Hi Recruiters,
How do you determine the years of experience needed for someone to be qualified for a job? Some may look at what their competitors are asking for. Others may go with what the hiring manager thinks is right. Many may be forced to take influence from a workforce planning system which recommends values based on job titles and market data.
But is it possible that many of the common job requirements we see and set today are arbitrary? I came across this job ad from a real business which broke all the rules:
Obviously, the tone and format of this ad wouldn’t work for most businesses. But what I found interesting is how they removed many of the barriers that could otherwise immediately reject a potentially good hire. Is it a little risky? Probably. But it got me thinking — how often are we creating unnecessary barriers for great talent to come through the door?
If you ask anyone who’s reached great heights in their career, I guarantee most will admit there were times when they were, on paper, “under qualified” for a big job. And to land the big job, someone had to see their potential and give them a shot.
The way some job descriptions read today, it’s as if employers want to hire someone who knows exactly how to do a job before even joining the company. It begs the question: do we really want to hire someone based on that big of an assumption? While it can be tempting to judge a book by its cover, you’ve got to actually read the book to know if it's any good. In other words, sometimes the best person for a job might not be the obvious choice.
Case in point: At just six years old, the little girl in the video below didn’t have anywhere near the experience of your average musician, yet she created magic (and has amassed 386K subscribers).
She brought more to the table than just the skill of playing guitar or singing. By leveraging her own unique qualities, she brought a fresh take on a classic tune. Would it have the same effect if she had 8+ years of experience performing the song exactly like the original?
As Steve Levy put it in a recent episode of Recruiter Therapy, “We can get so caught up in technology, we forget to make it personal.” Meaning, when it comes to modern recruiting, it can be tempting to let your technology and processes drive your decision-making for qualifying candidates.
The systems we use to filter out candidates should be built for and used as tools to support our recruitment strategy — not as a replacement for strategy itself. Why? Because even the most sophisticated filters can’t detect every valuable quality about a person. And when you’re blind to the hidden qualities within your talent pool, you may have trouble spotting that unexpected candidate who can help take a business to new places.
It doesn’t mean that the most qualified person on paper is never the best fit. Of course, that happens. But if you asked me what type of person would be best to perform a hit song from the 60’s, my first thought would not be “a six year old!”.
Besides the obvious hard skills needed for a role, there’s incredible value in being good at identifying what else a candidate can bring to the table. After all, superstar talents are worth much more than just their weight in subject matter expertise.
Paul DeBettignies shared a great example of this idea, when talking about his time spent with junior software developers just graduating from coding bootcamp. When asked what other job experience they have, one graduate said, “I only have experience in customer service.” To which Paul responded, “Oh, so you know how to talk to people, get requirements, work on a team, and lead and follow.”
Paul’s got the right idea.
Fortunately, our team at hireEZ is full of examples of folks going far in their careers. We can all be glad that somewhere along the way, someone took a chance on us.
If you’ve gone out of your way to make a hire that you just knew was special, we’d love to hear about it. Answer our 1-question survey here.
If you’re newer to the game, next time you encounter a new candidate or revisit a silver medalist in your ATS who felt right, but for one reason or another didn’t quite line up with desired qualifications, consider how you might uncover what else they can bring to the table. With a little more discovery, you might find they are quite desirable.
Kunwar Ishan Sharma here! Many recruiters looking for work are working on how they can present their best qualities themselves. In our latest blog, the hireEZ community talks about how you can leverage everything at your disposal, including LinkedIn’s “Open to Work” banner.
Thank you for being a part of the community, and we’ll see you next week.
— Recruiters