Free Article By Paul Glen of C2
Consulting
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The Wrong Stuff
(This article originally appeared in
Computerworld USA.)
Now that IT departments are
starting to do just a little recruiting, it's time to think about how to hire
the best and brightest people. Despite having had a few years when they could be
really choosy, hiring managers seem to have lost sight of how to pick great
employees.
We've all seen job postings
with statements like, "Must meet all requirements below to be considered.
Otherwise, don't waste our time by applying." What follows is invariably a list
of required experience that would elude even the most energetic and accomplished
centenarian. Usually the list includes a long string of ill-considered, mutually
incompatible skill sets and temperaments. Statements like, "Must have a
successful record as a sales hunter, a seller of large-scale software solutions
to senior executives and a J2EE programmer, with a minimum of 25 years of
experience," seem all too common.
I imagine some junior HR
person fresh out of college sitting in a windowless cubicle sifting through
piles of resumes. "Hmm. Here's one. Oops. Only 24 years of Java. Reject. Next.
Steve Jobs; that name sounds familiar. Oh, didn't finish college. Next."
I'm not suggesting that
hiring managers shouldn't be choosy now that they have the chance, but they
should use the opportunity to choose based on meaningful criteria. Too often, it
seems, these attempts to be selective are based on a few myths that lead to poor
decisions.
Myth 1: Past Experience
Equals Future Success
At the heart of absurd
selection criteria is the assumption that an applicant's previous experience
doing exactly the same job implies future success. But there are a number of
problems with hiring someone to re-create a previous performance.
People frequently try to
repeat past success by doing things exactly the same way as before, failing to
recognize the uniqueness of the new situation. In fact, if someone has done a
job before and been wildly successful, he's unlikely to reproduce the results.
Early success doesn't lead to learning. Failure is a much better teacher.
Also, people get bored doing
the same things over and over again and don't engage completely with the job.
A much better rule to follow
when hiring would be "past drive for success implies future drive for success."
The desire to be effective is much more enduring and important than some
specific experience. You can see it in a progression of increasing
responsibility, but mostly it comes through in the interviews.
Myth 2: Specialization Equals
Productivity
This myth has deep roots in
the business community. Ever since studies of scientific management were
conducted at the turn of the last century, specialization has been considered a
bedrock of productivity. The more specialized someone is, the more productive he
must be. Obviously, this belief has served us well over the past 100 years or
so, helping to multiply the productivity of physical labor by a factor of more
than 50.
But just because this
assumption has proved true for improving the productivity of physical labor,
that doesn't necessarily mean that it will work the same way for improving the
productivity of knowledge work.
A better assumption would be
that every organization and project needs a blend of both deep specialists and
broad generalists. Hiring a bunch of specialists more often results in internal
competition and posturing than in outstanding productivity. In the right
environment, people with varying perspectives find the most efficient and
creative solutions to the problems at hand.
Myth 3: You Can Do Only One
Thing Well
This myth assumes that each
of us is entitled to only one primary skill. If someone has pursued a career
writing mystery novels, he clearly can't be much of a programmer.
For me, one of the great
privileges of being in IT has been working with just these sorts of talented
polymaths. I've worked alongside people who started their careers as opera
singers, concert pianists, high school teachers, mathematicians, physicists,
historians, salespeople, factory workers and psychologists. They all bring
varied perspectives from their other careers, enriching our work experiences and
the quality of our technical products.
If we allow these people to
be forced out of the industry by checklist recruiting, our projects and work
lives will be poorer for it.
