Hire Talent That Tests You

What do you look for when you need to fill an open position on your team?

• Someone you're really comfortable with, who sees things like you do, whose career path mirrors yours?
• Or, someone who does things and says things and sees things in ways that are sound --but different? You know, someone who leaves you curious and intrigued after an interview. Maybe not totally comfortable, but a little bit challenged.

Comfortable is good when we're talking about our Lazy Boys. Challenged is good when we're trying to build a bold, balanced and diverse team. After all, we need the best talent we can get to make our businesses purr and roar. But in order to do that, as hiring managers, we need to be comfortable surrounding ourselves with people who aren't like us. Complement us, yes. But not duplicate us.

There's almost an aura, an energy, that emanates from a group of talented people at work:

• offering up unique perspectives to the same problem,
• seeing solutions that others don't see,
• and challenging each other with respectful push-backs.

Are you secure enough to invite the people who work for you to challenge your opinion?

• We can't be afraid to select strong and bright and competitive people.
• We can't afford clones of ourselves, as comfortable as that might be sometimes.
• We need people on-board who have or will have -- with some specific development -- the ability to take our jobs.

Look at it this way: if we're honest, we already have team members who are better at some things than we are. Through the hiring and staffing process, we have the opportunity to enhance and leverage that fact even more.

Harold R. McAlindon said "The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up." Hire the best minds, the strongest talent, you can afford. And then let them test you.

Photo on flickr by Gelatomettista2