Hiring People, Not Roles: Tailoring Positions for Strengths, Passions and Abilities
This blog is part three in a series. Check out part one here and part two here.
In our previous installments of this series, we covered why our training should be a continuous focus and how to see potential in candidates beyond credentials. A final important focus in the mission to “hire people, not roles” is understanding how positions can be tailored over time to fit the team members’ abilities and strengths.
Extend your training period
Back in part one of this series we covered the benefits of considering an employee’s first year a training period. This gives you a chance to really immerse your new team members in organizational culture and bring them up to speed on needed skill sets. This extended training period also presents an opportunity to get to know your employee’s strengths and passions. What part of the work are they really drawn to? We all have portions of our job that aren’t our favorite (paperwork is rarely exciting to anyone) and just have to be done. Can you make more room in the role for what the team member is really enjoying? Is there a skill set they have that wasn’t necessarily required for the role but is already proving valuable during the training period? See how you can flex their job description to fit their passions while ensuring required tasks still get done.
Rethink your annual reviews
Annual reviews are often a source of anxiety for employees; many organizations inadvertently position reviews as an “accounting of success and failures” that puts a lot of pressure on them. Every project that was slightly off timeline or budget becomes a potential stress point they will need to explain and justify again, after they likely did when the event happened. But what if you leveraged your reviews to not only discuss how successful an employee has been, but include how well their job description and role has been aligning with what they love to do? Where has their role changed and was that a positive for them? Did they discover a new skill this year that they can utilize more with a few adjustments to their daily activities? Job descriptions don’t have to remain static when shifts may be mutually beneficial and agreed upon.
Consider your business needs creatively
As you reflect on what an individual employee is passionate about and skilled in, map out what your current business needs are. How have these changed recently? Have you been considering hiring for a new reporting role, when one of your junior project controllers is showing interest in reporting? Could their role be flexed to include those type of tasks? While you want to avoid creating a role for someone that is essentially a “jack of all trades,” there is no reason an employee with the right skills and drive can’t learn and take on tasks that weren’t part of their original role. Perhaps you can have your junior controller take on more reporting and shift some of their current responsibilities into a different role for a new hire. Individuals with skills in seemingly distant areas of the organization can often have new, creative ways of thinking that can benefit the entire team.
Moving from rigid job descriptions and ideas of what makes a “role” for an employee can open you to a wealth of opportunity. Being willing to flex and adapt positions to your employees’ passions will present more opportunities for creative thinking and innovation. Consider people over jobs and you’ll build a stronger, more enthusiastic team.