On Hiring: Strengths vs Lack of Weakness

I was recently talking with an institution about joining their team to teach a few classes on design and innovation. Amongst other qualifying attributes, as a tenured professional with decades of experience bringing world-class industry defining products to market, I thought I'd be a perfect fit. Unfortunately, because of my lack of a graduate degree (also known as a 'terminal degree'), I was barred from proceeding forward.

This got me thinking about what it means to hire for STRENGTH vs hiring for LACK of WEAKNESS. I was introduced to this idea while reading the book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz, nearly 10 years ago. Its an interesting concept but sometimes hard to definitively highlight when its happening.

Using my experience as a case study, lets dig into this and unpack why we fail to hire the strongest person for a role, rather, we hire someone that looks the best.

The position I was exploring sat within a university's design and innovation department. The area of focus was described as "teach courses in the domain of marketing, innovation, and design, including the introductory course that blends design thinking with concepts from marketing and innovation." This opportunity felt like a perfect match for my background and desire to inspire future generations. Leveraging design-thinking to tackle hard-hitting problem spaces is where I thrive. I've grown teams and delivered highly successful products on the back of this approach to product innovation.

We'll circle back to my experience in a minute, but first let's explore more of this idea, strengths vs lack of weakness. As Horowitz writes, "When hiring, you should follow Colin Powell's instructions and hire for strength rather than lack of weakness". The first time I heard this, I loved it but I quickly realized that it's hard to put this into practice. As a hiring manager, I recognize that when hiring we are faced with many many biases, many unconscious. We're swayed by where candidates attended college, the brands they've worked for, personal characteristics, etc. Sadly, none of these really speak to the strengths a candidate has in relation to the role you need filled. Pulling an example as outlined in "The Hard Things...", we can better understand how this looks in real-life:

"He opened the conversation by listing his issues with Cranney: doesn't look or sound like a head of sales, went to a weak school, makes him(Marc Andreessen) uncomfortable. I listened very carefully and replied, "I agree with every single one of those issues. However, Mark Cranney is a sales savant. He has mastered sales to a level that far exceeds anybody that I have ever known. If he didn't have the things wrong with him that you enumerated, he wouldn't be willing to join a company that just traded at thirty-five cents per share, he'd be the CEO of IBM".

With this understanding, lets circle back to my situation. I don't have a graduate degree. This begs the question, how is a graduate degree a strength in this situation. Looking at the focus area of the course, these are not theory based deep-dives. Rather, these course are about the applied. How do we matter-of-factly bring to life new products, be it n-0 or 0-1. This is about the rubber meeting the road. When I hire individuals, I do so through the lens of 'show me what you've done and explain your modes of thinking' not, tell me about design theory.

In my conversation about this role, it was made clear to me that this is not about ability to teach or create a robust learning environment. No, this was squarely about the optics of the institution. Ensuring that the institution maintains a talking point that all faculty holds a minimum degree level, while also striving for an environment that educates future leaders.

So no, I don't have an advanced degree. But I ask you, will these students be better served by a tenured industry professional, or a recent graduate with an MFA with no applied understanding of how to bring innovate products to market. I guess we'll never know.