To build a team of creative thinkers, you need to hire people who are open to new experiences and have resilience, emotional stability, flexibility, and empathy. During interviews with potential hires, ask questions that test for these traits. For example, you might ask the candidate to come up with multiple solutions to a problem, and then see if they are able to draw connections between those solutions to find a novel approach. If you want to test a candidate’s ability for empathy, ask them to create a persona for a new product, or have them tell a story about a day in the life of a potential customer to see whether they can take on someone else’s perspective. These exercises give you valuable clues as to how well the applicant can connect with others both emotionally and intellectually.
Adapted from "A Data-Driven Approach to Group Creativity," by Bastian Bergmann and Joe Schaeppi
