In all the work I have done in my professional career, I have determined that there is no direct correlation between success and someone with a degree from a highly regarded school versus someone coming from a lesser school, or someone without a degree.
In fact, some of the best team members I’ve worked with don’t come from traditional backgrounds. They’ve been servers, customer service reps, or entrepreneurs who’ve had to figure it out on their own. They’re resourceful, creative problem-solvers, and they’ve got grit. Those are the qualities that drive innovation—not just a diploma hanging on the wall. That’s why I’m such a believer in STARs—people who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes, just like me. There are over 70 million STARs in the US, yet so many are held back by the paper ceiling—the invisible barrier blocking talented people without degrees from opportunities. Tearing down the paper ceiling isn’t about fairness or charity—it’s a smart business strategy.
If you are predisposed to only considering people with degrees, you will be doing your business a disservice by missing out on a legion of hardworking people. As a leader, you owe it to your business and your employees to focus more on looking outside the box. This will mean taking a holistic hiring approach to find people who are a cultural fit and deliver results.
Creating a HiPO Hiring Action Plan
As much as you want people with the collective chutzpah of character skills and instinct for action, it’s not always easy to determine if someone possesses them. This may be why many founders and business owners default to education biases.
Personally, I have a favorite question when I am screening people: “What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome?” Those who pause and ask if I want a personal or professional example are already ahead of the curve. When they ask this, I know they have a story to share that transcends a job situation. They want me to know that they have had to work through tough times.
Determining whether a candidate has the characteristics and capabilities for a job can be tough when you’re relying solely on education and interview skills. That’s why my team members and I adopted a “work product” approach. A work product essentially asks the candidate to perform an exercise that closely resembles the work they may be asked to do in the role.
Getting candidates outside their comfort zones and into a controlled situation so you know how they will react is instrumental in determining whether you have a HiPO in your midst. Sometimes, though, you may need a bit more insight into whether a person has the same vision for the role, particularly with more senior roles. For those situations, I recommend using a business plan assessment technique.
For all executive roles, I encourage companies to have candidates write a business plan for their role. Good candidates are already thinking about how they will address the role, and it is a great exercise to see whether their expectations align with yours. I will stress that the business plan most likely won’t be perfect since they will only have an outside perspective of your business. But you’ll be able to gauge whether or not they have a thoughtful view of their objectives and ideas around how they will accomplish them.
HiPOs are Worth the Extra Steps
Asking candidates to perform more advanced assessments might seem like we are demanding a lot from them. It also reduces the number of candidates and adds time to the hiring process—but it will yield higher-quality outcomes. And I can assure you that the time spent up front saves you significantly more than a bad hire will cost.
If you’re still hung up on fancy degrees and big-name experience, you’re missing out on the real most valuable players of the business world. HiPOs—those high-potential badasses—are the secret to taking your start-up or small business from surviving to thriving.