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Hiring Outside the Box

by Miki Saxon

What extracurricular activities do you look for in your entry level candidates?

Too many mangers chess team means a thinker/problem solver, debate team assumes good verbal and written skills, captain of anything indicates a leader.

How impressed would you be if you saw FAA, i.e., Future Farmers of America on the resume?

Many managers would write that off as irrelevant at best and valueless at the least, unless it was an agriculture-related position.

Not so fast.

Consider Gamaliel Rizzo, an apartment dweller from Brooklyn who is studying to become a doctor. He says he spent more time honing skills like public speaking and developing business budgets than learning about farming.

“What amazes me is the degree to which they have made themselves relevant when by all expectations they should have simply ceased to exist.” –Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, historian at Iowa State University.

And it’s not just in the heartland that the FAA is thriving.

About 70 percent of its members live in rural areas, and 19 percent live in small towns. The fastest growing segment, however, is in urban and suburban areas, now making up 10 percent of the membership.

So what’s the take away on this?

If you want the unusual, look for the unusual.

If you want to hire people who think outside the norm then you should look for those who did things outside the norm.

If you need talent that will challenge conventional thinking and not cave to the nay-sayers look for the ones who went against the tide and persevered in spite of the cardinal sin of “not fitting in.”

It’s not that conventional activities, such as chess, debate and sports, aren’t good, but looking further, even if it’s not on the resume, will help you uncover the hidden gems that others miss.

Flickr image credit: Bush Library

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