The Plug-and-Play or Project Dilemma

 

When working in the assessment and selection world, I often hear this from hiring managers:

“We have two candidates we are considering for our open position; one is very experienced and can probably perform the job from day one. The second candidate has less experience but may have more long-term potential. Who should we hire?”

I call this the “plug-and-play or project” dilemma. If you’ve been following me for any period of time, you’ll know my answer, “it depends.” I’m not trying to be evasive with this response, it really depends on the circumstances surrounding the selection. Here are some considerations to keep in mind:

The environment – often the recruiting market dictates our direction in hiring and selection. Are experienced professionals scarce or plentiful? Throughout my career in HR, it seems there has always been a shortage of IT professionals. It could be Python or Java Script developers, database administrators, or even Cobol programmers around the time of Y2K –  there never seems to be enough experienced IT talent. A realistic option (sometimes the only option) given this scenario, is to hire someone with potential and then develop his/her technical skills.  This is the classic “project hire” or “grow your own” approach. These individuals need a fair amount of technical development before they are fully productive and creating value for the organization. The time necessary to bring the project hire to minimum technical proficiency should be considered, even if the recruiting environment suggests it is the only option.

Organization culture or imprinting  – sometimes hiring managers prefer the project hire as they see an opportunity to start with a clean slate. They believe the project hire may be more flexible and amenable to the organization’s culture and values. Less baggage and easier to train. Developing this new hire provides an opportunity to imprint key organization values and provide mentoring. It may also be seen as an opportunity to replicate the hiring manager’s leadership style, or “give back” as the hiring manager was provided a similar opportunity earlier in his/her career. This is laudable, up to a point, but it’s worth recognizing that all new employees require some level of onboarding and assimilation into a new culture; experienced hires can also benefit from mentoring and other soft skills development activities.

I’ll also provide a bit of compliance caution here: sometimes the language used above when advocating for the project (younger) hire over the experienced (older) hire is simply code for age discrimination. Don’t do that! I understand the value of bringing new thinking or new ideas into an organization. But experienced candidates can bring those to the table as well.

Leader and organization bandwidth – development of project hires takes time. Let me provide a story from my past life. One of our regional leaders came to our headquarters for a typical management review where he provided our executive team an update on his geographic area. The primary question/objective: was his region on target to meet their annual goals? He had one branch location (out of 10) that was underperforming, and he had 25 slides in a PowerPoint deck describing how he and his team were going to invest in this branch and turn it around. It was a good plan with a high likelihood of success, until the challenge question was asked:

“What is going to happen to your other nine locations while you and your team devote 50 percent of your time to the underperforming location?”

Applying this example to the plug-and-play or project dilemma, the question looks like this:

“As a leader, do you have the time to invest in this project hire and how will it impact the rest of your team? Realistically, how many project employees can you lead and develop at one time?”

That’s always the central question in my mind when I hear hiring managers advocate to hire a project over a plug-and-play candidate. From a very practical point of view, do you really have the bandwidth to take on a project? Or, like many of us, will you be excited about your new project hire (insert any other type of new goal or project here – fitness routine, home renovation, relationship improvement plan, etc.) and then abandon it before it’s complete? Said differently, what will you need to give up in order to devote adequate time to your project? Your team benefits from a balance with some proportion of experienced team members who are low maintenance as well as other team members who fit that project category and require more attention from you. As a leader, with a finite amount of time, you can only invest so much in a project, no matter how great the future reward might be.

Wrapping Up/Key Thoughts

Here are the takeaways:

  • Most hiring managers face this dilemma and it’s often driven by the recruiting market. Sometimes your only option is to grow your own as an experienced hire is not available!
  • Be aware of your own biases and rationale when you are advocating for a project hire. Are you trying to recreate or clone yourself? If you’re looking for fresh thinking you might be better served by encouraging flexibility and creative thinking within your existing team.
  • Recognize the time commitment in developing technical skills. And the timeline that’s necessary for someone to come up to speed. What’s the likely return on investment?
  • All new employees will need some form of onboarding to assimilate to a new organization and get comfortable with the culture.

Wrestling with this dilemma? HLA can help with that!