Want to Innovate? Stop Hiring the Safest Option
After a three-month hiring process, my friend finally got the call. The job they were uniquely qualified for went to someone else. That person was an industry insider who was twice their age. Despite having skills the job posting mentioned no other applicants had, my friend didn’t have enough years at that seniority level or enough experience in the industry.
This sounds perfectly justified; who could argue with seniority and experience? But this role needed skills people don’t learn in that industry. They needed outside expertise to match the criteria they asked for. This team says it’s trying to innovate from within. So why not start with who they hire?
Innovation. Disruption. Creativity. Agility. Fearing the skills gap and the looming future of work, companies across industries use these buzzwords to describe what they’re looking for. And with a retail apocalypse, low unemployment, and automation at our heels, leaders are worried. Companies turn to innovation, hoping to disrupt before they become disrupted. This all sounds good. But what do companies really do?
They set up innovation hubs, but isolate them. They set up creativity boot camps, but they don’t design processes to turn ideas into successful products. Corporations donate to university innovation centers and fund design competitions, but entry-level jobs still require 3 years of experience. This say-do gap pays lip service to innovation.
There’s no silver bullet to magically become an innovative organization. But here’s a good first step: stop hiring the safest, most traditional person. What I mean is, stop hiring people with the same academic background as the rest of your team, who have already been doing your target job for years, and who only come from your industry. Stop choosing similarity over skill.
“Why?” you might ask. “It’s safer that way. Nobody got fired for buying IBM.”
You’re right. It is safer. And that attitude stops your company from embracing innovation. Innovation takes risk. If you aren’t going outside your comfort zone or bringing people in who think differently, how can you benefit from diverse-thinking teams?
References
[1] Van Iddekinge, C. H., Arnold, J. D., Frieder, R. E., & Roth, P. L. (2019). A meta‐analysis of the criterion‐related validity of prehire work experience. Personnel Psychology, 72(4), 571-598.
[2] Horwitz, S. K., & Horwitz, I. B. (2007). The effects of team diversity on team outcomes: A meta-analytic review of team demography. Journal of Management, 33(6), 987-1015. Bell, S. T., Villado, A. J., Lukasik, M. A., Belau, L., & Briggs, A. L. (2011). Getting specific about demographic diversity variable and team performance relationships: A meta-analysis. Journal of Management, 37(3), 709-743. Van Dijk, H., Van Engen, M. L., & Van Knippenberg, D. (2012). Defying conventional wisdom: A meta-analytical examination of the differences between demographic and job-related diversity relationships with performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 119(1), 38-53.
[3] Hülsheger, U. R., Anderson, N., & Salgado, J. F. (2009). Team-level predictors of innovation at work: a comprehensive meta-analysis spanning three decades of research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(5), 1128.
[4] Bóo, F. L., Rossi, M. A., & Urzúa, S. S. (2013). The labor market return to an attractive face: Evidence from a field experiment. Economics Letters, 118(1), 170-172.
[5] Agerström, J. (2014). Why does height matter in hiring? Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 52, 35-38.
[6] Uhlmann, E. L., & Cohen, G. L. (2005). Constructed criteria: Redefining merit to justify discrimination. Psychological Science, 16(6), 474-480.
[7] Johnson, S. K., Hekman, D. R., & Chan, E. T. (2016). If there’s only one woman in your candidate pool, there’s statistically no chance she’ll be hired. Harvard Business Review, 26(04).
About the Author
Natasha Ouslis
Natasha is a behavior change consultant, writer, and researcher. She started her own workplace behavioral science consulting firm after working as a consultant at fast-growing behavioral economics companies including BEworks. Natasha is also finishing her PhD in organizational psychology at Western University, specializing in team conflict and collaboration, where she completed her Master of Science in the same field. She has a monthly column on workplace behavioral design in the Habit Weekly newsletter and is a Director and science translator at the nonprofit ScienceForWork.
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