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In today’s highly competitive IT job market, how do you hire the extraordinary innovative IT talent that will change the rules for your business?
After conducting thousands of hiring interviews for innovators, I’ve learned what drives better hires and great team results. Surprisingly, teams often overlook key components of the hiring process. These four tips can help you focus on the basics before you start interviewing candidates:
1. Be careful not to “distort” the innovative role
Sometimes when we want to hire someone who breaks the mold, we try to fit too much into the description. The “turducken role” takes separate tasks and tries to blend them into one. When no one person can possess all of these traits, not only will the talent pool be drastically reduced, but you set them up for failure because they can’t cover everything.
[ Also read Digital transformation: 3 steps to enable innovation. ]
2. Align yourself
Develop consensus among all decision makers regarding the job description and deliverables for the role. Otherwise, it will be difficult to identify the most promising candidates. A bonus would be to identify a future role in which the person could be promoted. You’ll retain innovators longer if they understand their ultimate career path.
3. Identify resources to support the innovator ahead of time
Before you start interviewing, make sure you have the budget for new hires to make the changes that need to be made and internal champions to facilitate their journey through the transformation. Otherwise, you might hire an amazing person who just can’t get anything done.
4. Strive to attract forward thinkers
The Holy Grail is finding people with visionary technical expertise and interpersonal skills that rival their technical skills. If someone has amazing ideas, but no one will help them realize them, the transformation is doomed from the start.
5 key interview questions to assess the ability to innovate
The interviewing process should be designed to detect true innovators, avoid impostors, and ultimately lead to improved retention. The following questions help demonstrate a candidate’s persuasiveness, test their ability to think on their feet, and inspire just the right amount of introspection.
1. What unique idea did you create and successfully implement? How did you protect it in your organization? What were the results?
Sometimes innovators are great at generating creative ideas, but not at collaboration. When evaluating the interviewee’s response, consider the power and originality of the idea, and how effectively they inspired others to implement it. As a follow-up question, ask what they wish they had done differently.
2. What do your current team think is the most misunderstood thing? How did you correct this misconception?
Answers reveal self-awareness (or lack thereof) and insight into the candidate’s personality, perceived or otherwise.
3. Teach me something in three minutes or less. You have one minute to decide what to teach me.
Whether someone is teaching how to choose the best programming language for a project or how to yodel, assess how effectively they engage you in the lesson. Were they good teachers? Did they meet the time parameters? Did they explain why the lesson was important?
4. What’s the hardest group you’ve had to get buy-in or alignment from and how did you do it?
Listen to learn more to hear if the interviewees understood the needs of the group they were trying to engage and if and how they adjusted their approach accordingly. And find out what the results are. Did it work?
5. What is the most complex project you have worked on? Why was it complicated? How did you explain it to others?
This question will help you discover “complexity breakers,” domain experts who can crystallize a complex topic so that everyone in your organization can understand it—the hallmark of an effective innovator.
Beware of “impostor innovator” red flags.
IT innovators are rare. “Fraudsters,” less so. Here are two warning signs that a candidate may not have the combination of talent and interpersonal skills needed to bring transformative technology initiatives to life:
- They think something is more innovative than it is. Ideal candidates will recognize the difference between “new to the world” and “new to me” or “new to my company.”
- They exaggerate their involvement in a given project. Collaborative, self-aware employees give credit to their team and specify the role they played in an initiative, rather than claiming exclusive ownership of everything.
Improve innovator retention by understanding what makes them tick
To keep creative employees engaged, consider agreeing on a passion project—a task that may not be exactly related to the goals of their role, but allows them to apply their talents and find joy in the work while delivering value to the organization . The employee may work on this task in addition to business critical initiatives. Just remember to take your time. Otherwise, a passion project can outpace the time needed for actual transformation.
Finally, regularly discuss “what’s next” for the employee and the company. Innovators like to know what’s on the horizon to help shape it. With this future in mind, provide opportunities for upskilling and continuous learning.
[ How can automation free up more staff time for innovation? Get the free eBook: Managing IT with Automation. ]
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