Stop hiring skills and start hiring people
Skills can be learned, fitting into your culture cannot
Imagine this scenario: You are ramping up development on a new product X. This is going to be a large effort so you need to hire at least one new person. In order to find the best person, you tell recruiting that they will need to find applicants with skills A, B, and C. What happens next?
Odds are that that you will get many applications from many people, and almost none of them have all of the A, B, and C skills that you are looking for. However, there is some hope. You found 1 resume that you can infer comes close to having skills A, B, and C. You also found another resume where the person only has 1 of the skills you want but for some reason the resume really jumps out at you. Who do you hire?
Trick question. I’m not going to answer it yet. I do know that everyone you talk with will tell you to hire the first one with all the skills. Why? It means that the recruiters did a great job “finding” that person. It means that if relocation is needed it will be easier to justify. It means that if the person does not work out, no one can blame you for “taking a chance”.
Now you bring in both people to interview. You really hit it off with one of the candidates. They have a great personality, get along with everyone they meet, and seem like a natural fit for your organization’s culture. They are well spoken and give strong explanations of their experience. They are clearly not only very intelligent but have a proven track record of getting stuff done. You explain what you need from them, and you can tell that they get it.
Then you talk to the other candidate. Their personality does not click with you. There are a few awkward moments in the conversation. You ask about some items on the resume and find that they have trouble giving a clear explanation. You are not sure if they are intelligent and motivated, or if they just have a lot of experience. It is not clear how they will handle new challenges that they are not familiar with. They are defensive on some issues.
So who do you hire? I never said which candidate had the right skill set yet. Does it even matter? Personally, I would hire the first candidate that matches your culture with the better personality, motivation, intelligence. They are a much better long term investment. I cannot think of a scenario when it would ever be better to hire the other person.
Yet in today’s job market, hiring that second person is pretty common if they have the right skill set. Why? It is not because people are looking for duds. It is because most recruiting processes never let the first person through the door unless they have that perfect skill set. Eventually you succumb to the pressure of needing to hire someone, and choose the “best” person you have interviewed even if you feel like you have not found the “right” person.
HR, recruiters, and even many managers today are completely skill focused. Why? It is easier and allows for CYA (cover your ….). Finding a person with the “perfect” set of skills is almost impossible. It means if you only hire candidates with “perfect skills”, you will be interviewing at best 3 or 4 people with essentially the same resume. You are gambling that you will find one person out of the 3 or 4 candidates with the motivation, personality, and intelligence that can fit into your culture. However, by limiting your options to that small number of people, your chances of finding the right culture fit are lowered.
The problem with finding skills can be summed up in another way. If you are working on a cell phone antenna, you to try to find an engineer with a cell phone antenna design background. If you are hiring a product manager for beverages, you try to find someone with beverage industry experience. If you are hiring an engineering manager for Java software development, you try to find someone with experience managing engineers for Java software development. And so on…
The problem is that you should try to find the right person with the right personality for your company’s culture. Skills are still important but secondary to the person and their fit within your organization. In fact, hiring a person that does not fit in to your culture or has a negative personality can do more harm than good. Therefore, instead of just looking for an engineer with cell phone antenna design, look for any engineer with a background in electromagnetics. Instead of a product manager with beverage experience, look for someone with a proven track record. Instead of a manager with Java software development, look for someone with experiencing managing software development.
Remember, you can always train someone on the technology, intricacies of a market, and so on. You cannot teach someone to be nice, motivated, or intelligent. You cannot force someone to adapt to your culture. Hiring the right person ensures that you may not hit the ground running as fast, but they will eventually run further and harder than others. The right person with the right attitude can even bring his fellow employees up, but the wrong person with a bad attitude can drag everyone down with him. The perfect candidate is not about matching skills, but finding a smart and motivated person that fits into your culture, and seems genuinely interested in doing the work you need of them.
To further emphasize this point, think about what you do every day. How much of it was in your original job description? Probably not much. How long did it take you to learn new skills? A few months? Do not forget that people and organizations adapt. By hiring the right motivated person, it helps the organization become stronger as a whole.
There may even be hidden benefits to not finding the right skills. Bringing someone in with different skills may also bring a fresh perspective. Maybe they have a better way of looking at the problem. Maybe something they learned in a different industry is applicable here. Hiring someone with the same background as everyone else may just bring in more of the same perspective.
Digging down and finding the right person requires true self confidence. It requires a belief in yourself and a strong belief in your interviewing process. It requires thinking of the long term prospects of the candidate and your group, rather than looking for a perceived short term benefit. By focusing on personality, intelligence, and motivation, you are making a much better long term investment in your organization.
Part of the reason I write this is that I see finding a job and hiring are becoming harder and harder these days. Once you start working in one industry, you can get “pigeonholed” by HR and recruiters. Some believe (whether consciously or unconsciously) that you are only qualified to work in your current “position” in your current “industry”! Therefore if you get let go, to find another “good” job, you may need to move across the country to find another company in your “industry” with jobs available in your “position”. If you are sick of your current job and want to leave, you may have to take a pay cut to find a new job in a new “industry” as you do not have the right “experience”. This to me is crazy! The process is hurting both the individuals and the hiring companies.
Remember, the question on who to hire is not about skills A, B, and C. It is about the person with the intelligence and motivation. It is about who will be the best fit for the organization and its culture. It is about who is going to make the largest impact on the bottom line. It is about who in 10 years will have done the most good for your organization. Invest in people, not skills.
