The Hiring Manager Mindset

I was reading an article on the TV Series Friends. It did not have much diversity of characters in it, and it was mostly an all-white star cast, with no Indians, Chinese, or other ethnic diasporas, for which NYC is & was always famous. Yet it was one the most popular series of its time.?

The Big Bang Theory did have a multi-cultural diverse cast, but with some typical tropes of cultural stereotypes. Does it mean we did not enjoy watching these shows? Should we now feel guilty? Does it mean we should condemn those who enjoyed watching the show?

The question is should we judge history with present-day knowledge & sensitivities?

If not, why do we hire people based on past work experiences? Does their past guarantee how they function in the future? Yes, you may think, it's not a guarantee but an indication of eligibility, no? If so, are we not creating a homogenous workforce??

The risk with that approach is, that people with similar experiences deliver the same results. They seldom excel. And they seldom excel because they rarely embrace change. And what is the order of the day? Change. I will spare the sigh which comes with the corresponding cliche.?

If you look around Linked leadership profiles, you may notice, that almost 90% of the senior leadership profiles are now doing something they've never done before. They are leaders because they embraced the new way of doing things.

However, if their leaders thought, meh, I will not entrust them with new responsibility, would the businesses flourish in new directions as they are now??For example, we successfully sold on-prem until one day cloud came along. We had never sold subscription services before. Perpetual was the way to go.?

Quote it, sell it, close it and forget about it.

We unlearned adapted and executed this new way of selling. Did the ecosystem play ball right away? No. It took time. Were all of us successful instantaneously? No. But look at it today. Even if they were a great success or abject failures, does it matter now?

People did what they did, with their available level of intelligence, ability, and awareness back then. Assessing them with present-day intelligence and awareness could be misleading. Because hiring the same type of people is a function of mediocrity. Do you want an assembly line of people doing the same things mechanically??

Or would you instead?hire people with diversity, not just in gender,?but in mind as well?

So when we interview next, instead of going down the rabbit hole of the negative cycle of a fault-finding mission, can we focus on what they can accomplish in the future and how they plan to do it? How will they be different from the past?

AB

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Episode: Who's inspecting the interviewer?

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