Candidates, caucuses, and interviews. What a combination, eh? What about tossing in a little transparency for good measure as well. That should make things very interesting.

This Presidential Election season has my creative side working overtime. I see so many possibilities and one of them is applying the election process, especially the caucuses, to interviewing and hiring.

What am I talking about? Well, let's look at Iowa's caucus. People were motivated to come out and listen to what the candidates had to say about the issues. The candidates spoke on topic, took and answered questions, presented theirselves as knowledgeable and competent. It was then up to Iowa voters to evaluate what they'd seen and heard and then cast a vote for the person they felt would represent their interests capably. Each person who attended the caucus cast a vote for whichever candidate (regardless of party affiliation) they felt would do the best job of running the country.

Let's say it wasn't a caucus but a job interview for a management position. Let's say we have all of the candidates come in at the same time for one double-sided group interview. Anyone from the company can ask screening questions of the last five remaining candidates. Any of the candidates can answer the questions a la caucus style but restricted to a five-minute period. At the end of the interview (caucus), the company representatives cast their vote for who they felt did the best job of answering the questions.

This style of interviewing would raise the candidates' awareness of the things that are important to those within the company. It would motivate them to do their homework on the issues facing the company, possible strategies to address them, culture, markets, potential markets, leadership qualities that are essential to the company's environment, as well as many other things.

This style of interviewing would also put the candidates on their toes for answering the interviewing questions. They will have the opportunity to see and hear their competition and understand the why of who their competition is. They can make adjustments in their character as the caucus (interview) progresses based on what their competitors are saying. The competition would be more keen. And how they handle theirselves once the interview is completed will speak volumes about their potential for other openings.

Instead of the stilted rejection letter, "you were among a large number of very qualified . . .," there is evidence of how they did through viewing their own and their compatriots' performance (or lack of it). The count of the ballots at the end of the interview will provide the answer to the question, "How did I do?" as well as "When will I hear something?"

It would be wise to work out beforehand certain details such as who the key interviewing managers will be, how many, taping of the caucus (interview) so that those who had unresolvable scheduling conflicts can view later, or in the alternative pose their screening questions via tape or conference call. In which case, the voting could then be done via an online ballot in order to ensure confidentiality and accurate vote count. Voting would be conducted until everyone voted -- you attended, you vote -- just as with the Iowa caucus.

The other thing that would need to be worked out is what to do about the other candidates who had stellar performance but didn't get the most votes and what to do about the interview tapes for them if you have alternative positions for which they are also qualified.

Ah, but then a forward-looking company would have done that screening early on in the process. They would have ascertained whether the candidate had strengths in certain areas that match other openinings and inquired whether those would be positions in which the candidate may have some interest. These would not be mentioned as "also ran" prizes but part of the preliminary interview about interests, background, future opportunities, and so on.

It would be interesting to see how many companies have considered doing interviews in this manner or something similar. Even more interesting to learn how the process went. Finally, it would be interesting to find out whether they would continue to operate it this fashion, the why and why not of it, and what modifications are needed to make it work.