Highly Experienced or Less Experienced: Which One Will You Choose?

Recruitment styles and talent development practices have seen ‘n’ number of forms and patterns. There are various fascinating stories about how some great leaders tried on new recruitment styles and brought in those precious stones that drove the organization to unmatchable heights!

To reiterate, some of them were 

conventional while most of them were UNCONVENTIONAL!

Here’s some food for thought:

Would you prefer a candidate with great experience of working in a particular area or a candidate with considerable experience (or say very less experienced)??

Maximum responses would point towards a greatly experienced one!

Probably, a wise decision…but a wiser decision would be considering the less experienced.

You all must have heard about the common management practice saying throw people over their heads on the jobs and make it a matter of life and death to ensure that they don’t sink. This absolutely goes well with the point I am about to make here. 

In my opinion, to bring the best candidate over a job is to find the people who are familiar with the domain, but not the masters of it! Why I am saying this is only then they will enjoy exploring the area and finding new ways and techniques of doing the job. Unfortunately, many of the hiring managers don’t agree with the point as they believe that it will involve more costs on training and development and dropped ROI as if the candidate fails to learn, then the whole process need to be repeated.

Moreover, they feel that majority of people prefer fishing in areas they have fished and don’t welcome any challenges. But, THIS IS THE CATCH! They don’t want challenges and will show the same attitude at the workplace. They will be reluctant towards taking any negative feedback on themselves as they are always over confident of their performance. 

Thus, you need to bring the serious change in your perceptions and practices and emphasize on hiring swimming beginners and not the ‘already declared’ champions!

• Target the active candidates who are ready to learn and explore new areas.
•  Post job openings that focus on challenge accepting candidate and not just an impressive CV  holder. 
• Identify the ones who will prove to be great swimmers. Try judging them on their opinion towards your clues like promotions, deadlines, risks, etc.
• Ask them their accomplishments in non-familiar areas. 
• Try to assess their style of working and their plan of action for success.

You need to bring it on because even if you provide ‘test n try’ opportunity to those who ‘know it all’, you will never find any new scope area, as they will keep on evolving in just a single direction where they are comfortable. 

Now if you go with this Recruitment Style, then surely you can bring in the talent that can not only take you to new heights, but can also help you take on bigger risks with a strong backup in them.