How to Hire Humans, Not Headcount
An Ode to Humanity and Anti-Fragility
“Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.” — Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“Good University+ 2 Years Doing X + 1 Year Doing Y=Successful Candidate in 2017”
Ah, the linear model that tells us if someone is a qualified fit for a potential job. What if past skills were not the only indicator of future success? What if job applications, interviews, and hiring were a more holistic process? The standard hiring process is outdated and best suited to another era and another time. The way many companies chose to hire today largely judges individuals on two main variables; their CV and how well they interview.
In an era where we are moving away from routine, linearity, and predictable skill sets, we must also move away from the plug and play hiring model that has been followed for so long, and instead focus more holistically on the unique value people bring to the table and their potential for development and growth.
Hiring in an Old Paradigm
Let’s use an example of a hypothetical company called Cobalt Labs. Cobalt is a consulting firm that works with large corporations to help them implement advanced technologies and systems. Cobalt’s CEO, Frank Cobalt, used his financial and operating plan to show investors what he would be able to achieve if they invested in Cobalt. After raising funds in 2016, Cobalt’s HR staff began the hiring process of scaling the company. They scanned resumes eyeing candidates’ job history, looking specifically for banking or consulting backgrounds. If candidates checked this banking or consulting box, they underwent culture and case study interviews with various Cobalt team members.
For the Associate position, the leading candidate was a man named Ben. He had two years of consulting experience, a degree from a top university, and interviewed very well. Ben was a safe and predictable hire: his past skills provided Cobalt a low risk, low volatility, return on investment.
Hiring to Build an Antifragile Company
Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, Antifragile, states that fragile entities are those that fail when they experience volatility. Robust entities are those that can withstand volatility. Antifragile entities, however, are those that benefit from adversity and volatility, making them stronger when subjected to stress and tension.
Was Cobalt’s hiring and interview process creating an antifragile organization? Not really. A four-stage interview process is a great tool, if you are looking to hire candidates who are good at interviewing.
Following the linear hiring model of Good University +2 Years Doing X+ 1 Year Doing Y=Successful Candidate, creates little variation in the skill sets or mindsets of the employees that are hired to move the company forward. These linear structures face weakness when exogenous shocks disrupt the system.
Technology: The Exogenous Shock and Displacer of “Skills”
Artificial intelligence (at a high non-technical level), learns through experience. The more unique, variating data you feed an AI algorithm, the more it learns, the smarter it gets. Artificial intelligence is antifragile; small changes and stressors make it smarter.
Automated software systems will soon begin to replace routine and concrete skill sets. Ben was hired at Cobalt for his ability to analyze client data, create presentations and so on. But with software that does all the data analysis faster than 12 Ben’s, what is Ben’s ongoing contribution to the company?
Without the ability to innovate, take initiative, and think outside the box, Ben, and many employees like him, become obsolete. A year after starting at Cobalt, Ben decided he needed to take a step back, he wanted to tap back into his childhood curiosity, learn how to self-regulate, to take initiative, and improve his skill sets to adapt to changing future environments. So Ben decided to leave Cobalt in order to get some more hands-on entrepreneurial experience and start a small business.
To avoid a buildup of automatable skill sets, hiring models need to change so that companies can adapt to exogenous shocks, such as rapid and impactful technological changes. Hiring based on the a+bX+cY=Successful Candidate persona is an easy solution, but, the short-termism can’t be ignored. Short-termism is a like sugar hit, it achieves the desired returns in a quick and dirty way, but can create limitations in the long term. Short-term hiring strategies are an easy solution for quick actions, plug and play skills, and predictable linear ROI, but these strategies don’t create the strongest building blocks for the next paradigm of work.
Ben was a great candidate for the current paradigm, but in order for him to be successful in the future, he had to expand his intangible skills and learn to think creatively and work outside of the structured toolkits he developed in his past roles.
A Humanistic Thought Experience
“Online Education Credentials + Entrepreneurial Experience +Diversified Skillset = Successful Candidate in 2025”
By 2018, Cobalt decided to take a bit of a different hiring approach. They interviewed a candidate named Aaron, who had a Master in Philosophy, worked in a government role for a year, and then with a variety of startups the last 3 years. Aaron did not fit Cobalt’s CV checklist of Good University +2 Years Doing X + 1 Year Doing Y=Successful Candidate. When they brought Aaron in for an interview, he didn’t nail the case study questions on the three ways to augment a client’s gross margins. However, Cobalt’s HR team tried an experiment, they asked Aaron to work on a part-time contract basis for a couple weeks at Cobalt. During his contract term, Aaron worked with team members on various projects.
During this time, Aaron evaluated if Cobalt was the right fit for him and Cobalt was evaluating if he was right for the company. The experiment with Aaron created a two way street between employer and applicant, one that is rarely present in the hiring process. Employees need to be recognized as fundamentally important assets to businesses, and should be given the right to evaluate if a company is right for them. (Tangent: Employees today are only recognized as expenses on an income statement, and not assets on a company’s balance sheet. This allocation is shocking when you think about the value people bring to a business. If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, check out this incredible Fast Company article on the biggest lie in corporate America).
Aaron quickly found that the actual skills needed for the job at Cobalt could be learned quickly and easily, a few weeks of ramp up, a bit of onboarding and he was a superstar. He quickly ramped up and learned how to serve the short-term needs of Cobalt.
Aaron was innovative, he took on new projects where he was able to interpret output and create new ideas for clients, projects that automated software could not accomplish. His judgment and ideas made him valuable to clients. He used technology as a complement to his skills to serve clients better. This, in turn, made him valuable to Cobalt.
Ingredients of Implementation
In my own experience, I’ve found incredible success in a contractor trial model. Companies I’ve worked with have found superstar employees who started out on a contract basis. Their CV did not do them justice or demonstrate their potential problem-solving abilities and work ethic, but when they were put in a challenging environment they excelled. Over time, they got to know the company as much as the company got to know them.
As technology automates our repeatable tasks, we are forced to change the way we work. We must complement technology and use our humanistic side of judgment, our intangible, non-linear skills that lie at the core of our defensible value to any company. It is particularly important to pay attention to these attributes during periods of intense volatility and paradigm-shifting change.
Technological advances force us to reconsider the hierarchical systems that underlay present society and reconsider people’s individual value when routine work becomes automated and job descriptions change. Typical hiring processes rely on top-down policies that are meant to create structure and order but serve only to suppress change and enhance weakness. If employers encourage current employees and potential candidates to exercise self-regulation and individualized thinking and remove the typical linear structures in the workplace, a company has the opportunity to become stronger in a changing economy.
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What do you think about hiring processes today? How do you think hiring processes will have to adapt to a changing paradigm? Leave a comment and clap for support :).
