I’ve lost count of the number of people I have hired, much less interviewed, throughout my career but it’s a pretty significant number. In almost every case, I’ve enjoyed getting to meet the candidates and really tried to weigh each person’s merits fairly to make the best hiring decision. And while my batting record is pretty good, not everyone became the superstar hire I had hoped for.
In fact, I found myself recently reflecting on a couple of hires that would fit that description. They were both young, very attractive professionals and while they were fairly successful in their roles, neither quite reached the full potential I saw when I offered them the job. I reflected on that a fair amount at the time as they were leaving and, for whatever reason, thought of them both recently and thought I’d pose this as an interesting leadership wrinkle to consider.
Before I go any farther, however, I want to be very clear. I am in no way suggesting that a person’s appearance should influence the hiring decision. Unless you are recruiting tall, athletic people for your basketball team or an actor who needs to fit a part, how a person looks has 0% to do with whether you should hire them or not. What I am suggesting, however, is that you may want to account for some things in the interview to make sure you’re being as fair as possible to everyone – yourself and your company included.
So let me share a handful of conclusions I’ve reached and the lessons they suggest:
Attractive People Interview Well… Maybe Too Well
One of the two people I mention above was, arguably, the most polished person I ever interviewed. They were thoughtful, spoke fluently and were charming. They answered every one of my questions with ease and they quickly became one of my top candidates for the job. Other interviewers were equally impressed but, when I eventually hired them, they were certainly competent in their role but their abilities didn’t quite live up to the level that the interview implied was there.
Lesson learned: While we worked together, I observed that this person was extremely good at public speaking. They were comfortable being the center of attention, deftly handled conversations with multiple people and topics and were, basically, the person I interviewed. What I began to realize was that, as someone people were naturally drawn to, they were very used to talking and interacting with a variety of individuals and had had a lot of great practice. So upon reflection, I might have learned more about them if I’d deviated from my standard interview questions by asking more probing or even technical questions to see how deep their knowledge and experience truly ran.
There May Be Innate Bias at Work
The other hire I was thinking about actually had more raw talent and ability but ultimately ran afoul of my boss. While they were cordial with each other, they never really “gelled” and I had an on-going challenge to get my management to seriously consider new hire’s suggestions. Interestingly, my boss – a woman – was the sole dissenting vote against this young woman during her interviewing panel… which happened to be otherwise made up of all men. While I cannot know for sure, I wondered at the time if bias played a role here – for both genders – as the men all thought she was wonderful while my boss remained unconvinced even after she came onboard.
Lesson learned: bias is real and we all have it to some degree or another. Wherever possible, it needs to be recognized and called out – professionally – so that people can be given the opportunity to demonstrate what they are capable of by the work they do, not how they appear. Frustratingly, I still view this as one of my top professional failures of mine as I was unable to get the dynamics with senior management to work and, ultimately, our company lost the services of someone whom I think was capable of so much more.
Be Prepared to Run Interference at Times
Very early in my career, my trusted “second in command” hired a young woman onto our team. She was just out of college, extremely competent and turned out to be a great hire. She also happened to be really cute and a very approachable person. Now, the place where we worked had a mix of white- and blue-collar employees and, sure enough, within a week or so, I noticed how a number of the techs started hanging out in our department… in fact, right outside this young lady’s cubicle. It eventually got to the point where I found myself having to run interference, passively at first, walking by to pick something up at the copier or interrupting their chatting with a work question. That worked pretty well save for one technician; it got bad enough that we had to have a talk with their management to help reign things in.
Lesson learned: this one should be pretty obvious but it’s also two-fold. First, you need to be aware – and probably explicitly ask – if your new teammate is comfortable with the attention they are receiving. If not, then as a manager you need to address the issue immediately. The second point is to not be the social police. Work should rarely be all work and interactions with colleagues are an important part of building and maintaining culture. Don’t get in the way of that. But you also are responsible to ensure that the work is getting done and so you will walk a fine line. Ultimately, both points lead to the same advice – that having open and honest conversations with your team – all of your team – is vitally important.
If They’re Talented Too, They May Be Seen as a Threat
I feel a bit weird writing this one but I’ve seen it in action. Some people still have their belief that a person can be good looking or good at their job but it’s a bit of a surprise when they turn out to be both. As I’ve seen that play out over the years, I’ve come to believe that it stems from our measuring ourselves against others to see how we stack up. Ideally, we want others to have one advantage or the other but not both. Should someone be both attractive and very talented, then someone might think that they’re completely outclassed and resign themselves on reporting to this new hire some day (kind of silly, I know, but we all have our inner doubts and this perception can play into them).
Lesson learned: in a threat situation, our response is typically fight or flight. So when a highly competent, attractive new coworker enters the scene, and we go with a fight response, then perhaps an employee might actively seek to undermine their new colleague. Or if it’s flight, an employee could try to avoid them or perhaps “join up” and become a big supporter in the hopes of being carried along with their anticipated success. In either scenario, it has the potential to be divisive to your team which just makes it more imperative for you to be impartial and ensure that you’re helping everyone to have an opportunity to develop and demonstrate their contributions.
Again, I’ll repeat my opening – a person’s looks should play no part in whether you decide to hire them. As a leader, you should be focused on having the best talent possible on your team and then doing everything you can to develop and support them. Every person is unique and will bring certain strengths to the organization. The challenge with every hire is doing your best to find out the most you can about each candidate so you can make the best decision when interviewing.
Know that I’m pulling for you!
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