More thoughts coming out of a career coaching session this week

Imagine you need to make a bet on whether or not an individual will finish a 3 mile race in 40 minutes.

Candidate 1: Performed very well in several races 10 years ago, but has not run in a while.

Candidate 2: Has never been given the chance to run a race of this length – their best is 1 mile. However, they know all of the theory and lingo. They passionately speak about cadence, foot strike, and pace.

Candidate 3: Has never run a race, but is a skilled and accomplished athlete. They recently put up top 10% finishes in similarly challenging biking and swimming events.

Which would you be willing to bet on to finish the race? To finish in the top 50%? Top 25?

I realize this may seem like a bit of a strawman, and the reality is that candidates are infinitely nuanced. Still, the point is that I believe that transferable skills are often underappreciated by both candidates and hiring managers.

The person who has never run a race before, but has a near-perfect match of transferable skills, has the advantage. Is your job description or hiring process potentially only looking for people who have run a race before? What outstanding candidates might you be missing out on as a result of that?

Past performance has been proven to be correlated to future success, but that past performance does not need to be a perfect match.