“It has been said critically that there is a tendency in many armies to spend the peace time studying how to fight the last war” - J. L. Schley, 1929
“The stone which the builders rejected as worthless turned out to be the most important of all.” - Psalm 118:22
The “war for talent” is now 22 years old. While older than the war on drugs and not as old as the war on terror, it is just as unwinnable.
Organizations obsess about hiring the “A team”. This has always struck me as both lazy, stupid and hypocritical. Hiring the A team is easy. You just throw money at them, tell them they are awesome and then give them all the cool stuff to do. It does not take a genius to make this work. It does imply that your hiring processes are functional, which is a stretch for many organizations, but let’s lay that cruel reality to one side for now. There is only so much truth we can take in one sitting.
So it is lazy. And paying top dollar for everything is stupid. But why is it hypocritical? Well we talk about “growth mindsets” these days. The idea that abilities aren’t fixed but rather flexible and fluid. And yet while we talk as though growth mindsets are true, we don’t hire like they are. We view ability as fixed (and documented as such in resume form) until proven otherwise.
This is not what exceptional organizations do. And by exceptional, I mean desperate. And by desperate, I mean hungry. Because being exceptional is not a function of where you are but where you need to get to. Exceptional organizations can take B or C players and make them A players.
How do they do this? They do things differently. They spot talent differently. They cast aside resume scanning systems with a focus on keywords. They don’t hire people like their current employees. They don’t hire people that make them comfortable. They feel the fear and do it anyway. They find people who are poor fits for their current jobs, and they work out if they could excel at something else. Above all, they search for fit. Fit may be hidden and it may require as much skill as tailor to see and sew the job to the candidate like a fine suit.
Then they set these people up for success. Most employees are set up for mediocrity and they achieve that. Some are set up to fail like the sacrifices to false idols that they are. What does it mean to set someone up for success? It means that everyone in the chain of command above them will move mountains to help them succeed. If you aren’t willing to commit to that then you shouldn’t be in the business of hiring people.
Organizations should have designed the role that person is in rather than simply leave it to them to sort out. Sure the hire may tweak it but if the employer cannot clearly articulate what success means for that role then they need to go back to the drawing board without any supper. That means coaching and training and all that stuff that takes, yikes, money and, double yikes, time.
Now it also means that employers fire quickly. Mistakes happen. But unless someone has lied on their CV (and even then, let he who is without sin cast the first stone), they should be directed and supported to their next role. The hiring organization should own that mistake and do their best to fix it.
Now I have not always lived up to these precepts as a hiring manger and that is to my shame. But on the one hand I hear managers whining about the lack of talent in the market and on the other I see excellent people without the right jobs for them. This is broken. And if we talk about “growth mindsets” and “equality of opportunity”, we need to live up to our fine words or suffer the consequences of our actions.
We need to end this war.