Are you hiring for potential or still focussed on experience?

If you are doing it the old way, the resume has to match the job description, the person has to have industry experience, a predetermined selection criteria, then you are missing out. In today’s world where resourcing is tough and people need to be persuaded to change jobs, hiring for potential is a game changer with everyone winning.

According to Seek’s employment dashboard for February 2023, the number of jobs, applicants and volume across all industries and all job sectors are down year on year. This could mean many things. The obvious being traditional job advertising is not working and hiring managers know this and are looking to other platforms and undertaking targeted search. It is also reflective of the economic outlook and the prediction for employment trends. It could also be the case for change.

In July 2022 the unemployment rate was the lowest it has been since 1974, now slowly increasing by design, but we are as close to “full employment” as we’ve been in many years and this means there is more demand than supply (for the moment). On top of this, candidates are becoming more strategic about job changes, there is more criteria (high trust cultures, DEI, sustainability, environmentally friendly, alignment to values) and candidates have more uncertainty.

“Hiring for potential will change someone’s life,
and it is strategic resourcing”.

Today I saw a post on LinkedIn from a recruiter talking about how their client would hire 40-50 people if they could but there is apparently no talent.

Co-incidentally also today, I met an amazing accounting candidate who recently relocated to Australia from Sri Lanka. She is very experienced, Big4 background, super smart and desperate to prove her worth. The recruitment agency representing her has put her in an accounts receivable role, well below her capability. She needs someone to look beyond the pieces of paper and the geography and back her in to at least her capability and beyond, as her potential is real and demonstrated.

Recruitment agencies play a role here. They need to help challenge the thinking and support strategic resourcing by promoting candidates with potential and all the right soft skills. They have the relationships with hiring managers and can positively influence the thinking and the landscape. In doing so, they will opening up the talent pool significantly and fill those 40 odd jobs and more.

These two events in one day prompted me to write this article. The talent pool opens up when you challenge the status quo and hire for potential and not for experience.

I have hired for potential many times throughout my career. The first time, the hand was forced, after a lengthy and fruitless traditional recruitment process. Since then I have done so intentionally, many many times, because it works. Here are a few of my most memorable examples:

1. The Shop Steward/Mine Manager

I hired a shop steward off the shop floor and elevated him to Mine Manager, not only without the standard qualifications but also the regulatory required qualifications (that took some red tape wrangling). It was a stratospheric leap to fame in a single bound! I got to know him as an employee rep in enterprise bargaining. He was smart, pragmatic, technically savvy, he understood the job, the people, the challenges and always presented problems with solutions. He could negotiate, was calm, self aware, self regulated and ambitious. Everyone thought I was crazy, and if you asked him, he would agree at the time. But he trusted me, I trusted him, and we backed each other in. He stumbled and the learning curve was steep but he had the support he needed and he nailed it. The rest is history, he is now one of the most respected leaders in the mining industry.

2. The Bridal Shop Assistant/HR Business Partner

Having struggled to find a suitable Executive Assistant for myself, my HR team (who also understood the power of hiring for potential), presented me with a candidate who had a qualification in Science and was working in a bridal shop. She had never been an EA and never worked in HR. My HR team said, “she’s high energy, motivated, smart and savvy, she has huge potential, and you will love her - trust us”. It was crazy, but I did trust them, so she was hired. We wrapped our arms around her and provided an environment where mistakes were embraced as learning, where she could feel confident and we spent time coaching and mentoring her as well as teaching her. She nailed it. She moved into an HR Advisor role and then an HR Business Partner role all within 2 years. The bridal shop assistant was a superstar and would never have been hired from her CV.

3. The Government Employee/General Manager Operations

Someone known to me for sometime was always in my mind as high potential. She had worked in Government for most of her career and finally wanted a sea change but outside of Government, couldn’t get a foot in the door. On paper she would only ever be considered for other Government jobs - perceived as non transferrable experience to commerce but I knew that the Federal Government has some of the most contemporary HR disciplines and practices of any business in Australia and trains managers well. The skills were definitely transferrable. I hired her into a contract role, knowing that when people met her and saw the breadth of her experience, the depth of knowledge and some of the finest leadership qualities you will ever see, she would be seen as a keeper. Her general knowledge, intuition and commercial acumen meant she picked the new industry up quickly - in many respects quicker than those with 20+ years of industry experience. She knew people and how to get the best out of them. It was always going to work. She now has a very high profile senior executive role in commerce and is highly regarded.  

“More effort needs to be made to build careers and not just plug gaps with the same bum on the same seat”.

Granted, some jobs need technical expertise, but this is different to experience. Accountants, lawyers, strategists, IT etc - you need a degree of technical training for sure. But maybe you don’t need as much demonstrated experience and perhaps this technical training is transferrable to other disciplines. Perhaps you can take a punt because the candidate has real potential, all the soft skills, high EQ, the right attitude and energy.

What does it take?

It takes time, effort and focus, but this is the job of every leader. Investing in developing people is what the job is about. Coaching, mentoring, creating teachable moments, leading and advising. Hiring for potential for great leaders is easy as they already do all this every day.

It does take a high trust, high performing culture (read our article here) and it requires the right leadership behaviour. People need to be able to fail or stumble with support in a learning culture. You do have to get this right so that your intent is realised and you are not setting people up to fail.

What’s to gain?

The gain can be extensive. You get loyalty, gratitude, commitment. You get to be a leader who teaches and builds careers for people, many times you change people’s lives and set them on unexpected career journeys, but the best gains are from challenging the status quo. You will get different thinking, different approaches, fresh eyes, diversity and all the enormous benefits that come from that, and the opportunity to realise improved productivity gains from doing things in new and innovative ways. If you know how to assess potential, and you know how to assess soft skills, there is almost nothing to lose, but if you don’t try, you will never know if a shop steward can be a mine manager and if a bridal shop assistant can be a highly successful HR practitioner.

Stop hiring for experience and putting the same bum on the same seat, change it up. Back yourself in, hire for potential - you may be pleasantly surprised, you will likely change someone’s life, you will most certainly be sidestepping the so called “talent shortage”.

If you would like to know more about our leadership and culture programs, or how to create a competency model for recruitment that helps you identify potential over experience, and assess soft skills, reach out for a discussion.