Blog Post: An Accidental Hire's Legacy

"I was an accidental hire," Marshall shared.  "I was just sick of my old job, and had walked into the LA branch of this company to apply for a job, any job.  The Sales Director interviewed me that day, and asked what sales experience I had. I told her 'None.'
"'There's something about you, though,' she said to me. 'You're hired.'
"So I go into the office the next day, and she takes me to a cubicle, shakes my hand, tells me good luck, and walks out the door, box in hand.  That had been her plan: hire me, some kid off the street with no experience, and quit the next day.  And, she didn't tell anybody that she'd hired me."
Marshall sat in the cube for two days doing nothing. Called a few friends, told them about getting a job where everyone else thought he was a visitor or something. On the third day, the Branch President stopped by the cubicle and asked Marshall who he was. When he explained how the previous Director had hired him then disappeared, the President sighed: "oh, boy."

Perhaps it was to her credit that the Branch President didn't fire Marshall on that day. Instead, she handed him a phone book and said: "Let's see what you can do."  By the end of the month, Marshall had made 17 sales -- pretty good for a rookie with absolutely no experience, either in sales or in the industry. 

"You've got something, kid," the Branch President had told him, and handed him a proper leads list.
 
Eight years later, Marshall is a Director of Sales for his own branch.  He hires some of his staff based on similar gut feelings.  True, he admits, he was a payback hire, and the Branch Director really hadn't sensed much of anything.  However, he reasons, the Branch President must have seen something herself, since she hadn't fired Marshall right away. 
 
"Raylene?" Marshall looked at the dry-erase board where his sales reps document all their sales.  Raylene has 7 sales so far, with a goal of 10 for the month. "She served my coffee before she came here. She just had the right attitude, day in, day out. GREAT customer service.  Pleasant experience each time, even with all the chaos in the shop around him.  Chris sold appliances at KMart.  He didn't know much about sales, but he had great follow up.
 
"So I hired them.  Because I figured, they had something I can't teach. I can teach them how to sell something, you know?  I can teach them about the product. But I can't teach them customer service, or ethics."

Marshall appears to be hiring, either consciously or unconsciously, people who were like him when he was hired.  In doing so, he bucks the typical corporate thinking that one should only hire people with experience in the field.  Marshall was looking for a different kind of experience.  A life experience that had shaped these people to be potential salespeople who just happened to be stuck outside the place where they could shine.
 
"You're looking at me like I'm crazy," Marshall smiled.  For which I apologized, my face tends to adopt that inquisitive appearance naturally.
 
Because Marshall isn't crazy.  He hires experienced salespeople as well.  And he makes sure that his sales office is arranged in such a way that the sales neophytes are sitting next to an experienced rep, allowing the cross-pollination of ideas.  For while Chris is learning sales from Kim, an experienced rep, Kim is also being reminded of a few follow-up techniques that she may have known about, but hadn't been using since coming to this branch.  And Oscar, sitting next to Raylene, is observing how a softer approach could temper his aggressive sales technique that, frankly, turned a few people off.

Marshall's hiring methods speak towards the strength of diversity.  When one hears of diversity these days, one tends to think of racial or gender makeup of a team.  But diversity awareness should be so much more than that, moving even beyond personality styles to experience background.  A company that hires people with a particular resume may find itself challenged when seeking to grow. If all you've got are people who all know of the same thing, then you're only prepared to go in one direction.   Challenging people to stretch beyond their typical roles, both new and experienced, raises the bar for everyone on the team.