Atypical profiles: 27 tips for finding and keeping your nugget
Recruiting an atypical profile means hiring a candidate who differs from the established norms that usually qualify a defined profile for a position in a company. This atypical person appears to be an asset for the job, because of his or her career path, experience, vision or unconventional skills. Indeed, some managers complain that by trying too hard to fit into the standard mold, most employees end up as "tarts". Hiring an exceptional person with high potential for the company, rather than just another clone, is largely a good practice in talent management and optimal for your inbound recruiting.
Here are 27 tips to help you find AND recruit your nugget:
9 tips for recognizing them
Tip 1: Abandon the standard route
Don't look for the diploma you need, look for the skills you need. Your nugget may be self-taught, may have gone back to school in between professional lives, and may often have had trying experiences that contrast with a clear-cut, untroubled career path.
They're tenacious, tough-skinned, never give up and know how to bounce back: the pulp never stays down.
Tip n°2: forget the employee-of-the-month clone
Same old, same old? Out of the question: a chameleon blends into the background without enriching the space with harmony, color, form, visual composition or life.
The (atypical) job-hunter thinks differently: he projects himself and attaches a great deal of importance to the nature of his activity, the work atmosphere including his colleagues, whereas a standard profile thinks in terms of salary, grade and benefits.
Tip n°3: get rid of the obedient soldier
Don't expect him to do what you ask, when you ask, in the way you prefer: you've lost the war beforehand on all fronts.
Instead, give him the opportunity to practice his combat sports as he sees fit, to make sales explode if, for example, he's a salesman: he's also an atypical profile for the competition, which places its sentries according to expected attacks.
An atypical profile is a gift for you, a nasty surprise for your competitors. In short, every day is Christmas.
Tip No. 4: Look for a rebellious personality who shakes things up in the right way.
Rebellious doesn't necessarily mean reactionary or anarchist, but rather revolutionary in the positive sense of the word: an atypical profile has developed a spirit of independence and freedom of thought that drives it to seek the best means to achieve results.
Remember: a wealth of different experiences includes confrontation with different issues. The atypical profile is not afraid to think outside the box to find a novel solution.
True rebels create value and even introduce the pleasure principle into work and the act of change.
Source: "Le gène dissident facteur clé de l'évolution des organisations", Denis Ettighoffer.
Tip n°5: prospect a gifted or hypersensitive person
High intelligence quotient, gift for music or drawing, sportsman, outstanding cook (...): he may have been a precocious child.
What is certain is that today he is a gifted adult in his own right, having developed advanced analytical skills.
He's also gifted with a strong sensitivity: his brain mingles with his emotions to provoke innovative associations of ideas and bring a new point of view, new approaches, often more human.
Tip n°6: discern contrasting points of view
Illustration "On the roof of the world" © Arnaud Michel - artnoz.fr
Tip 7: Keep the brains trying to figure it out
Why do we act this way? Why do we follow this procedure? Is it coherent? If he's asking questions, that's a good sign: he needs to understand the "why" and the "how", which sometimes differ from his own way of thinking, his own logic.
This is a good thing: his priority is the result, not necessarily the method to be followed, which can be reassuring if you want to hide behind it in case of failure.
Tip no. 8: browse versatile profiles
Evil tongues like to describe an atypical profile as versatile. The wisest know how to recognize the richness of a career path: each professional experience brings new assets, new strings for those who know how to harness the power of the bow.
Tip no. 9: study the curious, they learn fast
More different experiences mean more ability to adapt to different contexts and work environments, as well as different personalities.
Learning is second nature. One of its reflexes is to grasp the elements and adapt quickly. More than a survival instinct, it's one of the conditions for professional fulfillment.
9 recruitment tips
Tip n°10: "Lick" your ad copy
Tip 11: Make your search easier with software
By using Talentsoft's Hello Talent software, you can be proactive: instead of waiting for candidates to respond to your job board ad, you can make your own selection of profiles by browsing through them and easily evaluating them using the criteria you've entered (interpersonal skills, competencies, atypical qualities, etc.).
Video overview of the Hello Talent recruitment solution (Talentsoft):
Tip 12: Develop an attractive employer brand
Tip 13: Hunt the candidate on his own territory
Tip no. 14: Be an atypical person yourself
If you're looking to recruit an atypical profile, it's because you've set objectives, identified a need, a gap - in short, you want to get things moving.
To be ready to receive (and perceive) a different vision of the job, start by adopting the psychology of the atypical profile yourself. There's no better way to capture their interest!
Tip n°15: Source your nuggets from your CV library
For example, Eurécia Gestion des Talents, part of the Eurécia HR suite, includes a recruitment module that helps you as soon as your advert is (multi)posted on job boards: an atypical profile is bound to have set up an alert notifying him/her by e-mail of adverts likely to interest him/her.
Candidates reply and send their CVs: you store them in your CV library , integrated into Eurecia Talent Management, and organize your tests and interviews within the same space.
Tip n°16: Examine CVs with your prejudices at bay
A short list of thoughts to banish from now on:
- he doesn't have the right profile, experience in our field, or the right diploma,
- he's unstable because he's never been with a company for very long,
- he's overqualified,
- he's too young, he's too old,
- he's a fan of funk music, his culture won't fit in with the company's policy,
- he's a fan of funk music, he must be macho,
- he's a boy, he's not going to fit in with the team (all girls!),
- he'll overshadow me,
- he'll get bored, that's for sure,
- We'll just have to pay him by the slingshot, and then we'll see.
Tip n°17: map soft skills and mad skills
Identify soft skills, those famous atypical assets such as personality, team spirit, infectious good humor, willingness to learn and extra-professional experience.
Also look out for mad skills, those abilities that are positively disruptive: the out-of-the-ordinary aspects of a profile, the slightly "crazy" sides, everything that makes an atypical profile stand out, such as a project that has come to fruition thanks to a surprising path, or a behavior that is sufficiently extrovert to engage others: these mad skills are conducive to the development of collective intelligence, and therefore to greater productivity within the company.
Tip no. 18: Pamper the candidate's experience
If employer branding is attractive to the rare pearl, the atypical profile is also very sensitive to the exchanges you will have with him/her: choice of words, conditions of exchanges, types of questions, etc. He/she attaches a great deal of importance to human aspects.
They attach a great deal of importance to human aspects, and much prefer an evaluation test based on a practical case rather than a graphological analysis (who still uses this technique today?).
Software from Eurecia or Talentsoft integrates all the essential functionalities needed to follow up candidates without false notes, at every stage of the recruitment process: talent acquisition, facilitated responses, candidate relationship management, CV library and collaborative notes.
You can't see yourself managing all that with Excel, can you?
9 tips to keep it that way
Tip n°19: prepare the ground
You've found the perfect candidate: they'll be arriving soon! Don't forget to prepare all the information your new employee will need: data on the company, the team, how to use certain tools such as the knowledge base. They need to understand the organization in order to get to grips with it.
Tip 20: Prepare the team
"Relax: we haven't recruited the Tasmanian devil, just an atypical personality" you can warn, specifying why you've recruited this person, as well as delimiting everyone's roles and responsibilities, so as to leave no room for equivocation: it's impossible to say whether or not an atypical profile will find itself "between two chairs".
Tip n°21: Give your new recruit a challenge (without overexerting him or her)
Your new recruit has come to invest himself: he believes in the position, in the company, and his desire is to help the company progress. Keep them busy (but not too busy): boredom is their worst enemy, as is the absence of a social life.
Tip 22: Let him breathe
Or ask him to run slower, as his hyperactivity can play tricks on him: forbid him to check his work e-mail on weekends. Prefer Mondays in the sun, when your troops are in full swing.
Tip n°23: listening must be mutual
Some managers hire a constructive rebel to get things moving, but don't let experience or a new method have its say. This is a contradiction in terms.
It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people to tell us what to do.
Steve Jobs
Tip 24: Be transparent and agile
An atypical profile is sensitive to openness and is capable of listening to remarks, provided they are constructive: they know how to be agile in correcting faults.
His ability to question depends on the transparency of your words and arguments: remember that once he understands things, he is highly adaptable. So prefer straight talk to cynicism - it works much better.
Tip n°25: make sure you satisfy his need for recognition
Sensitivity is his strength, and sometimes his weakness: he constantly needs to be reassured about the quality of the work he's doing, as well as about the collaborative working environment.
So he regularly polls the people around him. He lives his job like a passion.
Tip n°26: Let him share / instill his sensibility
Exchange and the quality of human relations are the driving forces behind the quality of his expertise: an atypical profile needs to compare points of view and is always thirsty for new knowledge and new methods.
As much as they want to share their discoveries: their generosity in sharing knowledge and know-how has a positive influence on company customs and teamwork.
The more you share, the more you want to share: this is how the collaborative enterprise maintains its competitive edge. We refer you to the notion of collective intelligence already discussed in this online magazine.
Why did we hire 55,000 brains if we're only using three of them?
Woody Morcott, former CEO of Dana Corporation
Tip no. 27: judge results over the long term
It takes a while to fit in, and another to drown out the competition: an atypical profile must first feel like a fish in water before becoming an octopus and grabbing all the toughest jobs.
Software dedicated to human resources, recruitment and talent management, such as TalentSoft or Eurecia, help you to retain talent, evaluate results, manage and develop skills: they enable you to automate many time-consuming tasks.
So you can concentrate on nurturing all your talents and making your company shine like never before in its market.
Atypical profile or recruiter? Tell us about your experience: enrich this article with your views and experiences, comments are open!
PS: any resemblance with real facts and existing people is not fortuitous.
Article translated from French