Don’t Fill Jobs, Build a Team!

The need for talent has never been greater. Everywhere organizations have unfilled openings. Part of the problem is our over reliance on on narrow ways of identifying candidates.

After interviewing powerful women leaders to write her book?Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power,?award-winning journalist and former anchor of CNN Newsroom, Brooke Baldwin,?learned?that when women led hiring efforts, résumés were?less relevant.

Baldwin’s research revealed that many women leaders took into account an applicant’s skills, values, and life experiences instead of their employment history. This enabled them to build more diverse teams which benefited both these leaders and their companies.

How can you implement a similar approach?

4 Actions

When you have an opening, instead of starting with the qualifications and experience of the person who last held the job, take these four steps instead:

• Create a matrix of the experiences and backgrounds of the team and identify missing skills and perspectives.
• Project the evolving needs of your customers, the company, the team and the future demands of your business/industry. Make a list of what type of person it will take to address these needs as they evolve (not what it was like in the past).
• Assess your own background, experience and points of view - what type of person would add to not replicate your approach?
• Instead of eliminating candidates because they don't have the same experience as the incumbent, look broadly for someone that fills the gaps you've identified. You'll need to look beyond their resume and LinkedIn profile to find them.

This process will open up a whole new list of candidates, the type that will improve your team's results.

Instead of filling job openings, inclusive leaders build performing teams. Are you?