Human resources expert and VP of HR supporting IT and Engineering for UPS Regina Hartley said in her TED Talk that those who don’t always look good on paper may just be the people you need to hire.
“Ivy League” candidates vs. the Underdogs (“Scrappers“)
In her presentation, Hartley described a situation where two completely different candidates apply for an open position.
One of them is the perfect “Ivy League” candidate with a flawless CV and excellent references, or as she and her colleagues refer to them, ” the Silver Spoon” candidates. The other is a public school graduate with job hopping and odd jobs as a cashier and singing waitress. These candidates she calls “Scrappers”.
Hartley declares that there is nothing wrong with the Silver Spoon candidates; it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice to get into an elite university and a degree. However, she questions how someone who has spent their whole life designed to succeed will handle the tough times.
Why can Hartley’s personal experience be misleading?
Raised by his single mother in a rough neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York, Hartley says she was motivated to understand the connection between business success and the Scrappers. She said that when she met successful businessmen and read their profiles, she noticed some commonalities.
“Many of them had experienced early hardships, anywhere from poverty, abandonment, and death of a parent while young to learning disabilities, alcoholism and violence. The conventional thinking has been that trauma leads to distress, and there’s been a lot of focus on the resulting dysfunction. But during studies of dysfunction, data revealed an unexpected insight: that even the worst circumstances can result in growth and transformation. A remarkable and counterintuitive phenomenon has been discovered, which scientists call Post Traumatic Growth.,” she said in her speech.
She even referred back to Steve Jobs, who had been through several job hops, spent a year in India and was dyslexic.
Hartley told the case of one of her employees who felt that, because she was at an elite university, certain tasks were beneath her; for example, she had to do temporary physical work to better understand an operation. Eventually, she quit.
Her insight was that companies that are committed to diversity and inclusive practices tend to support Scrapper and perform better than their competitors.
Not surprisingly, based on her own childhood and work experience, her choice and recommendation is to hire under-appreciated candidates (“the Scrappers”) whose secret weapon is passion and determination; – but I don’t think that’s always good for everyone, or a universal solution.
How important is it where we come from?
I agreed with Hartley at first and then wondered if there was a problem: “underdogs” have to make a living first, which requires money, which means that they usually don’t have the luxury of not making as much as possible.
So it is quite realistic that they will leave the company because they can earn better elsewhere, no matter how much they like it.
However, a well-educated, “Ivy League” worker living in a stable financial environment can easily afford to work not primarily for the money, but for what he or she stands for and believes in.
In my opinion, you cannot choose the “right” employee based only on the circumstances (“Ivy League” or not). It is important to understand what motivates her/him and whether it is right for your company.
