The Secret To Finding Great Talent - Tyler Cowen - #482

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What's happening, people? Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Tyler Cowen. He's the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University, a columnist, podcaster and an author. Finding and recruiting the best talent is perhaps the most important job that an organization has. Skillful, enthusiastic, keen staff can make or break a business. So why is it that most companies are mostly useless when it comes to discovering talent? Expect to learn whether population collapse is coming very soon, whether talent is innate or developed, why there's a crisis of talent when we have more people on earth than ever before, whether you should look at someone's parents before hiring them, the best questions to ask in an interview, what SpaceX's hiring strategy teaches us about thoroughness, how Tyler screens young staff for the most original thinkers and much more.
I am back in the UK for a couple more days. I've been here for nearly a week and British Airways managed to lose pretty much all of my possessions. So I am recording podcasts on a Sellotape and Twine pieced together old kit setup at the moment, which feels oddly nostalgic and is actually quite fun. But hopefully I will get the rest of my possessions back from British Airways. Also, back end of this month, we have got two of the biggest episodes that I've ever done and I absolutely can't wait to release this. So stay tuned. This is going to be something very, very special. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Surfshark VPN. You are already paying for a Netflix membership, so why not pay an extra £1.50 or $2 a month to 10x the amount of access that you've got on your Netflix. With the click of a button, you can change your location to a different area on the planet and it means you get access to whatever that country has on Netflix. 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