By Greg Blencoe
The first principle in The Supermanager is to surround yourself with high-quality employees. One tip discussed in this section is to hire for attitude and train for skill in lower-level positions where the job can be learned relatively easily and doesn’t require special skills, a degree, certifications, etc.
Here is an example of this.
Around ten years ago, I worked for a large company in Chicago that was looking to hire an employee to handle payroll for one of the divisions. One of the two finalists for the job was a recent college graduate who had majored in accounting.
The other had been a stay-at-home mom for many years to raise her three daughters. But since they were getting older, she was looking to get back into the workforce. A superstar administrative assistant who worked in this division in the company knew her, because their daughters played soccer together. The administrative assistant thought highly of her and let her know about the job opening.
While the recent college graduate had much more accounting knowledge than the other candidate, this expertise was not something that was needed for the payroll position. The payroll software system utilized by the company would need to be learned by either candidate.
Furthermore, there was a concern that the recent college graduate would probably just try to use the payroll job to get her foot in the door with the company and then would look to get a job in the accounting department as soon as that was possible.
On the other hand, while the other candidate had been out of the workforce for many years, she was recommended by one of the top employees in the division, had the basic computer skills that were needed, was very excited about the job in the interview, and did not seem to be likely to want to move out of the position soon after she joined the company. She definitely had the right attitude. And she could be trained to get the skills on the payroll software system that were needed.
She ended up being hired for the position, learned how to do the job quickly, enjoyed the job and took a lot of pride in it, and was an outstanding employee.
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