What The Matrix can teach us about hiring for potential

In the move The Matrix, computer programmer / hacker Neo is scouted then recruited by Morpheus in his quest to beat the machines which have created an imagined reality but are actually growing humans to harvest them as their own energy source. Putting aside some of the surrealistic elements of the plot, Morpheus at his basic is a leader-recruiter who is looking for someone who will be able to bring victory to humanity. He knows that the challenge is massive and the system they are fighting is complex and is becoming increasingly so as artificial intelligence evolves. Nevertheless, he is not seeking out other human fighters (in other words those with experience), nor is he looking for someone with the right skills or competencies (such as mastery of martial arts), but rather he is looking for someone with potential – someone with curiosity, motivation and determination – who can be taught the key skills that will be needed (at one point, having experienced a training ‘upload’, Neo exclaims: “I know kung fu!”).

Neo was hired for the potential of what he could become rather than for the experience of what he has already done. However, hiring for potential is not easy – it requires diligence and effort, excellent questions and an open mind. Whilst it is understandable that a recruiter – often faced with several hundred applications – will want to pursue the path of least resistance, they are doing a disservice to the recruitment industry or to the business they are meant to strengthen. Let me give you three reasons why you should hire for potential: 

(1) as with the Matrix, most of business life is becoming ever more complex – as my Chief HR Officer over the last nine years astutely observed, the problems and challenges our successors will face will be more difficult, complex and ambiguous than what we have to face today; accordingly, we need to build a next generation of leadership talent who will be distinguished by their ability to learn and adapt faster than even we are – it is enough to think of COVID-19 as just such an event: no one was really prepared for this, no one could really practice how to deal with an event as disruptive as this – yet many people, teams and organisations have adapted fast to either mitigate the impact or exploit opportunities presented by the pandemic, surely proving that learning agility can be just as valuable as experience. (Ironically and frustratingly, pandemic crisis management requirements are already finding their way into job requirements as another unfortunate representation of our focus on experience)

(2) If you want to improve cognitive diversity and through that increase your organisation’s chances of solving complex challenges, fishing in a narrowly defined pool – especially where experience in the same industry or sector is required, even for jobs that are obviously transferable across industries – will be expedient but ineffective, unlikely to bring new ideas and stimulus into conversations. If you think of most innovative start-ups (those which truly are centred around a new idea, product or service), by definition, most of those founders have never done what they are attempting to do and thus cannot rely on past experience – yet they have the passion, motivation, curiosity and determination to find a way. Even if they don’t succeed, you could argue they have just found a way that doesn’t work. Or to use another dialogue from the Matrix, slightly tongue-in-cheek: Trinity: “Neo…nobody has ever done this before.” Neo: “I know. That’s why it’s going to work.”

(3) In my experience, those individuals with outstanding potential do not tolerate to be boxed into narrowly defined categories precisely because they know they can achieve so much more. Yet many businesses continue to approach either internal or external talent narrowly because they find bold talent moves risky. Yet these high potential individuals welcome uncomfortable ‘assignments’ because they know they will be able to learn from them. If you are only ever going to give them a challenge which is incrementally larger than the last gig they did, they will most likely walk away. A friend of mine – in fact, someone who worked in my team many years ago in HR and has continued to work in HR consulting since then – through a profound personal loss found herself in the position of leading an architectural studio, without any background as an architect. Through many challenges and of course with the help of colleagues, she has learned how to lead a business in a field completely different than her prior experience would have us believe.

In 2020, six years after Claudio Fernandez-Aráoz’s HBR article, “21st-Century Talent Spotting” (link here: 21st Century Talent Spotting), many recruitment and selection processes remain too narrowly focussed on requirements and expectations centred around experience and/or competencies forming a small, seemingly impenetrable box that only a handful of candidates can possibly inhabit. It seems as if these job adverts could be summarised with the simple tag line: “In order to qualify, you must have done the same job before, though preferably a bigger one.”

Whether you are a recruitment consultant, HR professional or a recruiter-leader, if you want to build a stronger organisation or business it is worth considering the balance of emphasis you put on potential vs experience or competence in your selection. The alternative is, as Neo says to the matrix at the end of movie: “I'm gonna show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders and boundaries… a world where anything is possible. Where you go from here is a choice I leave to you.”