I was clueless!

I Was Unqualified and Clueless, and Got Hired Anyway

My latest for Psychology Today.

I loaded vans full of fifty-pound coffee pots, with plenty of cream and sugar in coolers. I was 16 years old and working at a coffee delivery business that provided coffee and breakfast to various businesses around Los Angeles. And in Los Angeles, by extension, that means deliveries movie studios and sound stages all over town that hosted some of the best loved soap operas and late night shows of our times. I met some of the nicest people and some of the not nicest people one can ever hope to meet.

But I had no business doing that job in the first place. I was not qualified to do the job, much less get hired.

Why? Well, I couldn’t make a cup of coffee if my life depended on it. I had just barley gotten my drivers license and by all accounts I was a novice driver. I had no experience in the food industry. I couldn’t tell the difference between a several day-old bagel and a fresh one. I had no idea that milk spoiled when left out.

But what I did have was gumption. And the willingness to learn.

Now many years later the things I learned on that job had led me to hire over a thousand people in my career using unconventional creative thinking. The kinds of creative thinking at first glance seem eccentric but will truly work wonders for you. So let’s dive in and explore three different ways to win the battle for talent by thinking with a solution mindset:

1.     Hire on Attitude

I was unqualified for my job as a coffee delivery person, but I found out that I got the job because I was willing to learn. I had a good attitude. I showed up every day with the willingness to learn and an appreciation of the business challenges that lay ahead. I was curious, forever inquisitive about process and procedure and trying to understand why we were doing things the way we were doing them. And immediately looking for improvements.

When we hire on attitude, we look for that spark in the candidate (a Roman word from a beginner member of the senate as they wore a white toga or toga candida to indicate their interest in the job[1]) that tells us they are eager to learn. That eagerness to learn is a quality that I value much more than experience. In fact, experience can be a deterrent in challenging conventions of a particular role or industry, and sometimes the best ideas come from outside the industry. And so when we hire on attitude, and positive and eager desires to learn, we end up with candidates that perform better, are happier in their roles and tend to introduce novel and unique ways of coming up with solutions to problems.

2.     Experience Is Overrated

Most hiring managers and HR professionals love to see linear experience in a resume. It

shows that the person has a firm grasp on the industry and has worked in it for many years. But I think it obscures the possibility of uncovering a great talent – especially today when the war for talent has reached epidemic proportions[2].

            Instead of hiring on experience, try hiring on similar attributes from different fields. For example, If you are looking for customer service folks at the help desk, hiring someone with restaurant experience in the front of house may be a good fit. Sure they don’t have experience at a help desk, but they do have experience helping people at a restaurant, and that experience may translate perfectly to your role. Thinking about how experience can transport from one field to another will help you find talent that most others will overlook.

3.     Ask for Recommendations

Your existing staff members have friends. And it is likely that one of those friends may be looking for a new job. They may even have a neighbor that is looking or a friend at church or temple or their pickleball team who is looking for work. So why shouldn’t that job be found with you?

Looking for recommendations with existing staff for people to fill much needed roles is a brilliant creative way to uncover talent that may be perfect for you. The added benefit is that people love to help - -so if that particular friend may not be a good fit, perhaps they know someone who will be a good fit and so on. I have found countless staff members who have gone on to lead productive and essential roles in my organizations just this way. And the results can be surprisingly robust.

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When I was 16 I got hired on to work a job I was not qualified for because my boss had a vision and a perspective that was creative. He knew that he could train and teach people who were motivated to learn, and he probably saved money on hiring a beginner level staff as well. So it was literally a win- win for the both of us. I got a job, and he get a discounted employee.

Having that vision and perspective rooted in creative thinking and a solution based mindset sparked a lifetime of learning how to think differently about hiring. And the above three ideas may help you find talent and fit people into roles that you may have never tried before. Because when thinking about hiring with a solution mindset, anything is possible.

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/candidate

[2] https://time.com/6224186/global-war-for-young-talent/