By Mark Chussil

If you want to recruit people who have knowledge, test their knowledge. If you want to recruit people who have experience, ask for job histories. And if you want to recruit people who can think, watch them think.

I'm a strategist, not a recruiter. I've been around. I've seen people who think strategically and those who don't. I've learned what kind of people I want on my team. I've learned what kind of person I want to be.

The way you can tell a strategic thinker is not by gender, age, education, experience, nationality, ethnicity, or industry. (There's some evidence political preferences may reflect strategic thinking, but I'm not going to go there.) The way you can tell a strategic thinker is by observing them thinking strategically. What you want to do is to observe their thinking early and at low cost; that is, when you hire them.

I spoke recently at the ERE Recruiting Conference in San Diego. The audience and I played a game. It wasn't a complicated game, and its specifics aren't important here. This game can be played entirely with people, which how I use it in my workshops on strategic thinking. It can also be played with a single person and a computer, which would work better in recruiting.