I have been reading the fantastic book by Charles Handy ‘The Age of Unreason’ over the summer holidays. I was hooked after I found it on my father’s bookshelf and I cannot seem to stop thinking about the myriad of fascinating points the book raises. One of those points is the fact that most intelligent and talented people want the chance to learn new skills and take on new job roles, yet most recruitment seems to go against this philosophy with organizations preferring to hire someone who has done the job before – regardless of how good or motivated they really are to do the job.
Six Figures has previously undertaken various research projects on this subject before (the High Income Earners Report & the Executive Job Market Confidence Report), which confirmed this point. Most of our members, who are professionals and 30 years plus, are looking for the opportunity to do something a little different and are even willing to take a significant salary cut to do so; yet the reality is that there are few opportunities in the market where this occurs. It’s rather sad really when you think about it – all that wasted talent.
Now ‘The Age of Unreason’ is 20+ years old and was written whilst I was still at high school. What has shocked me most about reading this book is how little has changed when it comes to how organizations attract and retain talent.
Prompted by this book and looking through various job ads on different sites, it struck me that most job ads are a shopping list of what an organization wants – i.e. must have x,y,z. I don’t think I have ever seen a job ad that says must have the potential to do x,y,z. It seems that potential, desire and motivation have no place when it comes to seeking employment – it’s all about what you must have and must have done before. Now I too am guilty of this, however I will certainly make more of an effort when writing job ads to not be so limited to ensure that I don’t screen out the talent before I have even begun hiring.
What are your views on recruiting based on potential, be it as a job seeker or recruiter? Have you ever seen a job ad that actually highlights the fact that they are looking for someone with the potential to do x,y,z?
Note: I have since discovered this book was rated in the top 10 business books in 1990 by Business Week. So it’s well worth a read.
9 Comments
I’ve never seen an ad that seeks potential; nor have I experienced employers that give you a passionate chance in an interview; they’ve only ever got to their position by following the upward sameness pathway – playing the game to please their boss
Great post,Kelly.
What actually is ‘potential’? I think this is where the problem starts.
To me ‘potential’ describes behavioural competencies (or transferable skills) rather than existing technical skills. Most organisations are hopeless at building a competency framework which does three things;
i) identifies the specific competencies required to be successful in that job, team and organisation
ii) identifies the current level of each employee’s relevant competencies, and
iii) has a clear plan to develop each employee’s competencies to the required level
Organisations who take these three steps are light years ahead of their competitors because they take a proactive approach to their employees’ ‘potential’. Organisations who do not take these steps will always be left guesssing about each employees’ ‘potential’ and as a result will almost always take the safe option and hire ‘previous experience’.
When I was first hired as a recruiter 21 years ago I had no recruitment skills at all but I did have ‘potential’ based on my specific behavioural competencies of Influencing, Persistence, and Achievement Drive.
Hear, hear! I thoroughly agree. The Age of Unreason has also been on my bookshelf for nearly 20 years and it’s still pertinent.
As for hiring on potential, I’ve been in the IT business for 30 years and while I have a large body of work behind me, employers are mostly interested in technology that is 10 years old or less. On the basis of simple mathematics, this means that two thirds of my experience doesn’t count.
By contrast, I have always worked in my own time to develop new skills in new technologies, I get better every year and I am now further away from reaching my limits than ever. If employers were genuinely interested in my potential I would be playing a whole new ball game. And yes, I would be quite happy to take a pay cut to work with anybody smart enough to recognise the real potential of their work force.
I believe that past performance is a reliable and clear indicator of future probable performance and I agree with Ross Clennett in his post above that ‘potential’ more likely reflects an individual’s ability to apply skills in a new technical, business or industry environment.
I also think that attitude is the ability to apply those skills elsewhere. This is rarely recognised by an employer because they are perhaps too focussed on getting a perfect technical skill match.
I’d take 90% less ability for 10% more attitude any day.
I agree with Ross. I work in an internal recruitment capacity for a large and complex organisation. Like Ross, I wasnt hired for my recruitment skills and in fact left the industry for a bit to hone some related skills before coming back.
When I am on a panel, I use my influencing skills where appropriate to turn managers minds to potential to a point. If the technical skills are a critical requirement, we don’t hire on potential, but often we are able to spot the stars in the making and I will advocate on this point where I feel it is useful.
It’s never black and white and never should it be.
I like to think that I’m always thinking that I need to “Hire for attitude and train for skill”. I guess it is a similar train of thought.
The problem comes when you have some specific requirements that need to be met. Many or maybe most organisations never seem to engage in strategic recruitment therefore they are always trying to fill a gap now!
It doesn’t seem to matter how many studies are done that shows the long term benefits no one ever gets the budget to hire above current requirements.
I think a lot is driven by the continual desire to achieve short term financial gains, whether that be for shareholder value, bonus schemes or just to keep the business afloat.
There are many terrific points being raised and clearly there is some murky ground here – particularly around defining ‘potential’. The topic of defining potential perhaps belongs to a whole other post. Technical skills certainly carry different weightings for different roles however until more businesses engage in strategic recruitment and factor in a candidates potential – they will miss out on the talent.
It’s amazing how often people get stuck on experience, and we have been lucky to have developed a culture which accepts people ‘just outside the square. One of the real benefits we have in our company is people wanting to work there and sending their resumes and letters of introduction – you often get a vastly different impression than when someone is applying for a specific role. We have a bit of history of of recruiting ‘good’ people – often when we hadn’t necessarily had a job. When we find these ones with ‘potential’, we often then fit them into the strategic puzzle for the future growth of both parties! Sometimes this has taken up to 12-18 months, but it works very well when there is strongly communicated and understood company goals, and HR is closely involved in the strategic goal setting process.
This is indeed such a relevant discussion. I worked in the IT industry for over 10 years but my ‘career’ or vocational choice is sustainability and CSR. Yet whenever I met with executive search representatives they inevitably wanted to categorise my career opportunities in IT yet I was desperate to change industries. I may have been exposed to the IT industry because that was the business of the company that employed me but my expertise is in sustainability. After many months I was finally offered a sustainability role with an energy company. Yes, the industry is vastly different but the core principles of sustainability were not. And most importantly I was highly motivated to commit myself to understanding the industry.