Why an 80% right candidate is better than the ‘perfect’ hire

It is easy to see why employers value top talents.  

As Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once said: “Someone who is exceptional in their role is not just a little better than someone who is pretty good. They are 100 times better.”

Great players bring multiplicative abilities and not just additive competence to the table.

Some recruiters even have a name for the perfect hire — "the purple squirrel”.

But have you ever seen a purple squirrel? The reality is that the perfect hire, much like the purple squirrel, doesn’t exist.

After all, a company can only hire what’s available on the market, and even if the best is available, the person may not be suitable for the company.

Yet employers like to demand that their recruiters give the candidate tree another shake. Ironically this hurts them, even though they may not realise it.

This desire to hire a perfect candidate is likely to be even more prevalent now, given how the job market has been ravaged by Covid-19 and there are likely more job seekers than jobs available.

To find the perfect hire, some companies design overly complex interviews and a long list of selection criteria. So, they inadvertently disqualify many viable candidates.

These candidates may not be from the best schools or the coolest companies, but they can get the job done and more.

Also, great candidates are those who want to learn new stuff. What are they going to learn if they are already perfect for the job?

When hiring managers understand that the perfect hire doesn’t exist, they will realise that passing up on a talented candidate who meets most, but not all, of the job requirements, is not a good decision.

So how about this as a hiring mantra?  If you find a candidate that can do 80 per cent of the job, has the right attitude, has high learning agility, make an offer before someone beats you to it.  

WHAT DOES AN 80 PER CENT RIGHT CANDIDATE LOOK LIKE?

Let me recount an experience I had when I worked for General Electric (GE).

Besides campus recruitment at some of the best business schools in the world including Harvard, London School of Economics and Tsinghua University, it also recruited at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

Many of its graduates were from working-class families.

GE hired one of its graduates, John, into its famed financial management programme, which has been around for over 100 years.

At the end of the programme, John worked for GE Aircraft Engines and quickly rose to become its finance manager. But his heart was not in finance — it was in people development. So he applied for a role in my department — corporate leadership development.

During the interview, I told him that GE’s Southeast Asia boss loved his work and hoped he stayed in finance, where the boss will champion his career.

John’s response was along the lines of: “It’s not enough to be great at something. I need to love it too. I love growing people.”  

So even though he had never conducted even one training class, had never done any curriculum design, never facilitated a single leadership forum, I hired him as GE’s Southeast Asia leadership development head.

Why? Because although he ticked only 80 per cent of the hiring boxes, he possessed 100 per cent of the three traits we value in GE: Integrity, passion and adaptability.

INTEGRITY

What do you do if you have to pick between a high performer with questionable integrity or an average performer with integrity?

For me, it's a no brainer. Because when you have integrity, you can be trusted to keep commitments and serve the interest of a bigger cause.

On the other hand, a high performer who is driven primarily by self-interest can destroy a team, even an entire company.  

Warren Buffett put it eloquently when he explained why he looks for those with integrity, intelligence and energy: “If you don't have the first, the other two will kill you.”

PASSION

It is an innate quality that can’t be bought or taught. But find someone who is passionate about the company and they will likely be more successful than others who go to work for a pay cheque.

Don't get me wrong — you need skills, but oftentimes the person with passion is a better bet than the one with the right skills set. They don’t just want to do a job; they want to serve a greater purpose.  

What did Frederick Nietzsche teach us? “He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how.”

ADAPTABILITY

Employers tend to favour candidates with relevant work experience so they can "hit the ground running".  

Yet a disruptive environment today can shorten the shelf-life of skills and experiences dramatically.

So, people who can adapt to a changing environment are gold. How do you know if a person is adaptable?  Look for qualities such as an ability to deal with ambiguity, humility and a hunger to learn, experiment and take risks.

I remembered giving John detailed instructions for his first leadership training session.

He did good — but not great.

But he improved in his second, third and fourth sessions. Soon he was getting better class assessment scores than me. In less than two years, he was outgrowing his role and was promoted to lead the GE Financial Management Programme in Asia.

Today, he is the CEO and co-founder of an award-winning leadership development organisation.

People can learn almost anything. But you can’t teach integrity, passion or adaptability.

If you hire people just because they are from the right schools or have a pedigree resume or are “perfect” because they check all of today’s boxes, then they will work — for your money and be effective for today’s challenges.

But if you hire people with integrity, who believe what you believe and will give everything they have to a larger cause, then you are growing an unstoppable force for today and tomorrow.

In a Covid-19 world, companies which treat job candidates fairly, offering equitable terms, will add a new shine to their employer brand.

In these uncertain times, having integrity, passion and adaptability is an edge for both employers and employees.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

David Wee was formerly head of GE’s Leadership Development in Asia Pacific, Johnson & Johnson’s Chief Learning Officer and the Chief Talent Officer for the Sinar Mas Group. He currently serves as an advisory board member at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Complex Choices and as a council advisor for Avanz.