Hiring the Right Person in the Wrong Seat with Thomas Brunskill of Forage

How often have you hired the right person for the wrong seat? 

Here’s how that happens. 

A person is identified and it is assumed that because of their background that they crush it for you. After all, they are already doing it for someone else.

Perfect logic, right? Nope!

The reason this logic is so dangerous for your company is that current skills are just a small part of success. As we have all experienced, by going above and beyond to land that “rockstar” from a name brand company. Only to have them crash and burn within the first 90 days. 

To avoid this dilemma in the future, we simply need to understand the person’s desires and level of accomplishment first. Interviewing to understand, not to sell.

This produces much stronger evidence to predict of success of your new hire in your unique business. 

Guest Bio:

Tom Brunskill is the co-founder and CEO of Forage which is changing the world of career discovery and skill building. 

Before moving to San Francisco, Tom was a corporate lawyer at a multinational law firm in Australia. It was during his own career journey that Tom discovered that an education and a degree doesn’t necessarily translate to knowing how to do a specific job role. He also realized just how inequitable the education-to-workforce pathway is. 

After observing the unfair advantage those with access to connections or educational opportunities had, Tom made it his mission to provide anyone the ability to learn skills through virtual job simulations produced by the world’s top companies, 

By breaking down barriers to gaining workplace-specific skills.

Tom hopes to level the opportunity playing field and empower anyone to pursue their dream career.

TODAY WE DISCUSS

• Why your company might be the wrong seat for the right candidate
• How to avoid wrong seat hires

HIRING STORY

This isn’t a story about a hire we did make, but a hire we wanted to make and didn’t pull off.

We were building out our leadership team between our Series A and Series B. Obviously in an early-stage company, getting the right leaders into your organization is crucial. Leaders in early-stage environments have a disproportionate influence on the ultimate success or demise of a company so the stakes are high.

On this particular search for this VP role, I was finding it really tough. It was the middle of 2021 when start-ups were sitting on a record amount of capital and there was a real pinch finding exceptional talent...

Challenge?

• Too many people end up in the wrong seats. 
  • Education on what the roles look like
  • Gap between the candidate's perspective and what the role really is
  • Realistic depiction of what it is like to work in the company
    • Attract the right people
    • Le 
  • Companies use the wrong signals when they hire
    • Schools, companies
    • Don't predict future success

Why is this important to the company?

• High attrition 73% failure rate
• SHRM reports that the cost of replacing an employee is approximately 33% of that employee’s salary 
• But that’s just the direct cost of having to find and replace that employee. It doesn’t take into account the indirect costs of a disengaged, non-aligned workforce.
• My broader take is that recruitment processes traditionally focus on getting bums on seats rather than the right bums on the right seats. Until you figure out how to design a process that gets the right people into the right roles for the long-term, employers will continue losing millions in direct costs and lost productivity. 

Rick’s Nuggets:

• What a person desires needs to be discovered in the 1st conversation!
• Do they get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it

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