The JobSync Blog
Succeed in Recruiting by Hiring Failures
December 15, 2011
Jeffrey Stibel is Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet, the Fortune 500 company known as a leader in providing credit building and credibility solutions for businesses. He is also a lover of failure. But be warned: If you ever give him a canned “Miss America” answer in an interview when he asks you about a time when you failed, you will probably fail to get the job.
Why the embracement of failure? As Stibel explains in a recent article from the Harvard Business Review, committing a mistake forces one to analyze and reflect on what went wrong and how to correct it next time. On the other hand, succeeding is not always readily explainable. In fact, he thinks success is often simply a matter of luck.
A wall at Stibel’s corporate headquarters invites company employees to write about a time in their life when they failed. But he takes the necessity of failure one step further. As Stibel explains, “We don't just encourage risk taking at our offices: we demand failure. If you’re not failing every now and then, you’re probably not advancing. Mistakes are the predecessors to both innovation and success, so it is important to celebrate mistakes as a central component of any culture.”
Stibel’s emphasis and approach to failure can also help guide your recruiting and hiring. A candidate’s response to past failures offers a window into their potential for growth as well as their character. These factors are critical, as they will help paint a picture of what a candidate can achieve for a business as well as how well they will fit in with a company’s corporate culture.
If success is silver, then failure is golden. So go for the gold, and you will hopefully end up hiring a candidate who is platinum.
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