I just caught up to some reading on Workforce Management’s website. Ready for the Big Time captivated my attention. The author references a company where candidates are hired similar to an NFL-style draft. You have to register at the site but it is free.
The article is quite long but I’ll give you the high points. The article is written about what National Oilwell Varco’s (NOV) chief executive did in response to seeing that most of his executives and upper managment positions were being held by baby boomers. He put his Senior VP of Sales and Director of Employee Development on the task to develop a system to recruit their next generation of company leaders. At the time, the VP of Sales was asked to spearhead this initiative and he was reading Patriot Reign – a book about the New England Patriots. He pulled a few points from the book which included business units competing for candidates based on the NFL draft.
A couple of points jumped out at me. Obviously, NOV made a conscious decision to shift their existing hiring paradigms. First, they stopped looking just in their backyard and started recruiting beyond the states of Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. Second, they actually started looking to recruit directly from colleges, picking 30-40 students from 10 different colleges for interviews. In interviewing these students, they looked for specifc competencies: communication, ability to deal with ambiguity, perseverance, strategic ability, a drive for results and political savvy. They stopped prioritizing a recruiting paradigm that focused on hiring from their competitors for industry experience.
There are a number of interesting points thoughout this article but I would like to focus on hiring competency over experience. As we meet with clients and prospects, we consistently uncover that their top priority is to hire someone with direct industry experience. Their logic is that this approach will certainly lead to success. As with NOV, we recommend first to understand what competencies will lead to success in the role and then worry about the experience piece. In sales, some times experience helps, but all to often it is grossly overrated. Even though a salesperson may have sold a similiar product, how they went to market and competed is far different than any other company . . . including our customer. The only possible exception I can think of is when a company sells a commodity, leads with price and has no value add.