Why You Shouldn’t Hire Another You
Mirror-Hires Lead to Corporate “In-Breeding”
When you recruit and hire new employees, do you often find that you’re searching for people just like you? If you do hire employees this way, then rest assured that you’re not alone. At the same time, however, you’re also just like many bosses who are selling themselves and their companies short.
There are several very positive reasons to hire “clones.” Clearly, you know what you want in a good recruit. You know what works in your company in terms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, outlooks and behaviors. In brief, you know what leads to top-notch performance and victory. Therefore, it’s easy to believe, if you take that philosophy one step further, that the more candidates you hire with your specific set of skills, the more successful you and your company will be.
On the other hand, by hiring a clone, you may be missing out on a number of opportunities that may prove difficult and problematic. That’s because for the sake of conformity, you might be rejecting people with skills both complementary and supplemental to your company that would permit its culture to grow and expand with outcomes that could create a more productive, innovative, challenging and rewarding environment.
The inevitable result is that the new hires look like, think like and act like you, the boss. This “group think” situation results in employees not challenging each other, not asking enough “why” questions, settling for agreement where disagreement would conceivably produce more options, perspectives, opinions and viewpoints.
Consider being open to diversity, not just in terms of race, gender or sexual orientation, but also in terms of skills, attitudes, interests, backgrounds and experiences. The key words here are “collaboration” and “innovation.”
