due diligence in recruitment requires the human touch

Verifying a senior hire’s CV is vital to avoid costly mistakes. But due diligence in recruitment requires more than database checks alone.

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Malcolm Gladwell, the popular social science writer whose works include Blink, Outliers and The Tipping Point, has a new book out.
In his latest bestseller Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, Gladwell argues that when it comes to judging a person’s honesty we are ill-equipped to read accurately people’s intentions if they operate outside of our normal social circles.
Gladwell says that on meeting strangers we are socially programmed to "default to truth", which means we assume most people are being honest and are not consciously trying to deceive us. We make these assumptions, Gladwell argues, f
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