When I became the first employee at the Pulmonary Hypertension Association, I had the wonderful opportunity to be able to build a staff from the ground up. Over 17 years, we went from 1 part-timer (me) to about 60 full-time. That entailed hundreds of hires…and I learned a lot.
Over my first couple of years at PHA, I did traditional hiring. That is, I looked for people whose past jobs had given them the skills I needed for each particular position. It seemed to make sense but I often found there was something missing. Besides hiring, I was spending too much time on personnel issues and transitioning staff out.
After a while, I began to think about the reasons. I started by looking at where I had success. One young woman, in particular, gave me a good point of analysis. She didn’t have a lot of experience but she had three other things
- Commitment to cause
- The ability to work well in teams
- Native intelligence
I realized that, for the most part, I really didn’t need specific skills. I needed generalists…generalists with energy, enthusiasm and the ability to think.
Soon, my hiring mantra became: “commitment to cause, ability to work well in teams and people as smart as I could find them.”
These three rules often brought another unexpected advantage. I found I was hiring a high percentage of creatives. These are the people who bring ideas and innovation to their work. When given the opportunity to implement the best of those ideas, organizational growth is fostered in many areas.
This raises another issue. When people understand the qualities that got them the job and hear that their peers were hired with the same qualities, a strong team spirit is fostered.
A final point. Many of my hires over the years were young with high energy and a desire to show what they could do. I often found that for young people, living outside their experience – for example, having lived internationally – was a maturing factor.