Everybody Needs a Hungry Heart
The Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics played a best-of-seven series in the first round of the NBA Playoffs; Philly won 4 games to 3.
Why it matters: Although the Celtics were favored to win and had beaten the 76ers by 30 points twice in the series, there was an intangible in play: heart.
The Sixers center Joel Embiid missed the first three games of the series due to appendix surgery on April 9; he returned to the lineup on April 26 for game 4.
The 7-footer went on a tear, averaging 28 points, 9 rebounds, and 7 assists per game, leading Philadelphia to the second round.
"I've been playing these guys for so long,” Embiid told the media. “I'm tired of losing to them.”
Embiid had been on the losing end of his last three series versus the Celtics, and his reputation was starting to be that he couldn’t beat Boston when it counted.
All of the data, expert statisticians, and AI analysis had the Celtics winning the series, particularly when Boston took a 3-1 lead.
They were all wrong; they didn’t factor in that Joel Embiid was simply not going to let the Sixers lose - again.
Let’s connect the dots to how this relates to new hires: In the age of AI, machines do not do well at assessing the intangibles that make all the difference when it comes to someone’s career.
While some might say, “That’s what the interview is for,” many star candidates are filtered out before they have the chance to meet with someone.
A company that is over-reliant on tech - especially AI - when it comes to recruiting is going to be going after the same “best candidates” as everyone else.
We have a client that invites the CEO to speak to its early career hires. One year, he shared an important strategy he had when he started.
“My goal was to outwork everyone,” he told the group. He didn’t go to an Ivy League school, have a 4.0 GPA, or have a perfect resume.
In today’s world, he would have been filtered out.
He ended up running the place.
When we work with companies launching or redesigning an early-career program, we emphasize the importance of developing a recruiting strategy that goes beyond metrics and algorithms.
Part of our clients’ success has come from visiting less-known sources for talent and incorporating non-traditional screening metrics; the payoffs have been huge.
Although the 76ers lost to the Knicks in the next round of the playoffs, they still advanced farther than Boston.
Don’t get me started on the fact that the Celtics’ best player missed Game 7 versus Embiid’s Sixers with a sore knee.
