The Problem with “Hiring for Potential” as a Key Strategy to Increase Diversity
This is #IncreaseDiversity, a weekly newsletter series + Increase Diversity Toolbox sharing best practices for employers who want to learn how to….well, increase diversity. To see previous editions, visit JenniferTardy.com. | IG: @IncreaseDiversity
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In our two previous Increase Diversity newsletter article editions, we have been unpacking this idea of shifting our perspective of who is and who is not qualified. If you have not read those article editions, you can check them out here:
Today’s article is not a part of the above series, yet it has a critical relationship to it. We will unpack the problem that I have with “hiring for potential” being used as a key strategy to increase diversity.
To get started, let’s first make sure that we are on the same page with what it means to hire for potential. Hiring for potential means different things in different workplaces. For some, it means considering transferable skills rather than traditional skills as qualifications. For other workplaces, it means finding coachable candidates rather than experienced candidates. For other workplaces, hiring for potential can mean something totally different altogether. I am not opposed to the strategy of hiring for potential in general, but using hiring for potential as a key strategy to increase diversity gives me cause for pause.
Here are two reasons why:
Reason #1: Your “hire for potential” candidates are likely qualified (already). Rather than creating a strategy to hire for potential, first reevaluate what your team perceives as qualified. Transferable skills, for example, do not make someone unqualified. Transferable skills are a different way to be qualified. Avoid bringing up the strategy of hiring for potential until you have created a deep level of awareness around eliminating the bias baked into how we perceive who is and who is not qualified. Until we can effectively assess a person’s knowledge, skills, and abilities without bias, there will continue to be too many individuals who are qualified to do the work that get overlooked because their skillsets are nontraditional. That is how powerful bias is.
Reason #2: You are positioning your “hire for potential” employees at a disadvantage. Hiring for potential as a key strategy in diversity recruiting creates a stigma that suggests that in order to increase diversity, we must soften the qualifications or hire unqualified people. This perpetuates the false notion that historically underrepresented groups are getting positions that they are not qualified to do in order to help a company meet its initiative to increase diversity. Increasing diversity does not mean softening qualifications, again, it means eliminating bias so that we can see that someone is qualified to do the job successfully.
As I shared in the beginning, there is a place for hiring (and even promoting) for potential, but it is too early and too soon to connect this conversation to our initiative to increase diversity. Even with the best intentions, it can be distracting and present negative outcomes. I would recommend leaving it out of the conversation for now and focus solely on correcting the lens through which we perceive qualified. Focus efforts today to make sure that the basic or required qualifications are truly following the model of minimum, essential qualifications to do the job successfully. Focus on identifying the transferable skills that make a person completely qualified to do the role. And once we can get this working effectively in our workplaces, there may not even be a need to talk about potential. Who knows…
