Across the HR profession, we’re constantly “preaching” to our business stakeholders to consider transferable skills to broaden their talent pools, especially given they’re frequently faced with candidate shortages.   It’s understandable that we need to guide those stakeholders on how to hire for new roles that either haven’t existed before (think AI experts 10 years ago) and/or are consistently in globally short supply (think engineers) and/or that are just not in the volumes we need (think opening of new sites in markets with low population numbers and/or high levels of competition of hiring from other employers).

And yet, when it comes to hiring within the HR profession, we abandon all emphasis on transferable skills.  Which ironically leads to vacancies being unfilled for weeks and sometimes even months within the function. 

So, I want to question some of the more common hiring criteria for leaders within the HR profession because as long as these “road blocking” criteria exist, you and your company will struggle to secure the very best performing, and diverse talent choices.

1. The need for a degree.  Why?  There are other ways to prove a person’s ability to learn and to check their reasoning and presentation/organizational skills.   Hiding behind the excuse that “degree qualified business leaders will expect a degree qualified HR person” is poor form.   If that is really the way your business leaders think, then it’s probably a part of your company culture in which case you’ve got bigger issues to be tackled.  And for all the CHRO hires we’ve effected over many years, across so many industries and company sizes, never once has a CEO or board member asked us about candidate degree qualifications.

2. The need for industry experience.   Ok, I see the benefit of someone new coming in who knows the jargon, knows the likely day to day challenges and theoretically should be “up to speed” more quickly as a result.  But here’s the rub.  You risk winding up with someone who is likely to “assume” solutions to problems.  They may not feel the need to dig deeply, they may not ask the “why” and “how” questions, and you may well wind up with traditional results, rather than innovation.   Again, for all the CHRO hires we’ve effected for progressive CEO’s and board members over the years, never once have they asked us to secure someone with industry experience.  In fact, quite the opposite – they’ve embraced candidates who’ve worked in other industries that have already tackled and solved similar business and talent challenges that are being faced by the hiring company now.

3.  Cultural fit.  So, I do think it’s essential to secure someone who shares the core values of the hiring company.  And it’s often useful to hire someone who is likeable (depending on the job to be done).  But hiring because they went to a college or university that you (or peer colleagues) went to, because the candidate lives in the “right” district, because the person agrees with all the opinions or has the same approach to work as the people they’ve met through the interview process….is a mistake.  Firstly, you’re going to slash your options for diversity of candidate profile.  Secondly, you’re going to miss out on opportunities for genuinely new ideas, creativity and positive disruption.   Finally, you’re going to wind up with a team of clones who think, act (and heaven help me) kind of look alike.  No one to rock the boat, no one to be the catalyst, no one to give the function, or your company a competitive edge.  

4.  Stable work history.  This is a tricky one.  Candidates who’ve changed employers every couple of years, or who’ve had interim contract work histories are often bypassed for salaried roles within the HR function.  Reasons I’ve heard over the years include “too jumpy”, “clearly no commitment”, “must have a history of performance issues and/or trouble”, etc etc.   But sometimes there are other factors….maybe the person has been the “trailing spouse” of the main breadwinner whose work demands frequent moves.  Maybe the person has been in an industry that is particularly volatile for short term cost cutting (publicly listed companies in tech, manufacturing and retail immediately spring to mind) so they’ve been impacted by a series of legitimate redundancies.  Maybe the person is an over achiever, who is compelled to move when the work “fires” have been put out and they’ve run out of challenges.   My point is most hiring leaders never stop to consider the benefits that these people could potentially bring.  Like being able to assimilate quickly, to get the job done quickly, to offer a wealth of extra experience simply because they’ve had so much more exposure to processes, what has and hasn’t worked, personalities and politics, etc.   Given that many roles being hired for are only focused on the next 1-2 years of “shopping lists” to be fulfilled, do we really need to be assured of someone’s “ability” to stay for 5+ years?  And given that we’re perfectly accepting of using consultants to gain expertise for delivering new key projects, why not apply that thinking to workers who’ve made frequent employer moves?

5.  Must be able to work the same hours and days as the rest of the HR team.   There is a saying I love but I unfortunately don’t know who to credit it to.  Along the lines of “I’ve spent years honing my craft and gaining expertise so that I can deliver results quickly”.   Simply, if it takes me 3 days to do the work needed, but someone else 5 days because of their lack of experience, why would you want me to drag out my work?  Or worse, repeatedly overload me with work to pick up to slack of non-performing team members?    Also, if the workforce I’ll mostly be supporting are working nights, why would you want me working days?  Or if the workforce I’m mostly supporting are in a different time zone, why wouldn’t you want me to mirror that?  Finally, the profession loses too many people to carer commitments, be it to support young children, elderly parents, sick relatives, etc.  And we lose too many people to early retirement – not because they don’t want to work, but they want to have the time to invest in personal projects (eg: additional education, community support, “once in a lifetime” adventures, etc)   So why aren’t we flexing our work attendance expectations, in order to take advantage of these resources to secure high performance talent to be “on tap” to top up our team capabilities?

The HR profession already has too many average rather than great performers.   Hiring, in all the years I’ve been doing it, has always been competitive, and with all the new challenges facing every part of the profession, I predict hiring is going to get even harder.   The companies who dial into offering the most flexibility to access and accommodate great talent will be the winners.   Is it time to overhaul your offering?