In the first part of this blog entry, I said the unimaginable. Which is that the best candidates are always under-qualified. And it's true. However, I mean that in the context of rigid job requirements, not in their capability to do the job. Consider the reasons reasons why.

For starters, top candidates don’t apply to positions that require comparable experience to what they already have. These types of candidates aren’t interested in moving laterally in terms of job responsibilities. They aren't interested in doing the same thing in a new job that they've been doing in the past.

Every high potential candidate wants to take a step up and is therefore looking for a growth opportunity. It’s important to keep in perspective that while you may be interested in a candidate’s past experience, the best candidates are exclusively focused on gaining new experience they don’t yet have. In other words, they're attracted to the job spread. This disconnect is one of the key reasons managers find it so difficult to consistently hire candidates who become top performers. Rigid requirements that pigeonhole candidates by their current skills only attract mediocre candidates who lack the motivation to take their career to the next level. Suffice it to say, you don’t want to hire those kinds of employees.

Finally, the number of years experience needed to be successful doing a job is highly subjective. There’s no conceivable way of determining such a number since every candidate develops at a different rate. The brightest and most motivated candidates, the kind you want to hire, develop their skills at a much quicker rate than their less talented and motivated counterparts. Therefore, while a top performer may not have as many years of experience as a more ‘experienced’ candidate, their skills are often vastly superior. I see excellent candidates consistently ruled out simply because their resumes don’t show the desired number of years required. Talk about sabotaging your own hiring efforts!

When looking for new talent, it's critical to realize that top candidates are highly motivated by new challenge and growth potential. Needless to say, doing the same thing they have done in the past does not represent a challenge. Therefore, it's imperative that you offer them an opportunity that is bigger than what they have ever done before. Of course, the catch 22 here is that because they haven't done it before, they seem under-qualified for a bigger job. But keep in mind that being slightly under-qualified in terms of requirements has no correlation whatsoever with a candidate's capability to do the job. In fact, more often than not, it's the slightly under-qualified candidates that make the best hires because they're motivated by the challenge and the career growth they will realize as a result. Always assess a candidate's potential on previous examples of growing into a new job. Never assess them on years experience, which is a common and egregious mistake.

So how do you assess a candidate who appears to be under qualified yet may turn out to be a great hire? Find out in my next blog entry.