Shiny vs Scrappy: How to Hire Beyond the Archetypes

#leaders

There are lot of investment team searches this time of year. We discuss a key challenge to finding talent for growth: our own cognitive bias. We hear a lot about two talent archetypes - the well credentialed, highly polished heavyweights and the gritty underdogs. It pays to look beyond this first layer to ensure the right person fills the seat.

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It’s a mistake to diminish a very large cohort of young, future investors and possible firm leaders down to just two things, but we do it all the time, often to our detriment. It’s just so darn easy to put people in buckets. Pollsters do it. Colleges do it. So why not investment firms, too? I’ll provide a few very data-oriented reasons why this can drive poor decisions, but first, let’s outline our usual suspects a bit more. On one side of the ring, we have the shiny, or very well credentialed and polished candidates. Squaring off across from them are the scrappy, the grit-filled, determined, adversity-overcoming candidates.