What is a “Rock Star” in IT anyway?

We’re on a big recruiting drive at the moment, and I notice many of our ecosystem cousins in the cloud & cloud-native community are on a similar push. But, there seems to be a common theme across our job adverts. I've realised that I’m also guilty here too. These job posts so often come with a strapline like “Looking for Rock Star to join us” or “Top Talent looking to join us”.?

I read a post from Mitch Sullivan recently and it got me thinking about why we do this. How many people actually self identify as Rock Stars or Top Talent? And if anyone does, maybe that could be a challenge to develop them with that sort of mindset. If you already think you’re amazing, how likely are you to accept coaching. I think that terms like Rock Star and Top Talent can actually be quite gatekeeping, I worry it will actually put people off applying.

So I want to take a moment and actually describe what I personally mean when I mistakenly post something calling for Rock Stars. There are some really key characteristics and behaviour traits that set someone up to be a highly successful and valuable contributor to a company (aka Rock Star).

Mindset / Grit

I think it starts with mindset, specifically having a growth mindset. I’d recommend watching one of the following videos (or both):

• The Power of belief -- mindset and success | Eduardo Briceno | TEDxManhattanBeach
• Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck

These people explained the concept much better than I could. Hard work is relentless, but for some people it drives them. Being ‘good’ at something doesn’t come naturally, it comes from challenging yourself and putting in hard work to become good. I used to be in a band, and several of my band members were just truly gifted musicians. But, this wasn’t a natural gift, they didn’t just one day pick up a trumpet, saxophone, keyboard or guitar and immediately be able to play a complex song. It came from years of hard work, grit and determination. Some of that, no-doubt, was unpleasant, but it led to them being seen as truly gifted musicians.

The successful people I know are not afraid to challenge themselves, go out of their comfort zone, and work hard to become an “Expert” (whatever that is anyway). When I interview folks I often ask how well they know some technology or concepts. Very rarely does anyone say “I’m an expert in that”, most people say something like “I’m comfortable with the concepts and can find my way around, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert”. I love this answer because it often shows the Dunning Kruger effect kicking in. These people usually actually know quite a lot about this subject but they also know just how large this topic really is, so will never claim to be an expert. That’s actually a really powerful place to be.

Other terms for growth mindset would be grit, you have probably heard this thrown around (especially if you are in sports or sales!). Angela Duckworth covers this nicely: “Grit: The power of passion and perseverance”.

Empathy

Next on my list is empathy. This is so important that I can’t decide as to whether grit or empathy is the most important character trait, and honestly I think it’s a tie. You need both. First, what is empathy? I’ll let the Oxford dictionary tell you “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”. Not to be confused with sympathy, you don’t need to comfort someone or settle them, having empathy is about understanding. You can have empathy for someone you’d never give sympathy for. I believe in almost every career, it’s important to have empathy. You need to sit in someone else's shoes, understand their challenges, their goals, their pains, their joys. Once you do that you can help them.?

• In sales this would be finding a solution that helps them meet their goals and fixes their pains
• In product development this would be building a product that helps them
• In HR this is helping coach someone to improve their career (in whatever context that is)
• In teaching that’s understanding how different students learn and why some struggle more than others

In my world of sales, it is essential to understand a customer / potential customers drivers, whether these are positive (goals, project initiatives, career progression, etc.) or negatives (reduce cost, less overtime, less unpredictability, etc.), it’s essential. We want to sell a solution that actually helps people and businesses improve. The days of selling snake-oil and just getting a sale at any cost should be long behind us (I know they’re not, but I’m lucky that I rarely have to work with folks with that view).

Passion / A love for what you do

Finally what I look for is passion, and I’m very reluctant to use that word as it’s very overused, but in its purest sense it has the correct meaning. Passion is such an overused and nowadays even a toxic word. I wholeheartedly don’t mean ‘passion’ in a thinly veiled sense of wanting someone to work 100 hours a week because they have passion for the company. No, it’s the passion that drives the above 2 character traits. Passion drives a growth mindset, people that enjoy improving, learning, challenging themselves. Passion that drives us to want to genuinely help other people and other businesses. Passion in our job and the work we do that drives a sense of satisfaction with a job well done, not a sense of exhaustion and relief that something is finally done. Maybe a better way of phrasing it is simply “A love for what you do”.

I’m going to personally challenge myself to not use these phrases when I’m sharing job adverts, and I’d like you to challenge these job adverts for yourself. As I mentioned above, if you know a decent amount about a topic, you likely appear in the middle of the Dunning Kruger curve, so you see jobs looking for ‘Rock Stars’ and you think that couldn’t possibly be you because you know just how much you don’t know. Please change this, give yourself a growth mindset, apply for that role. If you see yourself in some of the character traits I’ve talked about above, you likely have exactly what it takes when people are saying they want a ‘Rock Star’.

Summary

I think we've gotten into this habit of using Rock Star to describe people that we think are amazing at what they do, but I think we need to break down the specific characteristics we're looking for. Many rock star can be difficult to manage, and even quite toxic / destructive (just look at real-world musical rock stars!).

If you're a candidate, next time you see a job asking for rock stars or top talent, ask what they actually mean. An overused Richard Branson quote is “If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes (or apply for it) - then learn how to do it later”. I think you’ll surprise yourself.

If you're an employer (myself very much included), maybe think about being clear on what characteristics make up your definition of a rock-star. Be specific, trust me your potential candidates will love it! And I'd bet the diversity across your hires would change too.