To Hire Talent Wired For Innovation, Focus On Mindset—Not Skill Set

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Looking for true innovators? Turn traditional hiring on its head. 

According to the consulting firm McKinsey, 84 percent of executives agree that innovation is critical for their business. But here’s the rub: only 6 percent are satisfied with their performance. To succeed going forward, they’ll need to do many things. Among them is to hire talent wired for innovation.

Innovation is about doing something new that hasn’t been done before. So innovators, by their very nature, have to believe that something is possible before they know it actually can be done. And that requires a special mindset.

All to say, to know if a job candidate is wired to innovate, you have to turn traditional hiring on its head. Why? To focus less on what they know and more on how they think. To focus on mindset—not skill set.

Start with these four key practices:

1. Play down the resume.

Use a candidate’s resume as a mere starting point. Go ahead and touch on the basics, but more important, seek out something that you have in common to start a real conversation. Your goal is to get to know who they are and how they think rather than what they’ve already done. Odds are, their resume focuses on their skill set. You want to understand their mindset.

2. Apply the UFO test.

The UFO (uncertainty, failure, ownership) test is a great way to get a sense for how a candidate thinks and how they’re likely to respond to innovation’s inherent challenges.

With regard to uncertainty, ask the candidate to solve a problem in real time. Not a technical problem, but a thinking problem. For instance, ask them: “How many barbers are there in New York City?” Then have them talk you through how they would figure it out. (You can have a whiteboard on hand, too, if you like.) How they respond is a good indicator of how they deal with the unexpected—a predictable occurrence in innovation. Keep in mind, you’re not looking for the correct answer; you’re looking for the ability to tackle problems, and the uncertainty that comes with them, in the moment.

With regard to failure, ask the candidate to describe a profound professional failure and what exactly they learned from it. (Warning: You may need to nudge them.) Their “lessons learned” provide insight as to how effective they are in dealing with disappointments and risks as well as their ability to be introspective and self-aware. They also tell you how well they’re likely to learn from any failures to come and, likewise, about their resilience and temperament.

With regard to ownership, look for something on the candidate’s resume that shows they were part of an organization that ran into business trouble. It could be a bankruptcy, a corporate scandal, a collapse in market share, a disastrous product launch, or the like. Then ask them why they didn’t do more to prevent that problem. They’ll probably say that wasn’t their job, but keep pushing them. They should be able to come up with at least something they personally could have done. You’re looking for someone willing to do what it takes to help a company succeed, and not merely what is in their job description.

3. Spot non-resisters. 

Innovators naturally push for more and better—and never settle for “good enough.” Conversely, a candidate’s long tenure at a large company can be a red flag. Big corporations may be full of great managers, but they rarely innovate. That’s because the very things they do to manage the business well also restrict the actions and behaviors that real innovation requires. To linger in a large organization for a long time usually means accepting the system, not actively resisting it. And that’s anathema to innovators.

4. Beware candidates seeking titles. 

When all is said and done, innovation is hard work. Those who succeed at it understand that recognition comes from the accomplishment, not a title or a position on an org chart. In fact, by and large, the best innovators don’t even think of themselves as “innovative.” Instead, they see themselves as being good at coming up with solutions to problems that create value for others, and sometimes even society at large. Real innovators, in other words, can’t be bothered with titles; they’re concentrated on what they’re doing today for the world of tomorrow.

Hiring, to be sure, is an imperfect science. But if you’re serious about selecting talent wired for innovation, turn tradition on its head and focus on mindset—not skill set. Only then will you find true innovators.