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What happens when experience stops being a teacher and starts making us a little too comfortable? I have been in the recruiting business for 30 years, and if there is one thing I have learned, it is that the people who continue to grow are usually the people who continue to learn.
Recently, my mother completed Leadership Winter Park, (https://www.winterpark.org/lwp/), and I could not be more proud of her! At the same time, my brother, Chef Brandon McGlamery, a two-time James Beard Award nominee, is taking on another new challenge in his 50s by launching The Reverie in Winter Park’s historic Hannibal Square. Two very different paths, but the same lesson.
It is never too late to learn something new, meet new people, take a chance, or start another chapter. After three decades in recruiting and staffing, I still learn something new almost every day. The hiring market changes. Technology changes. Companies change. People change. The way we communicate, lead teams, and build businesses continues to evolve. Experience certainly matters. I have built my career around evaluating it. Among all else, experience should teach you, how much you still do not know.
Curiosity Is One of the Qualities I Look for Most
Some of the best leaders and professionals I have met are naturally curious. They listen. They ask good questions. They seek out people who know things they do not. They are willing to adjust when something is not working. They put themselves in situations where they have to stretch. They remain students.
That is what struck me about my mother completing Leadership Winter Park and Brandon launching The Reverie at this point in his career. Neither needed to do it. They chose to do it. One chose to invest more deeply in leadership, relationships, and her community. The other, after an already accomplished career in the restaurant business, chose to take on the challenge and uncertainty of building something new.
Hiring Should Look Forward, Not Just Backward
There is something admirable about people who are still willing to be beginners. And after spending 30 years evaluating talent, I believe there is an important hiring lesson in that as well. We spend a tremendous amount of time in hiring by looking backward. Where did someone work? What title did they have? How many years of experience do they have? Have they used this particular system? Have they worked in this exact industry? Those things matter, but they only tell us what someone has already done. Great hiring also requires us to understand what someone is capable of doing next.
Learning Agility Can Tell You Something Experience Cannot
Harvard Business Review has written about the importance of learning agility, or the ability to learn from experience, adapt and apply new approaches when circumstances change. Research highlighted by HBR has found learning agility to be one of the most meaningful indicators of high performance. After 30 years of interviewing people, that makes a lot of sense to me. You can teach many skills. It is much harder to teach someone to be curious.
It is hard to teach someone to genuinely want to improve, seek feedback, adapt quickly, and take ownership when they are faced with something they have never done before. Some people demonstrate this naturally. They can tell you about a time they were thrown into a situation they had never experienced and found a way through it. They have taught themselves new skills. They have taken on responsibilities before they felt completely ready. They have sought out mentors, changed industries, learned new technology or stepped into uncomfortable situations because they knew it would make them better. Those stories matter.
Hire for Where Someone Can Go
I would rather hear someone say, “Give me the opportunity. I will learn what I need to learn, adapt quickly and I will not let you down,” and then show me a history that proves it, versus listening to someone simply recite everything they already know. That does not mean experience becomes less important. Quite the opposite. Experience combined with curiosity, humility and adaptability is incredibly valuable. But companies should be careful not to hire only for the person someone has already been. Hire for where they can go.
Watching my mother complete Leadership Winter Park and Brandon build The Reverie reminded me of something I hope I never forget myself. Thirty years into this profession, I still have plenty to learn. There will always be another person who can teach me something, another relationship worth building, another idea worth considering and another opportunity to get better. Congratulations, Mom. And good luck to Brandon and the team at The Reverie as they begin this next chapter.
Both are great reminders that experience should never be the reason we stop learning. If anything, it should teach us just how valuable learning really is. That is true in life. And after 30 years in recruiting, I believe it is one of the most important things we should be looking for when we hire.
