Interesting times for astronomers! Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft has just completed its Pluto drive-by and the information sent back home has already given some fascinating dwarf-planet-related insight. Some highlights:
- It’s much bigger than we thought;
- It contains more ice than expected;
- It’s brown.
Why is this information important? It all depends what you’re looking for. Imagine that you are trying to recruit an IT Manager and Pluto is one of the shortlisted candidates. A few days ago you probably knew only a few vague ‘facts’ about this candidate / distant cosmic relative – things like:
- It was a planet when you were at school but has since been demoted;
- It’s named after a famous cartoon dog;
- It’s absolutely miles away.
But now you are so much better informed!
In the real world we don’t drive past the candidates’ homes at high speed in order to get information about their character; a better use of time is to get them to sit an online personal profile analysis (PPA). Or a general intelligence assessment, or a Motivational Map. So instead of relying on a cv (possibly some fictional elements), an interview (subjective) and perhaps some references (maybe unreliable / self-selecting) you can use these extra insights to make a recruitment decision that is more likely to be the right one.
So is Pluto the right candidate for you? If you are looking for a candidate with five moons, an apparent magnitude of 5.1 and a rotation period of 6.39 earth days, then it could just be!
But you might want to think about the commute.
