Recruiting for Potential

Recruiting for potential

What if the best person for your next entry-level role doesn't have three years of experience? For employers recruiting people early in their careers, it's worth looking beyond the number of years someone has spent in previous jobs.

A young person might not have an impressive employment history yet. That's rather the point. What they can have is potential, which can be much more useful than simply counting years of experience.

1. Curiosity

Curious people ask questions. They want to understand how things work, why decisions are made and whether something could be done better.

For someone at the beginning of their career, curiosity can be incredibly valuable. You can teach someone your processes and systems. It's much harder to teach someone to genuinely care about understanding what they're doing.

2. Reliability

Will they turn up? Will they meet deadlines? Will they do what they say they're going to do? Reliability isn't measured in years of employment.

Someone who has demonstrated responsibility through education, volunteering, sport, caring responsibilities or personal projects may already have strong evidence that they can be trusted to get things done.

3. Communication

Good communication is useful in almost every job. Can someone listen carefully, explain an idea, ask for help when they need it and communicate professionally with colleagues and customers?

They don't need years of workplace experience to demonstrate those abilities. Communication skills can be developed in classrooms, teams, clubs, volunteering, part-time work and everyday life.

4. Problem solving

Every workplace has problems. The important question isn't necessarily whether someone has encountered the exact same problem before, it's whether they can think about a problem, ask the right questions, consider their options and work towards a solution. Personal projects, coursework, hobbies and previous experiences can all demonstrate this.

5. Willingness to learn

Perhaps the most important quality of all. Someone just starting out in a career isn't supposed to know everything. They are supposed to learn.

Look for candidates who are open to feedback, interested in developing their skills and willing to have a go at something they haven't done before.

Experience still has value

This isn't an argument for ignoring experience altogether. Some roles genuinely require specific knowledge or previous experience, particularly where there are technical, legal or safety considerations.

However, it's worth questioning whether every experience requirement in a job description is genuinely necessary. If a skill can be taught, ask whether you really need to filter out candidates who haven't had the opportunity to learn it yet.

Stop counting. Start looking.

When recruiting those at the beginning of their career, instead of asking: "How many years of experience does this person have?"

Try asking: "What could this person become?"

Look for:

• Curiosity
• Reliability
• Communication
• Problem solving
• Willingness to learn

Recruit for what they could do next

The person with the longest CV isn't necessarily the person with the most potential. Don't just recruit for what someone has already done. Recruit for what they could do next.