{"id":614,"date":"2015-04-30T15:09:49","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T15:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carolinegourlay.wordpress.com\/?p=440"},"modified":"2020-09-08T15:55:20","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T15:55:20","slug":"experience-or-brains-which-matters-more-in-a-senior-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carolinegourlay.co.uk\/experience-or-brains-which-matters-more-in-a-senior-role\/","title":{"rendered":"Experience or brains – Which matters more in a senior role?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Which matters more when you’re hiring someone for a senior job – intelligence or experience? You may be thinking, ‘it’s obvious, go for the experience’. On the other hand, you may be thinking, ‘it’s obvious, go for the brains’. Which one you favour tends to reflect your own biases rather than any universal truth. Ideally, of course, you’d want both, but let’s say that’s not on offer.<\/p>\n
Imagine you’re recruiting a Senior Operations Manager in a manufacturing company. In your business, raw materials come in, you turn them into something else and store those products, before shipping them out. This manager’s role is to manage a large workforce, adjust production to meet demand, manage contracts with suppliers and so on. There are production targets to meet and a constant pressure to cut costs.<\/p>\n
You put in a place a very thorough assessment process where you find out about the breadth and depth of candidates’ specific experience and then use a psychologist <\/a>to find out who they are as people – how smart they are, how they interact with others, their leadership styles, what they’re like under pressure, what’s lurking in the shadow side of their personalities <\/a>and so on. Through this process you’ve whittled it down to two candidates, both of whom have sound management skills, good interpersonal skills and seem pretty resilient under pressure. You could imagine working with either of them.<\/p>\n Alison* currently works for one of your main competitors. She has years of operational management experience, is well-regarded and knows the market well. She is of average intelligence and works most effectively in a familiar environment where she can draw on her existing knowledge and skills. It helps if she has a degree of structure, in the form of processes and procedures, to guide her thinking. Without these, and particularly when faced with very ambiguous information or situations where she has to work things out from scratch, she may be at a bit of a loss as to where to start and could risk jumping to conclusions.<\/p>\n Becky* is an experienced retail manager. She is used to managing a large workforce, working to sales targets and managing relationships with suppliers. However, she has absolutely no experience of manufacturing. Becky is extremely bright and learns quickly. When faced with ambiguous or complex information, she will be able to make sense of it rapidly without making assumptions. She can work out solutions from scratch without needing structure to guide her thinking.<\/p>\n Well here are some things to think about:<\/p>\n There is no right answer here. It’s not as though Becky has no relevant experience – I wouldn’t suggest that a super-bright history professor would be a good candidate for the role. Neither is Alison by any means stupid. But there are blind spots in her thinking that it’s worth taking into account.<\/p>\n What I hope this illustrates is the importance of a) understanding what a candidate needs to succeed in the role (which may not be what you think it is) and b) assessing people properly so that you have more than a surface view of your candidates. I’d be happy to discuss either with you: caroline@carolinegourlay.co.uk<\/p>\n * I know, I know – the two best candidates for a senior job in manufacturing and I made them both women. It’s political correctness gone mad. Actually if you found your attention snagged on the idea of female candidates for a senior operations job, may I direct you to my blog on unconscious biases.<\/a><\/p>\n Photo credits<\/p>\nThe experienced one<\/h2>\n
The smart one<\/h2>\n
Which one would you take?<\/h2>\n
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