You probably heard of Van Halen’s 53-page contract rider and how it required a bowl of M&M’s backstage– brown ones removed.
It’s not that brown M&M’s are necessarily bad. Rather, the band was checking for attention to detail.
If there were brown M&M’s there, they knew to expect sloppiness in the lighting, stage set-up, and other details.
So we’ve been following a similar strategy in our job postings.
In this particular one, we asked the candidate to say “INCEPTION” in their response.
We find it’s a good proxy for whether they will be sloppy when hired.
You don’t want people messing up on your projects now, do you?