Top 5 reasons to think 'outside the box' when recruiting new talent!

That exciting time when it comes to growing the team and finding new talent on the market is always a challenge! As a hiring manager, what do you try to look for in a potential employee?

One of the main problems when recruiting is hiring people who are like you. We subconsciously look for points of similarity in everyone we meet because similarities make us feel safer. When we do find any small commonality, we then tend to exaggerate it…We have all been there at least once in our career. ?

I openly admit I’ve been guilty of it in the past but more from a personality perspective. I try to understand the person(s) values and behaviours. From 2012 when I first landed my full-time job after university I was managing a team of 12-15 people and when hiring for my team, I would think to myself ‘will I get along with them’ or ‘what do we have in common so we can build good rapport from the get-go.’

Yes, we all want to get along with everyone and apart me even thought this person is a younger version of myself, but the fact is I shouldn’t have ever thought like that and since then, I mentally try to challenge myself to think differently. I was young so I naturally thought a great manager is someone who gets along with everyone in the team.

The biggest thing I have learnt in management is not to become a friend. ?Yes, I want to be approachable and yes, I want to also be respected, however being too friendly and approachable has also in the past jeopardised my authority!

Based on that, I wanted to write this article in the hope that we could all be pushing ourselves to think differently when growing the team and to push ourselves to think outside of the box to attract new and different talent for the organisations that we work for. I believe we can achieve this by keeping in mind the following 5 tips!

1.?????Hiring someone who has no experience:

I believe in this very strongly (personally speaking) because whilst I had no previous recruitment experience prior to IAC, I was keen to learn, develop and soak up everything to do with recruitment and audit so I can start a successful career.

Yes, it will take time for the right person to learn, however I would think of it as an investment opportunity. It might take a bit of time initially however, investing in someone would more likely make them loyal to an organisation for the longer term. Besides, any hire is always going to be a risk regardless of whomever you hire! ?

2.?????Hire someone with a different vision to you:

Cognitive diversity has been defined as differences in perspective or information processing styles. It is not predicted by factors such as gender, ethnicity, or age. For any team in a business, it is so important to see how individuals think about and engage with new, uncertain, and complex situations. It is always important to see what opinions people have on various topics within the business to generate new and creative ideas!

3.?????Hiring someone with international experience:

Hiring someone with international experience allows a variety of communication across the team. Their cultural experience is different as well as, their communication styles would be different too!

Coming into the team with international experience would naturally bring in a different skillset to the rest of the team. You would never want an entire team that is good at the same things. This is a good way to balance out skills and ideas in the team so everyone can bounce ideas off one another.

4.?????Giving candidates a step up:

Hiring someone who is well on their way to the next level is a great way to find and attract new talent. We have been working with key clients of ours, who provide step-ups to the next level and it has been a great way of finding new talent for their teams.

It gives a candidate a chance to prove themselves, but it also gives organisations a chance to reach a candidate pool that is inactive or passively looking on the market. It is a win-win situation in my opinion!

5.?????Hiring people with different personality to diversify team dynamics:

A brilliant team also comes with different personality traits which naturally have an impact on team dynamics. Everyone wants people in the team that can deal with different challenges in various ways! Here is a tool you can use by clicking on the below link to see what kind of shape you are: https://conniepodesta.com/shapes-thanks/ [SOURCE: Connie Podesta]

PS: I am a SQUIGGLE! What shape are you?!?