Atypical profile: 27 tips for finding and keeping your nugget
Recruiting an atypical profile means hiring a candidate who differs from the established norms that usually qualify a defined profile for a position in a company. This atypical person is seen as an asset for the job because of his or her career path, experience, vision or unconventional skills. Some managers complain that by trying too hard to fit into the standard mould, most of their staff end up as "tarts". Hiring an exceptional person with high potential for the company, and not just another clone, is largely a good practice in talent management and is optimal for your inbound recruiting.
Here are 27 tips to help you find AND recruit your nugget:
9 tips for recognising them
Tip 1: abandon the standard route
Don't look for the diploma you need, look for the skills you need. Your nugget may be self-taught, may have gone back to school in between professional lives, and may often have had trying experiences that contrast with a clear-cut, untroubled career path.
Tenacious, they have a thick skin, never give up and know how to bounce back: the pulp never stays down.
Tip no. 2: forget the employee-of-the-month clone
Same old, same old? Out of the question: a chameleon blends into the background without enriching the space with harmony, colour, shape, visual composition or life.
The (atypical) job-hunter thinks differently: he projects himself and attaches a great deal of importance to the nature of his activity, the working atmosphere including the employees, whereas a standard profile thinks in terms of salary, grade and benefits.
Tip no. 3: get rid of the obedient soldier
Don't expect them to do what you ask, when you ask, in the way you prefer: you've lost the war beforehand on all fronts.
Instead, give them the opportunity to practise their combat sports as they see fit, so that if they're a sales person, for example, they can make sales soar: they're also an atypical profile for the competition, who place their sentries according to expected attacks.
An atypical profile is a gift for you, a nasty surprise for your competitors. In short, every day is Christmas.
Tip no. 4: Look for a rebellious personality who will shake things up in the right way
Rebellious doesn't necessarily mean reactionary or anarchist, but rather revolutionary in the positive sense of the term: an atypical profile has developed a spirit of independence and freedom of thought that drives it to seek the best ways to achieve results.
Don't forget: a wealth of different experiences means being confronted with different problems. Atypical people don't hesitate to think outside the box to find a new solution.
True rebels create value and even introduce the pleasure principle into their work and into the act of change.
Source: "Le gène dissident facteur clé de l'évolution des organisations", Denis Ettighoffer.
Tip 5: Prospect for a gifted or hypersensitive person
A high IQ, a gift for music or drawing, a sportsman, an outstanding cook (...): he may have been a precocious child.
What is certain is that today he is a gifted adult in his own right, having developed advanced analytical skills.
They are gifted with a strong sensitivity: their brain mingles with their emotions to provoke innovative associations of ideas and bring a new point of view, new approaches, often more human.
Tip 6: Recognise contrasting points of view
Illustration "On the roof of the world" © Arnaud Michel - artnoz.fr
Tip no. 7: Keep the brains trying to understand
Why do we act in this way? Why do we follow this procedure? Is it coherent? If they ask questions, that's a good sign: they need to understand the "why" and the "how", which sometimes differ from their way of thinking and their own logic.
That's fair enough: their priority is the result, not necessarily the method to be followed, which can be reassuring if they want to hide behind it in case of failure.
Tip no. 8: Browse multi-skilled profiles
Bad tongues like to describe an atypical profile as versatile. The wisest know how to recognise the richness of a career path: each professional experience brings new assets, new strings for those who know how to harness the power of the bow.
Tip no. 9: study the curious, they learn fast
More different experiences mean more ability to adapt to different contexts and work environments, as well as different personalities.
Learning is second nature. One of its reflexes is to grasp the elements and adapt quickly. More than a survival instinct, this is one of the conditions for professional fulfilment.
9 tips for recruiting them
Tip no. 10: "Lick" the wording of your advert
Tip 11: Make your search easier with software
By using Talentsoft's Hello Talent software, you can be proactive: no longer wait for candidates to respond to your job board advert, you can make your own selection of profiles by browsing them and easily evaluating them using the criteria you have entered (interpersonal skills, skills, atypical qualities, etc.).
Video overview of the Hello Talent recruitment solution (Talentsoft):
Tip 12: Develop an attractive employer brand
Tip no. 13: Hunt candidates on their own territory
Tip 14: Be an unusual person yourself
If you're looking to recruit an atypical profile, it's because you've set objectives, identified a need, a gap - in short, you want to get things moving.
To be ready to receive (and perceive) a different vision of the job, start by adopting the psychology of the atypical profile yourself. There's no better way of capturing their interest!
Tip 15: Find your nuggets in your CV library
For example, Eurécia Talent Management, part of the Eurécia HR suite, includes a recruitment module that helps you as soon as your advert is posted (or posted several times) on job boards: an atypical profile is bound to have set up an alert notifying them by email of adverts likely to be of interest to them.
Candidates respond and send in their CVs: you store them in your CV library integrated with Eurecia Talent Management and organise your tests and interviews in the same space.
Tip 16: Examine CVs with your prejudices at bay
A short list of thoughts to banish from now on:
- they don't have the right profile, experience in our field or the right qualifications,
- they are unstable because they have never worked for a company for very long,
- they are overqualified,
- he's too young, he's too old,
- he's a fan of funk music, his culture won't fit in with the company's policy,
- he's a fan of funk music, he must be macho,
- he's a boy, he's not going to fit in with the team (all girls!),
- he'll overshadow me,
- He'll get bored, that's for sure,
- All we have to do is pay him by the slingshot, then we'll see.
Tip 17: Map your soft and hard skills
Identify soft skills, those famous atypical assets such as personality, team spirit, infectious good humour, a desire to learn and extra-professional experience.
Also look out for mad skills, those abilities that are positively disruptive: the unusual aspects of a profile, the slightly "crazy" aspects, everything that sets an atypical profile apart, such as a project that came to fruition thanks to a surprising path, or a behaviour that is sufficiently extrovert to engage others: These mad skills are conducive to the development of collective intelligence, and therefore to greater productivity within the company.
Tip 18: Pamper the candidate's experience
While the employer brand appeals to the rare pearl, the atypical profile is also very sensitive to the exchanges you have with them: choice of words, conditions of the exchanges, types of questions, etc. They attach enormous importance to the human aspects and much prefer an assessment test on a practical case rather than a handwriting analysis (which still uses this technique today).
They attach a great deal of importance to the human aspects and much prefer an evaluation test based on a practical case rather than a graphological analysis (who still uses this technique today?).
Software from Eurécia or Talentsoft incorporates all the essential functionalities for monitoring the candidate without false notes, at every stage of the recruitment process: talent acquisition, facilitated responses, management of the relationship with the candidate, CV library and collaborative notes.
You can't see yourself managing all that with Excel, can you?
9 tips to keep it that way
Tip 19: Prepare the ground
You've found the perfect candidate: they'll be arriving soon! Don't forget to prepare all the information your new employee needs: data on the company, the team, how to use certain tools such as the knowledge base. They need to understand the organisation in order to get to grips with it better.
Tip 20: Prepare the team
"Relax: we haven't recruited the Tasmanian devil, just an atypical personality", you might warn, specifying why you've recruited this person, and delimiting the roles and responsibilities of each person, so as to leave no room for equivocation: it's impossible to say whether or not an atypical profile will find itself "between two chairs".
Tip no. 21: Give them a challenge (without overworking them)
Your new recruit has come to get involved: he or she believes in the job and the company, and wants to help the company move forward. So keep them busy (but not too busy): boredom is the worst enemy, as is a lack of a social life.
Tip 22: Let them breathe
Or ask them to run slower, because their hyperactivity can play tricks on them: forbid them to check their work email at the weekend. Prefer Mondays in the sun, when your troops are on their toes.
Tip no. 23: listening must be mutual
Some managers hire a constructive rebel to get things moving, but don't allow experience or a new method to express itself. This is a contradiction in terms.
It makes no sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people to tell us what to do.
Steve Jobs
Tip 24: Be transparent and agile
An atypical profile is sensitive to frankness and is capable of listening to comments, provided they are constructive: they know how to be agile in correcting faults.
Their ability to question depends on the transparency of your words and arguments: remember that once they understand things, they are highly adaptable. So prefer straight talk to cynicism, it works much better.
Tip 25: Make sure you satisfy his need for recognition
Sensitivity is their strength, and sometimes their weakness: they constantly need to be reassured about the quality of the work they're doing, as well as the collaborative working environment.
So he regularly surveys those around him. He lives his job like a passion.
Tip no. 26: Let him share / instil his sensitivity
Exchanges and the quality of human relations are the driving forces behind the quality of their expertise: an atypical profile needs to compare points of view and is always thirsty for new knowledge and new methods.
They are just as keen to share their discoveries: their generosity in sharing knowledge and know-how has a positive influence on company customs and the team.
The more you share, the more you want to share: that's how the collaborative enterprise maintains its competitive edge. We refer you to the notion of collective intelligence already discussed in this online magazine.
Why did we hire 55,000 brains if we're only using three of them?
Woody Morcott, former CEO of Dana Corporation
Tip no. 27: Judge results over the long term
It takes time to integrate, and another to drown out the competition: an atypical profile must first feel like a fish in water before becoming an octopus and grabbing all the toughest jobs.
Software dedicated to human resources management, recruitment and talent management, such as TalentSoft or Eurécia, helps you to retain talent, assess their performance and manage and develop skills: They allow you to automate many time-consuming tasks.
This means you can concentrate on developing all your talent and making your company shine like never before in its market.
Atypical profile or recruiter? Tell us about your experience: add your views and experiences to this article - comments are welcome!
PS: any resemblance with real facts and existing people is not fortuitous.
Article translated from French