Who Do You Choose?

Two candidates apply to your open position:

• Candidate A has 8 years of experience at your competitor. In the interview, they are confident what brought them great success previously can be replicated in your organization.

• Candidate B has spent the past 5 years split between a nonprofit and a entrepreneurial hustle that didn't work out. In the interview, they asked great questions about your process, your technology, and your customers.

Who do you choose? There's an argument to made for both, but I suspect in most organizations Candidate A gets the nod. Let me suggest that Candidate B might be the right choice for these reasons:

• Humility is the prerequisite to curiosity. And curiosity is the prerequisite to results.

• Experience and growth are not synonymous. What often passes as 8 years of experience is really 1 year of experience with the 2 year repeated 6 more times.

• Prior exposure to a field, career, or discipline can inoculate a potential new hire from adopting current best practices.

• In most fields (surgeons and astronauts being the notable exception), there's no data to suggest that prior experience is a predictor of future success. Humility, curiosity, and the ability to learn quickly is.

In other words, hire for slope, not y-intercept.

_____________________________________________ At Trellis Group, we believe chaos is the enemy of the small business. It's our mission to partner with small business owners and their teams to develop the managerial practices and processes to crush chaos. If you feel overwhelmed and need a proven system to focus on the next best thing, we can help. Companies who work with us see revenues go up, anxiety go down, and work becomes a force multiplier for good in the lives of your people. Reach out to discover how the Trellis Group can help you crush chaos.