HR Peep Show

Hidden Gems in Hiring - Transferrable Skillsets

• HR Peep Show • Season 1 • Episode 3

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In this episode of HR Peep Show, hosts AnnE Diemer, Claire Baker, and Krista Lane dive into the intricacies of modern hiring practices. Drawing on their extensive experience, they discuss why and how hiring managers often get it wrong by skipping transferable skills. The conversation explores historical hiring practices, the pitfalls of over-indexing on past roles, and the tangible benefits of hiring based on skillsets. They highlight how this approach can lead to more well-rounded teams, better retention rates, and improved organizational innovation. They also provide actionable advice on updating hiring processes, engaging in meaningful conversations with hiring managers, and the importance of rigorous documentation. Tune in to learn how to make your hiring process more effective and aligned with your company's long-term goals.

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Acknowledgements

This episode appreciates all the contributions made by participants in our live event series, Team TuneUp. We did not end up quoting the stellar group’s wisdom in this episode, but we are especially grateful to all the participants for showing up and discussing this topic.

Team TuneUp brings together People-minded folks who want to nerd out on the big and small of topics we don’t always get to think about in our day jobs: juicy, underappreciated, or sometimes existential questions that affect employees and employers alike.

The HR Peep Show podcast is produced by Krista Lane and hosted by Claire Baker, AnnE Diemer, and Krista Lane. This episode was edited by AnnE Diemer and Krista Lane. Theme music was composed for the Royalty Free Music Library by Rik Pfenninger. 

You can email us with feedback, questions, or topic ideas at team@hrpeepshow.com. If you’d like the chance to contribute to a future episode, we encourage you to join our next Team TuneUp event. You can find out more at hrpeepshow.com.

We also thank our friends who listened to early takes of episode 1 and gave feedback, and those we spoke to about making a podcast— especially Kamrin Klauschie, Kevin Landucci, and Jenna Lane for their invaluable expertise, advice, and encouragement.


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A Disclaimer

While we hope you’ll take away useful ideas that help your careers and/or workplaces by listening, what we share in this podcast should not be construed as advice specific to your situation. But, feel free to consult with us!


Additional Reading

Materials we recommend or referenced, relevant to this episode:


Transcript

KRISTA LANE: Welcome to HR Peep Show, where we pull back the curtain of life in human resources in the United States.

ANNe DIEMER: I'm AnnE Diemer.

CLAIRE BAKER: I'm Claire Baker.

KRISTA: I'm Krista Lane, and we are your hosts. We may be new to podcasting, but not when it comes to People work. We are each fractional consultants at the intersection of People and Operations with a collective several decades of experience, both in-house and consulting under our belts.

Today we're talking about hiring, how it's been done historically, how we encourage leaders to update their processes and how candidates can tell their stories about relevant previous experience.

AnnE, I know that you have hired a lot, you and I have both hired a lot, and have supported orgs in how they think about hiring. Why are we here today? What is it about hiring that hiring managers are getting wrong?


PART 1

ANNe: Hiring can be better. We don't have to be doing it the way we've always done it. I think it's really tempting for hiring managers to hire someone that has done that role before. And I get why that's appealing because you think they can just jump in Day One and the job is gonna be so clear to them.

But that's actually not usually how it works because no matter what job someone's held before, they still have to onboard when they join. They still have to learn the way that you and your team and your org do things. So since your new hire's gonna be learning anyway, you don't need someone who knows everything about how to do the job on day one.

You don't need someone who's done this exact role before. Instead, I try to encourage hiring managers to hire for skills that are going to, one, help them learn on day one and two that's gonna carry them throughout their time in this role. And my other hot take is I think if you hire someone who's already done the role before.

They might get bored sooner than another person would. So my proposal for hiring is that hiring managers look forward, not back. You wanna think about what the candidates are gonna do next, not just what job titles they've held before.

KRISTA: It doesn't mean that we can't hire specialist roles.

ANNe: Totally. The main thing I'm trying to emphasize is that we're not just interviewing for job titles.

KRISTA: Yeah, I would say that like, our industry probably overindexes on hiring for people who've done a role before…

ANNe: Yeah.

KRISTA: In more places than is necessary for that to be a criteria.

CLAIRE: And like a lot of times if you get somebody who's done a role before in a lot of roles, not every role, but they're bringing in preconceived habits and things that are from a different org that actually may not apply in your org. And unlearning those settings is difficult. And so it can be hard to, sometimes you have to think about what skills are even transferable across the same job title, but in different companies.

KRISTA: I'm reading this book called Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein. So far what I've been really struck by is that the research he's showing says experience often increases confidence, but does not necessarily increase skill.

And that the type of role really matters for whether you actually need somebody with experience versus roles where that doesn't matter or won't make a difference, or in some cases could be worse than the alternative, to Claire's point. Because the roles where experience is really beneficial are roles that have patterns, that have predictable outcomes, and that you can absolutely be a specialist in and be really good at it and your experience will contribute to greater skill.

There's an example of a firefighter who is a great firefighter but has only ever done residential homes, because that's where they've been stationed for a while. And then they moved to a city with skyscrapers and a fire in a skyscraper is handled very differently and none of their experience mattered or helped in treating that fire.

ANNe: And that comes to like what we wanna be talking about today, which is hiring for skill sets. If someone's had the job title before and they have the skill sets, great. But I think the firefighter one is a great example because they've had the title before, but firefighting in different contexts is very different.

So they might not have those skill sets. So if you're just flipping through resumes trying to get through it really fast, and you're like: been a firefighter, not been a firefighter. You're gonna move forward with a candidate who may not actually be a fit, even though they have the same job title. So we're not necessarily saying job titles don't matter, we're just saying skill sets matter more.

But I wanna, like, zoom out a little bit and think about why we've been doing it this way first, just so we can understand where we are before we understand where we're going. So I'm curious, why do you all think that orgs and hiring managers insist on hiring someone who has done the job before? Where is this coming from?

CLAIRE: My very cynical take is that it is easier to scan a resume.

KRISTA: Yeah. Easier to scan a resume. I, I think in general, a lot of hiring managers think that it's easier to hire someone who's done the role before. Sometimes that is because they've never done the role themselves or are not familiar with that role themselves. And in a startup situation where you're making your first hires in certain departments and roles, that's understandable, but that doesn't mean that you'll get the best hire for that.

ANNe: Yeah, we don't wanna rule out hiring someone who's had the job title before. It's just like, that can't be the only thing. And I agree with what Claire said, and I agree with what you said, that it comes from people just trying to speed through the application part of the process. Because you have 300 applications, it feels really overwhelming and you just need a way to get through it faster. 

And it feels like, okay, I could just narrow it down to this in the same way that when they're hiring new grads or interns, it's like, well, they went to Harvard, move them forward and then say maybe they went to Scripps, which is where I went to school, and it's like, I don't know that school. We don't need to move her forward. 

It's just a shortcut. It's just something that someone's trying to find something to make it a little bit easier to make a decision to move forward. But I would argue that assessing for skillsets is an easy enough way to do it. As long as people are intentional about it and they're really thinking about it. It requires a little bit of thought, but I don't think it's that much harder than seeing if someone went to Harvard. I think it's doable.

KRISTA: It just puts a little bit more work up front.

ANNe: Yes, definitely work up front. I feel like that's a lot of what we're gonna be talking about today. And we've kind of addressed this, but let's make it explicit. How is it holding folks back when they are only interested in talking to someone who's had the job title before? Who are they missing and who are they moving forward with?

KRISTA: So I think first of all, we're missing perspectives that you don't even know you're missing. That can be hugely valuable to innovation, which is why it's so important to be intentional about seeking new perspectives wherever they might come from.

CLAIRE: If we go back to Krista's earlier thing about pattern matching. I think that we assume that experience is gonna let you pattern match to the point where you're gonna have better judgment and make better decisions.

And, there, there may be other skills that people will be better in the type of judgment that you need. And so when we're thinking about, like, what types of skills you actually need for a role, it's better to pull back from title and think about the types of decisions this role will have to make. And do they have the type of experience that will be able to pattern-match because the patterns of a controller in one company to the next may be pretty much the same because Excel is Excel is Excel.

But the ability to pattern-match, for example, in marketing may actually not be transferable from one company to the next. It has to do with, like, your brand's voice and your campaign and all these subjective factors that vary a lot more between different companies.

And so knowing is this role something like a controller that we can rely on experience being transferable from one company to the next, from one situation to the next. Or is this going to be more like a subjective type role? In which case, like, let's pull back and think about the types of decisions that this person is gonna be making and do they have the experience behind them to be able to pattern-match and have that judgment.

KRISTA: Especially in startups, so many companies are like, we're gonna be different and we're gonna disrupt and we're gonna do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then their hiring process or how they do their company operations in general is just all of the bland copy and pasted stuff that every other company is doing.

And I think in order to be truly innovative, you have to also think differently or at least critically about how you do every process, including hiring.

ANNe: It leads me to my next question. Exactly. How do we start having that conversation? I know how we start having it with the partners that we're working with. They tended to come to us because they wanna do hiring differently. But if someone's listening to this right now and is thinking, wow, I'd really like my team to think about hiring this way. How do they start that conversation? What does that look like?

KRISTA: A lot of our work is oriented around problem solving and most of the time when they've come to us and are ready to do hiring differently, it's because they've struggled in some way or another with some aspect of their hiring process.

Claire and I met in an engagement where a company she was working at at the time, came to me with a candidate quality problem, or at least what they thought was a candidate quality problem. I, and you know, there was other stuff going on and we worked it out and figured out a different way to think about their hiring process.

ANNe: So often we're blaming the candidates. “Oh, we haven't, we haven't hired for this role 'cause we just haven't had enough good candidates.” I have such a hard time with that because there's a million bajillion candidates out there. There's a good candidate in there. Your process hasn't identified them.

I feel like this part of the conversation is a really good lead into what I wanna talk about next, which is how to have these conversations with leaders about changing the process. Why do we have these conversations? What does it look like to have these conversations?

And what does it look like to actually update the process? What do we need to do? Krista, I know you thought about hiring for skill sets a lot, and you've also done it. You've hired from, I'll say a quote unquote, you know, non-traditional backgrounds. Can you tell us about what that process was like?

KRISTA: At the time that I was doing this most often, I was running an internship program where I was the recruiter who was recruiting successful interns to full-time employment. This was in an engineering organization. We started with university interns and that was going really well.

And then it was also a really exciting time for… bootcamps we're like peaking around this time. And, you know, we were like, well, let's look at bootcamps too and expand our hiring pool that way. But we realized pretty quickly that they had a very different experience profile than university interns.

Like we couldn't just copy and paste the university program into something that would work well for, you know, people in bootcamp. Hiring managers, they had sort of assumed that the bootcamp group were, like not prepared.

And part of that was that our process was designed and oriented around questions that were very, CS degree focused. So a computer science degree was not required for this. But a lot of our interview questions were designed around that assumption. 

And so we had to kind of rethink, like, how are we even assessing these candidates, given the skill profile that we're seeing because they're knocking it outta the park in all the practical exercises in everything that has to do with actually showing their skill. But they are completely deer-in-headlights when it comes to asking about “how does it work on the backend” and “how does it all get to the point where you're building this cool app?” Which is, you know, comes from more of the academic theory side.

But like once we were like, oh, maybe they need different information in their onboarding to get everybody on the same page.

We just need to fill different gaps. The university interns still need that “how to work at a company” type knowledge and, you know, maybe the bootcampers need a little bit more of something else. Ultimately once we realized that it wasn't actually a skill gap, that it was just, like differences that we were talking about, hiring managers seemed a lot more open to considering them, and especially because we made as many accommodations as we could to make hiring managers not have to do as much work around that.

So we're like, okay, like let's give you better documentation around this. Let's give you different guidance. So you're not just saying like, “oh, well they can't answer, this binary algorithm question or whatever, then therefore they are not qualified.”

CLAIRE: So wait, talk more about that. Like how did you teach them what this profile looks like and how did you sort of differentiate that and pick that apart.

KRISTA: It was a lot of experimentation. So, I really believe in treating a hiring process like a product function. And by that I mean we set up pilots, we brainstormed with hiring managers and said, Hey, we're noticing some differences.

This source of candidate is not passing our interviews at the same rate that we expected them to based on how other candidates have performed. Why do we think that might be, and what do you think we could try differently about it? We spoke with the bootcamps themselves, the instructors and the program directors who gave us really interesting ideas to try.

And through that experimentation, we basically were like, let's try this for a few months. In parallel, let's do, some side by side studies. And then let's actually borrow our data science team to analyze some of the results and do a little bit of like, internal analysis, to test our hypotheses.

Um, and that's really when we leaned on like, oh, the pattern we're noticing from this type of candidate is a higher incidence of practical skill. And a lower incidence of (teachable) knowledge. Those are easy to fill gaps. 

And the practical skill is honestly harder to find, so maybe this profile of candidate is actually something we want more of on our team. I think ultimately, like it actually worked out really well to have both because Bootcampers performed better in some areas and not as well in others. Just on totally different things, which I think made for more well-rounded teams at least.

ANNe: I think one of my takeaways from hearing this story is that what we're suggesting isn't going to be effortless. We are suggesting a change to how hiring has been done. And it sounds like what you did in this role is you had to have a lot of hard conversations. You had to look at a lot of data. You had to rigorously consider what you were doing and not just continuing to do it the same way.

And I think that is something I want hiring managers to sit with as they change hiring processes. For some reason there is a stereotype that people work should be easy and it should be straightforward, but I don't think that's necessarily true. I think people work should be rigorous

But I think the other thing that I'm hearing from your story is that it was worth it for creating really well-rounded teams when you were just relying on the pipeline from university students, you were getting a lot of, you know, one type.

And I say that pretty generously. One type of student. But then when you, when you started bringing in bootcamp folks. That allowed you to bring in folks who have practical work experience and that's gonna change the dynamic on teams. Yeah. They might not know all of the algorithms or understand the, now I'm trying to speak engineer and I don't speak engineer, so I'm not gonna do that.

They might not have all of those pieces, but they know how to work on a team. They know how to get shit done. So I feel like that is one of the benefits coming from the work that you did to think about hiring processes differently is ultimately you get a more well-rounded team and that hopefully results in better products.

KRISTA: Yeah, I don't, um, I don't, I don't I, I don't like to brag, and I, and I, and I…

ANNe: Do itttt.

KRISTA: I, I feel better about this knowing that it was not just me, you know, doing this. Obviously there were a lot of people that had to be on board to make this possible. 

But, you know, we called it an internship program. Really, it was an internship and an apprenticeship program side by side, and anybody with previous work experience was really an apprentice.

But, uh, what was real, a really cool outcome that we didn't see immediately, that we didn't anticipate , is that from interns who converted? That population of people who stayed at the company stayed longer, like probably 25% longer than the average tenure, which was already pretty high at that company, but was much better among that population and they got promoted faster.

And they were the single largest source of managers at the company, um, outpacing even a recruiter dedicated to filling management roles.

ANNe: Okay. That's pretty compelling to me. if I put in this rigorous hiring process, if I hire for transferable skillset, I get to keep people longer. They get promoted faster, they do better work. I'm convinced. Is it always gonna work like that? No, probably not. But we talk about what do we need to say to our leaders to get them on board to doing something a little bit differently– that's a pretty compelling argument.

KRISTA: Well, and part of why I hesitated to brag about it so much is that like, that wasn't the goal. Like we didn't set that as a KPI or whatever.

And honestly, it took three years to like, feel like it was a reasonable hypothesis. And it took five years to really definitively sink it in. Which I understand for a lot of smaller companies is a big investment of time at least to see the numbers and like, see the data.

But a lot of people, especially in startups, you gotta run on vibes. You gotta run on how individual cases work or don't work, which is less of an exact science than some of this stuff. And you're never gonna get a reasonable data sample from just a couple of years in a startup, so there's a little bit of faith that has to go into it.

[00:19:08]

ANNe: And I think there are more benefits than just thinking long term. I think thinking about retention, thinking about promotions, I think all of that's really important, but I think there's actually other benefits to hiring with skillset in mind rather than just the long term ones.

There's short term things that you're going to see too, whether it's a better interviewing process, like when candidates are interviewing and they don't just have to, in every single interview, reiterate what their experience is.

But they can really put themselves in the mindset of the role they're going to be taking on. I think that's a better experience for candidates. I think it's a better experience for interviewers because they know how to evaluate it if you're not just saying like. Hey, evaluate if this person has done this job before, but instead you're saying, can you tell me if this person really understands stakeholder engagement? That's a completely different conversation, and they're gonna be able to get so much more out of that interview than just, well, yeah, they did it before check. What are some other benefits that we see when folks focus on hiring for skill sets rather than just hiring for previous experience?

CLAIRE: You get like bonus talents that you never would've thought to look for. And it doesn't make sense to screen for, but once you get that person in the door, they're amazing. And, and you can't live without them. And I think every person has that like spiky skill in their repertoire, that is just like outside their resume, outside the things you think to look for.

But like people, everybody that works with them loves it. And if you are just finding somebody that like, as long as they're B-plus or better at whatever you're testing, but has some of these other skills, then you just wind up having so many great things on your team that you could never hire for in the first place.

ANNe: Absolutely you get more well-rounded teams. To Krista's point earlier, you get, if you, if your team has a lot of skill A. Then maybe that's not what we're interviewing for. When we bring on this new team member, maybe we need a little bit more skill B showing up to be filling in those gaps a little bit more.

And so that's where hiring for skillset can come in. Because there's a lot of niche areas. Like if we're just thinking about HR, because that's what I go to, 'cause I know those roles the best. Let's say you've got an HR team that is really good at compliance, not so great at the relationship building stuff. You're adding onto that team, I'm probably gonna wanna bring in some of that other skillset. And so when I'm looking at people's resumes, I'm not just looking for, have they been an HR manager? I'm gonna be looking for folks who have specific relationship management skill sets who have coaching abilities, because that's gonna fill in what the team doesn't already have.

KRISTA: Yeah, like product managers are famously really different in every context, and I feel like that's a really hard role for a lot of recruiters to hire for because every company even sometimes every team wants something different out of their product managers.

Like the actual job itself might seem really different depending on company to company. Which is why it's so important to be really articulate about what it is that you're looking for. Like what does it mean at this company? So when you have a really sharp interview process, that starts with a great job description or maybe even earlier than that, with a great relationship with your hiring manager, you build a good process that actually assesses those skills.

You not only feel more confident in your hiring decision, you also onboard much faster and more effectively. So that means they can actually hit the ground running a lot faster than they would otherwise.

ANNe: Absolutely. So my next question. That I was gonna ask because I, I sort of feel like we've already answered, but I'm going to ask it anyway. What are we saying to people who ask, why would we change the hiring process? Why do we need to improve on what's working?

KRISTA: I mean… is it really working?

CLAIRE: I usually wait until there has been a really painful mishire and we are now back filling that position again, and I try to find a diplomatic way to say, how's that working for you?

ANNe: I, I agree with this, but I think my other thing is like, I don't want us to wait for a mishire. I understand why you're saying that, but y'all, trust Claire the first time. Trust Krista the first time,

KRISTA: I mean, yeah, but you know, you gotta build trust. You gotta earn it. And sometimes that doesn't always happen before something bad happens. So I get it. And also sometimes you need to let something break for that problem to be apparent to everybody else.

Like I think we accept the cost of recruiting as a huge expense on the books, but if we did better hiring from the beginning, we wouldn't need to be spending so much on recruiting. It would be a lot cheaper. But we've accepted that cost and so we don't think about it as an area that is a problem or needs improvement.

ANNe: And it's part of innovating and building your company and trying to do more, and we wanna do it in so many other aspects. We don't want our product team to be chill and just accept like, ah, it's good enough.

We want them to keep pushing forward. I want folks to do that with People work, too.

KRISTA: I think it's like a complacency thing. We, we get complacent that if we can meet certain hiring needs, whether we have expended additional resources to meet them, that we don't need to rethink how. We met those needs or how we meet future needs. because maybe what worked before isn't what's gonna work next.

Sometimes that's low hanging fruit that we can just pick and say, oh, we should try this differently. And that would be a really easy switch. Sometimes it's a more rigorous change, but if you've integrated the idea of change and revisiting processes on a regular basis, it is not so painful; it becomes the accepted thing and that becomes the accepted pain that is actually moving you forward, [versus] the accepted pain of not doing it optimally.

What would a new hiring process look like? How would we help hiring managers rethink a hiring process in a way that lets them be open to these new ideas?


PART 2

[00:25:44] 

ANNe: There's a lot of answers to this question because it depends on the role, it depends on so many things. But if I had to give, like, a short TL;DR answer, I would say, ask why three to five times and see where that gets you.

And what I mean by that is, let's say I'm a recruiter, and… you know what, we're gonna play this out and I'm gonna show how pretending like you're an 8-year-old asking why a bunch of times can actually be helpful. Krista, will you be my hiring manager?

KRISTA: Oh, sure.

ANNe: Okay. What role are you hiring for?

KRISTA: Emoji designer.

ANNe: Okay. We're hiring an emoji designer, so I'm the recruiter and I'm helping you build out a job description. Krista, tell me what you're looking for in this emoji designer.

KRISTA: I want the emoji designers from Apple.

ANNe: Wow, that's so specific. Why?

KRISTA: Because they're obviously really good at it. Everybody uses them on their phone.

ANNe: Cool. Okay, so your hiring manager is telling you, I wanna hire an emoji designer from Apple, and I'm saying, why?

And they're saying, well, because they're really good at it. Why do you think they're really good at it?

KRISTA: because their emojis have not been replaced and are widely used, so they have a lot of impact in their industry.

ANNe: I only had to ask why three times to get to that answer where Krista told me she's not really just looking for someone from Apple. She's looking for someone who has designed emojis for a wide group of people. That has been used fairly often and a lot of intention went into the process. So she started off by telling me, I wanna hire someone from Apple, but I asked why a couple times and I got an actual skill that she's looking for.

She wants someone who has designed emojis for a wide audience. That's something I can work with. That's something we can interview for. That's something I can put into a job description, and that's gonna gimme a lot more candidates than just trying to steal from Apple.

CLAIRE: That sounds like somebody who's had the title before, though.

KRISTA: This is true. I bet there are a lot of really talented graphic designers out there, or some other type of designer, who have had wide impact with their work, and maybe that is a more general criteria.

ANNe: And I think even more than that, I maybe I could have asked why. Again, thanks for calling that out, Claire. Why does it have to be an emoji designer? Could it be someone who has, have you ever thought about who designs public transportation maps?

CLAIRE: All the time!

ANNe: All the time. Those folks are so good at visualizing things, and like, what would they do with an emoji? I would love to see their take on an emoji or someone who designs signs that tell you where the bathrooms are. Someone who designs, like there's so many different types of designers. You're right. We don't even need to just stick with someone who has done emoji designs before. 

Someone who thinks about designing for wide audiences. That opens it up even more. You can get so many interesting backgrounds from that. We have been able to widen who we're looking for so much just by asking why a couple of times.

So we asked, what does this new hiring process look like? It looks like that. It looks like having these weird conversations that we just had, thinking outside the box a little bit and generating a job description that doesn't describe one stereotype of a person. It describes skillsets that you need that can set this person in this role up for success.

KRISTA: I love that.

ANNe: And I think it's more than that too. I think it's, that's just the beginning of the conversation, I think is what I'm trying to say. Krista and I are doing one of these with a partner right now, and the thing that we really warn people upfront is there's going to be more work at the beginning of this process than you are used to. 

A lot of people think they can just post a job description, they're gonna start getting the candidates in and like, let's get this rolling. It's pretty rigorous what we make folks do before a job description is even posted to the internet. Krista, can you give us a high level of what we help folks go through to really make them feel set up for success in their hiring process that focuses on hiring for skill sets?

KRISTA: Yeah, we're with a partner on it. It's not just demanding a bunch of things from them. So let's think about: What does this role actually look like? What does the day-to-day look like? What are they gonna be doing? What do they need to be great at when they walk in the door? What do you think they can learn on the job? What do you think the first six months looks like? What do you think the first year looks like?

You know, thinking in different angles to think about what this role really is and what they're looking for out of it.

Sometimes that's also thinking a bit about what else, what other skill sets do we need to compliment on the team? So what is already a really strong skillset represented on a team and what might be missing or less well represented on a team. That doesn't necessarily mean that we would exclude or include someone otherwise, but it's good to know that maybe between two equally qualified candidates, if one, you know, who is scored similarly on their rubric, maybe they're scoring in different areas and maybe it's more important that we have this skillset where someone else has a more complimentary skillset to the rest of the team.

ANNe: And I think what that really thoughtful process does is it. Helps us see the skill sets that will really be needed when we go through the exercise of what will this person be doing in six months? We're thinking of things we might not have been thinking of otherwise. And then we take all of those and we put them into our rubrics.

We say, okay, they're gonna need to be able to do this, this, this, this, and that all came from the job description. The rubric is what we use to come up with the interview questions. The interview questions are what we use to evaluate the candidates and that's how we're able to make a hire that fits the team's needs rather than just checking a box, putting a butt in the seat from someone who's had the job title before. 

We're seeing a lot more of that nuance in the process. And if you've already written your three months, six month, whatever, you've got an onboarding plan ready to go too. You know how you're gonna do some performance management. You are making your life so much smoother down the road by doing a little bit of work upfront.


PART 3

[00:32:19] 

KRISTA: Okay, so fun fact, Claire, AnnE and I all came from different roles. We all came from different backgrounds, both in our careers and lives in general. And we somehow all ended up in a similar place. Pretty much anybody in HR will tell you that they didn't go to HR school.

So, you know, I thought it would be fun if we think about a little game, like how would we answer the interview question, thinking of an example from our previous jobs.

What is a key skill you employed in your previous role that you think could be relevant to this other role? Why don't we start off with a random role and see how it goes. AnnE, how would you apply your previous experience to a role as a modern art gallery salesperson?

ANNe: Okay, so in my previous life I was a zookeeper and I think that experience is really relevant to being a modern art gallery salesperson because in that role I learned a lot about thorough documentation. And when I'm selling art, I wanna be able to keep track of all the specific details of that piece of art, who made it, when it was made, what materials it used, why buyers are interested in it, et cetera.

And I wanna thoroughly document that so that way if there's multiple modern art gallery salespeople, they have that information. If a buyer came on Thursday and they're working on Friday, they have access to it. And I think documentation is really important for communicating with your colleagues. And I learned that through being a zookeeper, which I know doesn't feel very relevant to being a modern art gallery salesperson, but we had to document what was happening with the animals, so then when we handed them off the next day to the other keepers, they'd be up to date on all the information. And you wanna include information that’s relevant, but not too many details 'cause they gotta be able to skim it. So that's something that really surprised me that I learned in my zookeeper experience that I still use in HR and maybe would use in modern art galleries.

KRISTA: Claire, how about you? What did your previous role teach you about modern art gallery selling?

CLAIRE: Well, I come from a fitness background and so I was a personal trainer, which is a ton of sales. And the thing that they tell about sales is it doesn't really matter what you're selling because sales skills are transferable. And so in personal training, you really have to get to know the prospect.

You have to learn about their interests, see how they move, pick up on nonverbal signals. But also make sure that the things that you're showing them are gonna be the things that are gonna emotionally resonate most to them. These are also generally pretty high income people [who] tend to be pretty smart, pretty effective people, and so the less sophisticated sales tactics aren't always going to work with them.

And I think that with something that is as subjective as modern art, you wanna understand these people's tastes and what motivates them and show them the pieces that are going to speak most to them. And, I think that these are many of the same people that we are selling to, and I would rely heavily on my fitness experience in this role.

ANNe: I love that. Yes. All right, Krista, your turn. How are you using your previous quote, unquote irrelevant experience to become a modern art gallery salesperson?

[00:36:06] 

KRISTA: Okay. So I used to be a stage manager. This is a person who is working backstage both before a production actually opens and during the production itself. In that role, I often needed to manage the egos of highly creative diva types, and find a middle ground among both them and external constraints,, like budgets or other realities of the performance venue, and the many different creative voices involved in producing a performance.

That could include making sure that everyone feels heard, some problem solving, a lot of problem solving, to AnnE's point earlier about zookeeping, documenting everyone's work rigorously.

Um, because a lot of creative types are not known for documenting their work very well, or at least not in a standardized way that everyone else on the team can interpret. And generally keeping things moving forward. In a modern art gallery, I imagine that this skillset could be really useful with understanding the needs of the different stakeholders, the creative interests of the customer, as well as the goals of the gallery itself.

We might need to create and maintain some effective documentation, both for available and upcoming inventory. And we gotta problem solve a little bit. Like maybe there's two competing customers who are really interested in a specific piece. You know, how do we negotiate meeting both customer's needs with the inventory available? 

How did I do, Claire or AnnE? Would you hire me?

ANNe: I would always hire a stage manager for pretty much any role. So yes, I'm gonna hire you.

CLAIRE: I actually sat next to a woman on the plane who was an actor and her husband was an actor for like most of their adult lives. And, I was talking about you, Krista, and she was like, yes, every time I need an operational role, I will hire the stage manager every single time.

ANNe: I don't care what the role is, if it's modern art gallery sales person or something else. I'm hiring a stage manager. I'm hiring a barista. I'm probably hiring an elementary school teacher.

KRISTA: Now that I've heard about you, I'm also hiring every zookeeper. I know you're the only one I know so far, but you know, if I meet another one…

ANNe: What we're trying to do with these examples is a bit tongue in cheek. Yes. But we're trying to show that you can use your irrelevant skillset to interview for whatever role because skillsets overlap. They transfer between roles, so even if you don't have the exact same title, it's about how you tell the story. 

Did we joke around with our stories a little bit? Yes. But the point is, we wanna encourage candidates to think broadly about their experience and tell their story, because you do have relevant skill sets to bring to a role. Not every role, but a lot of the roles.

KRISTA: We don't really know anything about modern art gallery salespeople . Um, but I'm sure with a job description we could study it and come up with something a little bit more intelligent.

CLAIRE: I'm also gonna throw out there. That our answers weren't particularly polished. They didn't, like, follow the STAR method. But I think that at least when I've been in the interviewer position, when somebody is especially polished, I don't feel like I get any signal on what it's like to work with them.

People should give themselves permission to be more of themselves and be more thoughtful and be a little bit less polished; and rather than answering the question the way that ChatGPT would, actually engage in a conversation with the other person. Because I think when you go in weird, different directions, those are the things that stick with the interviewer more than when you give the answer that sounds exactly like the last five people they interviewed.

ANNe: One of the takeaways we really want folks to have from this conversation is business practices are always improving. Technology is always improving. So we can do the same with our hiring practices, with our People practices, [we] can make 'em better. 

It's not going to be effortless. It's going to take effort just like any business process that you're working on, but it's worth it, whether it's because you're creating more well-rounded teams or improving retention within your organization, or just making a better hiring process for candidates and really setting them up for success when they come into their role.

There's so many benefits from hiring based on skill sets rather than just trying to get a butt in a seat based off of a job title someone has had previously.

KRISTA: That's it for today's episode of HR Peep Show with your hosts, Claire Baker, AnnE Diemer, and me, Krista Lane. Thank you for listening and stay tuned for future episodes covering both hot takes and practical advice to build sustainable people-driven companies. To view transcripts and full credits or find out more about us, go to hrpeepshow.com. ​

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