the O’Hare test

canalside
Picture taken by me in the street . No rights reserved.

You may have heard of the O’Hare test. It’s a recruitment test supposedly used by some american companies to select between candidates at interview. I learned about it in the context of young tech companies, but it may be more widespread.

The premise is that you choose the candidate who you could most imagine being able to stand if you happened to be stuck at an airport  with them for several hours before a long transfer flight.

Earlier this week I was stuck at an airport in Brussels for 9 hours.

“Due to the power outage at the Belgian Air Traffic Control (Belgocontrol) on 27th of May, our flight operations were heavily disturbed. Even though we have done our utmost to limit the effect on your travel plans, we deeply regret the fact a lot of our guests were stranded.”

Luckily the University applies the O’Hare test to the recruitment of our digital education chairs.  Sian, Dragan and I were in Brussels for an evening seminar promoting the University of Edinburgh in Europe and engaging with discussions about how  universities will use technology to meet the challenges of  2025.   After 9 hours in the airport we had a plan.

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