Why you should never agree to build a business case for a job interview

[Disclaimer: I prepared a business case for every job position that I have held.]

To get it out of the way: I do not believe in business cases. I believe in interviews as the way to assess a candidate's worth, but not in business cases. Let me explain why.

Mankind has been conducting interviews since the first band of cavemen had to recruit to go hunt a mammoth. The concept is easy to grasp: if you ingratiate yourself with the big cheeses, you are in. We have not iterated much from this concept and, although the tools to reach that point have certainly changed, we are still far from hiring somebody à la Westworld, based only on data and reputation, and without a process that involves some kind of personal interaction.

A hiring process is a marvelous ballet of things that need to happen in an exact way, and in a set amount of time, in order to extract a result. There are two parts: the Company and the Candidate, and there is always some kind of reciprocity in the acts of each one.

For the better part of it, there is always some kind of equality in the investment that each part makes in the process: a Candidate will invest approximately the same amount of time to prepare his resume as the Company will to prepare the requisition (on average, twenty minutes), a Candidate will invest approximately the same amount of time to research the Company as the Company will to research the Candidate (on average, two minutes), and a Candidate will spend an hour in an interview where the hiring manager will also spend one hour.

There are, however, two factors that stack against a Candidate.

First one is the fact that, with many Companies, applying takes an outrageous amount of time for a Candidate. These are the kind of Companies that still use complex HRMS' like Taleo, that will not allow you to upload a PDF, require you to enter each position in a different text box, request that you upload a video of yourself [disclaimer: Badi requires to upload a video of yourself], or that do not use Linkedin's Easy Apply. It can take a candidate up to an hour to apply to one of these highly bureaucratized Companies (mainly banks, utilities companies, multilateral organizations and other Companies that don't want to get shit done) while his profile will be read for less than a minute, if so. (I hold a record of scouring through 200 profiles in less than 10 minutes).

This has an easy solution: don't apply to Companies that don't make it easy to apply. I've been following this rule since I left the IDB (who still uses Taleo) with amazing results. If I have to register, or it takes more than five minutes to apply, I pass. I would probably not have been happy working there anyway.

The other factor is the Business Case (henceforth: BC). It is designed as a tool to measure a Candidate's ability to understand the Company, the market, and it's capacity to put together and successfully present an action plan over a problem that can be more concrete or more vague depending on how incompetent the hiring manager is. I have received BC assignments like "what would you do?", "what would you do to grow?", "what would you do to succeed?", and the like.

Listen here motherfucker, if you want to know what would I do to succeed just give me the job and watch me do it.

It is also designed as a filter, to weed out Candidates that don't complete it, tagging them as "not sufficiently committed to the position".

Finally, many unscrupulous startups (and a fair share of big Companies too) use it to brainstorm new plans or ideas, or research new strategies, all for free.

The BC is stacked against a Candidate because it creates great inequality in the process. For a good BC to be prepared and its objectives (as listed before) to be successfully met, a competent Candidate will have to spend at least 16 to 20 hours researching the Company and the product, understanding the market, and rehearsing the presentation. In exchange, the hiring manager will spend no more than 20 minutes reading the document or attending the presentation. Companies usually forget that Candidates already have demanding schedules and tend to request the BC two days in advance, or on a Friday to present on Monday. (Usually, at this stage, HR decides to speed up the process to make up for all the time they wasted in the previous phases). It is also introduced by the end of the process, so a Candidate will already be invested enough on it to just suck it up and grind through it instead of plainly rejecting the task.

It is impossible to judge a Candidate's business acumen based on a BC. It is also unfair. All of my positions where in industries that were completely new for me, I had to learn about the product and the market and it took me a good couple months to master the ropes every time that I joined a new Company. After 10 years of doing nearly everything, I am still lost every time some prospective employer requests a BC. The most I can do with my limited time and my wide experience is to open the last BC I did, change the colors and the logos, recycle some very safe, catch-it-all ideas and pray that I can bullshit my way through the presentation with some well chosen action verbs and catchy startup keywords (synergy, action, alignment, visibility, strategize, top of mind...).

For the last three years, I have been starting every conversation with a Headhunter with "I don't do business cases". I know it is arrogant and it will close many doors, but I just don't have the time, neither the energy, nor the inclination, to devote it to just another keynote that will not represent how good or bad a professional I am. I still had to do them in order to get some jobs that I really wanted, and I have been lucky enough that Badi asked me to do a Business Case about myself, instead of the market or anything else. I can confidently say that I nailed that one.

For the same reason, I've never used BCs in the positions I have recruited for. I will sometimes send quick quizzes of ten questions with very concrete situations/problems, that do not require any industry knowledge, in order to measure a Candidate's common sense. That you cannot fake.

As the world advances, Companies that want to recruit the cream of the crop will have to understand that the best Candidates are usually already employed at good places, have a busy schedule, cannot attend an interview with 24 hours notice, will not wait 20 minutes in the lobby to be met by their interviewer, and will not dedicate 20 hours of unpaid time to give new ideas to a Company that may employ them.

In the end, for a Candidate, it is about performing a very simple cost/benefit analysis. How much do you want that job, and how much time are you willing to devote to pass yet another filter. Don't feel guilty if you find out that the answer tends to zero, but be very vocal about it. If you are convinced by what I just wrote, say it. You would not apply to a job that required you to disclose your political ideas, or change your beliefs, or requests you pay beforehand for the computer. You wouldn't because it is unfair. Just as unfair as taking advantage of your time to poach new ideas.

So be the change you want to see in the world. Say NO to Business Cases. (But get them done when they request them, because you really want that job).