Just read an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell titled "Most Likely to Succeed". The crux of the article is about determining who will succeed in a particular role. The article discusses this in terms of NFL quarterbacks, school teachers, and financial advisers and how each go about finding/hiring for each respective position. The issue for each is that what makes for the most successful people in each role are traits and skills that are not easily determined before someone is actually in the role. Think of how Matt Cassell succeeded this year despite never starting a game in college and being a seventh round draft choice.
One interesting thought the article comes up with is that in order to find the best of the best it is more important to increase the potential pool of candidates and put them in situations that would actually imitate what the job would do. For teachers, this would mean lowering standards for them to be certified and instead allowing them more on the job training and evaluating them on that instead. This vastly differs from the common practice of raising standards in order to get more qualified candidates.
I find this applicable at my own workplace in that we should apply some of these learning's to our own internship programs. Make sure that the programs are putting the interns in as many difficult situations that a normal team member would face as possible. Further, the focus for a internship program should be less on managing the intern on a day to day basis and more on constant and consistent evaluation of the traits that an organization feels makes for a successful team member. For Target, this may mean evaluating how they collaborate, navigate the culture, and strive for personal development to name just a few things.
All in all a very intriguing article.
One interesting thought the article comes up with is that in order to find the best of the best it is more important to increase the potential pool of candidates and put them in situations that would actually imitate what the job would do. For teachers, this would mean lowering standards for them to be certified and instead allowing them more on the job training and evaluating them on that instead. This vastly differs from the common practice of raising standards in order to get more qualified candidates.
I find this applicable at my own workplace in that we should apply some of these learning's to our own internship programs. Make sure that the programs are putting the interns in as many difficult situations that a normal team member would face as possible. Further, the focus for a internship program should be less on managing the intern on a day to day basis and more on constant and consistent evaluation of the traits that an organization feels makes for a successful team member. For Target, this may mean evaluating how they collaborate, navigate the culture, and strive for personal development to name just a few things.
All in all a very intriguing article.
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