Ability Over Credentials

No Organization operates in a static environment: Organization of all almost every shape and size are realizing the power and potential of new ways of hiring. They aspire to increase speed, adaptability, trust, transparency, and empowerment, but do so requires decades of habit and tradition shape and size.

As Peter Drucker said: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” What kind of good-morning-new-hire-breakfast are you feeding into your culture? Are you hiring simply to fill vacant jobs? Or embracing new ways of identifying and cultivate talent….

We all have known people who were ignored or overlooked at first but went on to prove their critics wrong”, My favorite story? Brian Acton, an engineering manager who was rejected by both Twitter and Facebook before confounding Whats App, the mobile messaging platform that would sell for 19 billion dollars.

The hiring systems we built in the 20th century is failing us and causing us to miss out on people with incredible potential. The advances in robotics and machine learning and transforming the way we work, automating routine tasks in many occupations while augmenting and amplifying human labor in others. At this rate, we should all be expecting to do jobs we've never done before for the rest of our careers. Journalists who studied journalism, engineers who studied engineering. The truth is, these folks are no longer the rule, but the exception. Past performance does not guarantee future success- and yet it's still the most common tool used for hiring.

Experience can be gained, taught, and crafted. It is much harder to mold who the person is because individual identity is much more entrenched. We’ve all seen how a single toxic person can damage staff morale, customer relations and the profit margins of businesses. We’ve also seen how a hardworking, morale-building, approachable and dependable employee can become the person everyone turns to for help and makes the business a better place to work.

Let’s embrace new approach of identify and cultivate talent :

1. Expand Our Search-Avoid shiny pedigree appeal. Many organizations today focus too heavily on sourcing efforts that target candidates with “pedigree appeal. If we only look for talent in same place, we always do – Ivy league schools, prestigious organizations, we’re going to get the same results – we need to build cross functional experience, diversity hiring.

2. Hire for Potential - Leverage technology, don’t fully rely on it. Potential is generally defined as the capacity to develop into something great based on unrealized ability. We should make candidate to demonstrate their skills before they are hired:  Work samples are one of the best predictors of success on the job. If you're hiring a data analyst, give them a spreadsheet of historical data and ask them for their key insights. If you're hiring a marketing manager, have them plan a launch campaign for a new product…

3. Hire for Curiosity- Let’s Get the Bigger Picture: We are very quick to label a candidate a job-hopper based on a single short stint on their resumes. Let’s understand this as a Curiosity and build a system where candidates can help by learning to tell their story in powerful and compelling ways. HBR says “most of the breakthrough discoveries and remarkable inventions throughout history” resulted from curiosity. Legendary and disruptive business leaders, from Walt Disney to Michael Dell, have stressed the importance of curiosity People who are curious have an innate need to expand their knowledge and skills. Curiosity Is the Key to Discovering Your Next Breakthrough Idea

Sump Up: When we get a holistic view of someone, our judgment of them will always be flawed. Let's stop equating experience with ability, credentials with competence. There is some influential research on this subject, including work by Professor Robert Kelley from Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business that has clearly demonstrated that technical skills alone do not distinguish standout employees.

While hard skills may get your foot in the door, soft skills will keep you there. The research proves time and again that the reward far outweighs the risk. I think it’s time for all of us to stop playing it “safe”, familiar choices and leave the door open for someone who could be amazing start being focused on people’s future and not just their past. We could live in a world where people are seen for what they're truly capable of and have the opportunity to realize their full potential.  

What Would You Do Differently?