If you are in the business of finding and hiring talent, specially for a
position that might prove critical in starting a new product, team or business
initiative full of challenges and unknowns, I am sure you'll have something to
think about by the time you reach the end of this short post.
Today we'll talk about a very unique set of people whose achievements are
generally undervalued and not openly talked about, at least in some societies
and cultures; those people who failed spectacularly at some point of time in
their lives trying to make a dent in this universe. The unsuccessful Entrepreneurs
who are yet to achieve that greatness so that their failures could be glorified
to become inspiring stories in newspaper interviews and Facebook/LinkedIn
shared posts. The Jack Mas and J.K.Rowlings who are still in their struggling
years and don't know what the future has in store for them. Some of them might
never become that successful ever but it doesn't matter in the context we are
talking today. Today we are talking about failure, how important it is in life
and how we as a society are apprehensive of the value it brings to the table.
So, what has failure to do with important hiring decisions. Well, a lot. I
wonder how many CEOs building a new team, HRs and recruiters hiring for a
critical position look forward to reading a paragraph starting with "I
Failed to..." in a resume and then say "Wow! That's impressive. Let's
schedule a meeting with her". Now you'll wonder, how many candidates
applying for the job would like to mention the same. Almost none. So here is
the proof of the society we live in and the taboos it nurtures. We are too
embarrassed to talk about it, forget about celebrating it.
The amount of learning an entrepreneur gets exposed to, be it about the
product development, the market dynamics, the customer's expectations, the
fundraising game, operational hiccups, bootstrap hiring and money management,
in just 2-3 years of struggle is unimaginable. That's the average life span of
a failed attempt at running a new business. There are few who give up too soon
and a few who keep struggling for too long but lets consider the bell curve and
stick to the majority. These 2-3 years of trying, failing, fixing, getting
almost at the verge of a breakthrough, finding no luck (again) and eventually
running out of oxygen, gives so much of valuable experience that it dwarfs the
10 years of sitting behind the desk experience, delegating tasks in a set,
organized, hierarchical corporate setup. No, I am not saying that those who
haven't been an entrepreneur before are not knowledgeable or are of any less
value but they hardly get to learn those aspects of a business that starting up
at something new does; from the bigger holistic picture of the business all the
way to the critical microscopic details of the product, things that are easy to
miss when you have a set "Role" and defined
"Responsibilities".
So if you as an HR, a recruiter who has gotten used to the kind of resumes
you come across everyday and even expect them that way, then think again. If
your company asks one of your "Technology Lead" or "Business
Manager" to interview an ex-entrepreneur and he starts the interview with
a question like "Ok, Can you please tell something about yourself?"
then take a step back and question, 'Is this interviewer really qualified
to ask the right kind of questions to this candidate? Will the interview
outcome really help make a right hiring decision?'. I personally believe a
CEO will always be the right person to interview another entrepreneur. Yes,
CEOs are very busy people but then I am assuming this role that you are hiring
for and the "Perfect" team you envision to build is also that
critical and important. If not the CEO then someone who had come as close as
possible to starting up a new business/product from scratch in a chaotic,
unpredictable market with almost shoe string budget. If she herself had
experienced a failure at least once in her life then she qualifies to be the
right interviewer even more.
If you ask an entrepreneur what all he has worked on in these 2-3 years,
he'll not know where to start. The ground reality of facing challenges,
getting the door slammed on the face truth, the client who ditched at
the last minute truth, being in the market too early truth, the never say NO
investor tactics truth, the scaling too fast too soon truth, the BIG fish
taking over market truth, it's unending series of learning experiences.
I believe, a team and an organization should have a lot of people with
insanely successful history because they did something right at some point of
time in their lives. But at the same time there should be a good mix of people
who also know 100 things that you should not do because that leads to a dead
end. They learned that the hard way.That's the value they bring to the table.
To embrace a culture that is highly innovative, an ecosystem that values
risk and respects failure, the HR and recruitment community might need to
unlearn a lot, start fresh, challenge the old, reserved thinking of what risk
and failure is. Once that happens, everyone will realize why at times,
the best problem solver in the room might not be that talkative, full of ideas
guy who recently had a glorious success but that quiet, observing, last to
speak person who has tackled failures up close.
Note: Original Post appeared on linkedin.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hiring-smart-failures-why-just-works-vikas-singh
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