2
Looking for potential in future employees
A Job seeker has his resume reviewed during the San Francisco Hirevent job fair at the Hotel Whitmore on July 12, 2011 in San Francisco, Calif.
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
If you're looking for a job or trying to get ahead in this economy, there's some age-old wisdom that would seem to apply: play up your accomplishments. Seems obvious, but maybe that's in fact not your best plan of attack.
A recent paper from researchers at Stanford and Harvard sets out to show that potential for success is considerably more powerful than the things you've actually achieved.
So why would we ever gamble on potential over proven experience?
"You can think about it a little bit like peoples' love of scratch tickets," says author Michael Norton, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, "where you have a dollar in your pocket, and the dollar in your pocket is great. But if you could get that scratch ticket, you could have $5 million."
It's easy for many employers to think about the potential positive gains. "You don't focus on the fact that the person might be a disaster," he adds. "You focus on the fact that they might be a superstar."
I disagree that this is categorical bad advice. I'm living proof this can work because I completely changed careers last year and won my position heavily on my potential because I didn't have a lengthy, proven track record in the new field. I suspect I was hired because I brought a passion and a fresh approach the others just didn't have. One year later and I'm told I'm out-performing those with more experience. (Coincidentally, I teach people how to get jobs.) The problem I find with this story is that it doesn't go far enough. HOW to market your potential is tricky and requires a lot of thought and practice. They don't take the time to cover that in this story and the details are sketchy. There is a fine line between "intriguing ambiguity" and defensive evasion. I work for hours helping people with these skills and it's much harder than this story makes it sound.
