Or, How Do You Hire The First Person To Walk On The Moon?

I’ve noticed that there are two broad strategies companies use for hiring, and I have given myself the liberty to use them as predictors of how those companies or organizations view Growth and Innovation–yes, that I word that we all vie for. (I recognize I’m generalizing here, but humor me just for this post.)

Method I: Hire Someone Who’s Done the Job Before

This is the easiest way for a company to hire. Does your resume show that you’ve done this? Check. A lot? Check. And successfully? Check. And you’re not wanted by the FBI or the the State Psycho Ward? Check? Great. Chances of you being hired? Pretty high at this point.

I’d say this method is ideal for employers who has limited resources, in both time and person, and just needs things done, fast. The employer knows exactly what needs to be done, now. This is ideal for the job seeker who’s perhaps a contractor, someone that knows exactly how to do the job in their sleep. Someone to just press Go, basically.

Pros: Minimal training, in and out, execute and run.

Cons: Eventually the employee is bored of doing the same thing and wants to learn something new.

In chapter 7 of the book 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts, Richard Sheridan advised, “Add Talents, Not Skills, to Your Team.”

I realized we had stopped investing in our employees’ growth. We weren’t looking for fresh, new talent. We were looking for very specific, already refined, skills. Now, I tell people that if they see an employer hiring for an exact skill match, what that employer is really saying is, “We don’t plan to invest in you.”

My advice to anyone seeking to build a strong team is to hire for talents, not for skills. What talents do I look for when hiring technologists for my agile development teams? Good kindergarten skills.

Method II: Hire Someone Who Can Grow Into the Job

There’s another method of hiring, which may seem riskier at first, but with risk may come rewards, and that is to hire someone who has what it takes to grow into the job and take your company, or project, further.

So how do you know if someone has what it takes?

Randy Nelson, the Dean of Pixar University said, the problem with resume-based hiring is a lot of the jobs out there fall in the category of Doing Innovating Things for Innovating Companies, which means doing things you’ve never done before. So, what does Pixar do?

Depth-Based Search

Everyone is looking for someone who’s really good at something. We often see this advertised as, “HOT_SKILL Rock Star needed!” (Never mind the fact that rock stars come with some other issues, but we’ll ignore that for now.) However, what if that Something To Be Good at has never been done? What if that Something calls for a lot of creativity and innovation?

According to Mr. Nelson, Pixar looks for someone who has truly mastered something in their lives. Why? Mastery of anything requires a level of commitment and self-determination. It’s proof that this person has a certain amount of ability to recover from errors and succeed, because to master anything means that you necessarily failed in that arena at some point. And, if someone has learned to master something, chances are they know what it takes to learn to master something else.

Breadth-Based Search

Another thing to look for in a candidate? Someone who is interested, someone who’s interested in a wide range of things, and who’s interested in learning to communicate in the languages of those things. Because communication is the root of collaboration. As Randy Nelson said, “We certainly don’t want any one-trick pony.”

I remember reading something about ninjas once (don’t laugh), and that they were always encouraged, well on top of staying in shape and all that, to study a wide variety of things, like poetry and the arts. Makes sense, if you’re gonna be a ninja, you might as well know how to write a haiku, right?

Collaboration

Having done Improv, Mr. Nelson’s messages hit home for me. Two core principles from Improv:

1) Accept the offer: if someone says, “Wow, you changed your hair!”, you should say, “Yes, I thought I’d go green like everyone else.”, not, “No I didn’t.”

2) Make your partner look good: If you’ve ever been on stage with bright light shining in your face and you know out there in the dark are 20, or 200 people wanting you to make them laugh, wanting you to make their Saturday night date go well, you know the anxiety can be high. The last thing you want to have is a partner, a team member, basically, who isn’t helping your game.

So, Depth, Breadth, and Collaboration, that’s how Pixar does it. And it seems to be working out well for them.

The core skills of innovator is error-recovery, not error avoidance.

The video below goes into more details of The Pixar Way, and it’s a good watch.