Mathematicians help you find the best job seeker, you just need to get rid of the top 37%.

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Whether you're looking for the best candidate or the right spouse, it's never easy to find the right person, because you don't know what the rest of the people are, or what you've seen compared to who you already are.

Fortunately, a mathematical theory called "Finding the Best solution" (optimal-stopping theory) can help you find the one that suits you best.

Hannah Fry, a mathematician at the Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London, Hanna Forey the theory in her 2014TED speech. Recently she also published a book called "Love Math". This theory essentially helps you know when to stop looking for and make the right decisions. The Washington Post has affirmed the book and the author's speech: "This is a witty guide to romance ... In both the speech and the book, Fury is a profound but understandable explanation of some long-standing problems. ”

She cited an example of finding a spouse in a speech. In this case, you will spend some time talking to a lot of friends and gradually strengthening your understanding of relationships, and you will reject the top 37% suitors and marry the next one who is better than everyone else before.

According to this logic, if you plan to date 10 people in your life, you will need to reject the first four, and if you are going to date 20 people, you will need to reject the first 8 of them.

But generally people don't plan to say how many people to date, so this method can be applied to practice. For example, if you are 15 years old and want to get married when you are 35 years old, you will have to reject all the people you met in the first 37% of the time, that is, before the age of 22, and then marry the person you met after 22 years of age who was better than everyone else before.

If you don't follow this strategy and just randomly pick one of the 20 dates you're dating, you're only 5% more likely to find true love, and if you do that, your odds of finding your best spouse will increase to 38.4%.

The same logic can be applied to the recruiting. In fact, the "Secretary's problem" is the most famous example of this theory. That is, if you want to recruit a new assistant and interview the candidate, you never know if the person you haven't interviewed has the best people you've ever interviewed, but you can't go on forever, so you have to stop interviewing and make a decision at the right time.

According to the strategy of finding the best solution, your best decision is to reject the first 37% of the candidates and hire someone who is better than everyone else in the next interview. You can also measure by time, if you plan to hire for three months, then you should reject all candidates for the first month and hire a candidate who is better than everyone else.

Of course, this strategy is not risk-free, you may meet the most appropriate person in the early days and never meet a more appropriate person, or you have bad luck, in the early encounter are some wonderful, and then choose a slightly more normal but not the best candidate.

But he said, "It's a wonderful game to be patient enough to wait for true love and make decisions at the right time to avoid all the good things being picked out." Even if all the risks are taken into account, the theory is still worth putting into practice. ”

Mathematicians help you find the best job seeker, you just need to get rid of the top 37%.