The Right Person for the Job

...might actually be the exact opposite of what your job requirements say.

Now hear me out for a second. I know if you are the recruiter responsible for hiring, say, the next anesthesiologist for the operating room, that you had better be darn sure that to folks you present know how to safely administer sedation, monitor their patient's condition, and respond quickly and effectively if something goes awry.  These critical skills and experiences for that kind of role are obvious and non-negotiable. I get it. Similarly, if you were hiring the next pilot for your company's charter airline service, things like 10,000 hours flying comparable aircraft, and a history of 'not showing up drunk for work' are pre-requisites for anyone aspiring to the gig.

But most of the jobs in the American economy are not life or death propositions, and the relative importance of published job requirements are certainly up for debate.  Sure, if you are looking to hire a Sr. Developer in 'XYZ' programming language, then at least some demonstrable knowledge and experience in XYZ are a real and defensible requirement, but again, most companies slap an artificial 'years of experience' qualifier to whatever particular technical skill they require. 

The thinking makes sense, you need a really proficient XYZ Developer, one that you don't have time to train, and that you are willing to pay the going market rate that kind of skill commands.  So you draw on your personal or organizational insight and determine for someone to actually have developed the level of XYZ expertise you are after, that the person must have been messing about with XYZ in a professional capacity for 2 or 5 or 10 years. It doesn't really matter what 'number' you land on, but rather that you have set the 'floor' of experience that you say you need. 

But by setting that more or less artificial and experiential floor, you have determined that you really don't care so much about actual and potentially demonstrable technical ability as you do about a candidate's ability to had you a resume that 'proves' the 5 years of experience is all in order. We don't really care what the candidates can do, we just care that they have done something related to the job description for the proscribed amount of time.

But what actually made me think about this topic, one I have written about before, was a recent piece in the Harvard Business Review's 'The Conversation' blog called 'Want Innovative Thinking? Hire from the Humanities. In the piece, author Tony Golsby-Smith articulates a case for organizations that are increasingly challenged to innovate faster, to surface more creative ideas, and to simply 'out-think' their competition, that a more expansive and inclusive set of hiring practices should be leveraged. Instead or bringing in yet another class of Top 20 Business School educated MBA's, firms should consider recruiting more students from humanities programs, as in the author's contention, humanities training can produce more innovative thinking, enhanced capability to embrace ambiguity, and perhaps most critically, more effective communication skills, both written and verbal.

We can debate the 'required skills' versus 'find the smartest people' issues forever. But for me, one thing is certain, each additional 'position requirement' you list on the job requisition makes your potential pool smaller, and of course that is what we want. 

But at some point, the combination of these (possibly arbitrary) requirements, and the other non job skills specific factors (salary, location, company reputation, prospects, etc.), narrow the pool so much, that millions of jobs sit unfilled at the same time more millions of people are out of work.

In NFL football, when the teams hold the annual player draft, each team determines a position or two of dire need, that they really want to try to fill with a new college draftee.  But when their turn comes to select a player, and the most talented options for their position of most need are all gone, they don't pass on their turn. Instead they select the 'best player available' regardless of whether or not they really need another player at that position. 

They know, as most high performing organizations do, that assembling the most talent, even if they don't exactly fit into a pre-determined set of boxes is, in the long run, a winning strategy.