In the age of online dating, the first in-person date can be an exciting early milestone — you double opted-in on the swipe app of your choice, managed to carry on an in-app chat without forgetting about each other, and successfully navigated the scheduling gauntlet. Yet many people dial it in when it comes to planning the date, opting for a meet and greet at a neighborhood coffee shop or (even worse) the tired happy hour ritual....
So you’ve matched with a promising guy or gal, and you’ve shared some witty banter on the in-app chat. What’s next? I recommend that my clients schedule a screening phone call. Yes, a phone call.1 This may sound old-school (and tends to particularly weird out millennials), but hear me out. There are a few advantages to doing this before setting up an in-person date: It’s a synchronous communication format with very low overhead....
Suppose you want to hire an assistant to alleviate the mundane tasks of your job. Every day that you have the job search open, an assistant comes for an interview. Immediately after the interview you have to choose whether to hire or not hire the interviewee. The hire/no hire decision is irreversible — i.e. if you reject someone, you can’t later decide to hire them. Under these conditions, how do you determine which candidate to hire?...