To conduct effective interviews, it’s helpful to know as much about the candidate as possible.   Additional insight can guide you to ask better questions and anticipate some of the issues potentially impacting a new hire.

Esri, a California-based technology consultancy recently introduced a free web-based tool with the power to give you this extra insight.

Esri’s mission is to “enable people to positively impact the future through a deeper, geographic understanding of the changing world around them.”  In essence, Esri makes the case that where people live (down to the zip code level) significantly impacts who they are as individuals. 

Esri’s tool, called the Tapestry Segmentation Project, was recently highlighted in the Wall Street Journal.

Esri overlays geography with other information, such as demographic data from the Census and marketing data from GfK Mediamark Research & Intelligence. The result is a detailed picture of the socioeconomics and demographics as well as attitudes and brand preferences of people in a given zip code.

From this information, Esri compiled 67 profiles of American market segments, which include far-ranging attributes, so that companies or governmental organizations can potentially figure out if your neighborhood is more into lattes or latkes.

The free version of Tapestry provides this information down to the zip-code level, but paid subscribers get additional information down to even the neighborhood/block level.

Perhaps some real estate companies have access to these types of tools already (after all, it would seem important to know the socioeconomic demographics of your clients), but I’ve never seen such tools used for recruiting purposes.

This additional level of recruiting insight may be helpful regardless of the source.  If you don’t have a tool you’re already using, try entering the candidate’s zip code in Tapestry site before your next interview.

Review the profile of those who live in the candidate’s zip code and craft a few open-ended questions based on what you learned.  For example, for the zip code where our office is located (98072), I might ask the following questions.

“I’ve noticed a lot people in your area are foodies. (ie. persons who seek out food/wine experiences as a hobby) Is this something you’re interested in?”

“I recently read those living in Woodinville (the main city in 98072) are involved in charities at a higher than normal rate.  Have you noticed this?  Are you involved with any charities?”

Both of these questions are focused on getting candidates to talk about their sphere of influence, but they’re crafted in a way that’s sensitive to where they live.   It equips the candidates to be more creative and thoughtful in their responses.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes.  This we know:  Insightful questions lead to great interviews.  Great interviews are characterized by candidates who open-up and share their stories.

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