Cultural Hiring Risks

Last week we discussed the risks associated with making hiring decisions based exclusively on company culture. 

If your business lacks a diversity of ability and thought, it will struggle to grow and develop. 

This week, let’s dive into a few of these risks to see them in action. 

Skills diversity

You will always need people who are good at the things that you are bad at doing. 

No one person, including yourself, can do all the things. Be realistic about what you and everyone on your team struggle to achieve. Then hire the people who are not just good at those things, but enjoy those things. 

I assisted a small business with a salesforce of three to define their newest sales role. Everybody on the team was a relationship salesperson: great at connecting and deepening relationships with prospects; terrible at cold calling and negotiating. 

These relationships were their strength and we did not want to lose any of that. But if we could add the skills that would bring a faster-growing pipeline and even faster closing sales, then we really would be building a successful sales team. 

We looked for somebody who had all the skills the current team lacked. They had to learn the new person’s way, and the new hire had to learn theirs, but when they worked together, the results were there. 

Opinions diversity

Not everybody you sell to and serve thinks in the same way. 

To cater to all the different opinions amongst your clients, it will behoove you to encourage different opinions amongst your employees. 

The decisions you make about your product, your service, your customer experience, and more must be challenged, reconsidered, and developed for your audience as a whole. Diverse opinions will ensure that happens. 

Continuing my previous example, the new sales hire was all about fast conversions, which made the rest of the sales team uncomfortable. But when they matched their use of language and approach, to his communication channel ideas, suddenly they were tapping into a whole new market. 

Ideas diversity

You want diverse opinions about what you are doing. 

And you also want diverse ideas about what else to do. 

A successful business is one that always fosters new challenges and new projects, allowing people to play to their strengths and test their projects. 

Innovation comes from these sorts of tests, some of which will work better than others. Have people in your business that will want to spearhead different types of projects, and ensure they are each learning from other people’s experience.