Talent is More Important than Tenure

Honestly...these are two different things.  They are unrelated.  First, I suppose definitions are in order.  I'm "tweaking" the standard dictionary definitions, by the way.

Tenure - Status gained by someone in a particular profession or discipline purely by practicing that profession or discipline for an extended period of time.

Talent - The ability to consistently deliver high quality results, continuously improve, lead, and maintain strong, healthy relationships through open and honest communication.

Whew, that was tough!

Let me first start with my own experience.

In the mid 90's, I decided to go back to college for computer science. I was 30 and knew nothing about computers. My wife actually had to teach me how to use a mouse. Ahhh, I can still hear her dear, sweet words ... "Double Click!!  NO!! NOT THAT FAST!!!!!".

So here I am, in the computer science graduate program (I had an undergraduate psychology degree) with a bunch of fresh-out-of-high-school computer geeks...and I just learned how to double click. I remember my first computer lab where we were learning C++, and the instructor told us to "open this file on the desktop, select all, copy, and paste in the IDE". Yeah, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about...copy? paste? huh? Someone took pity on me and helped me out. Whew.

Fast forward two years. During those two years, I rarely slept, read everything I could get my hands on, took on web programming side jobs that I was in no way qualified to handle, and ultimately caught up to (and surpassed some of) the fresh-out-of-high-school computer geeks. I loved this stuff. I actually ended up administering those same computer labs where I originally had to have help copying and pasting. I LOVED Linux. I LOVED open source. Heck, I even kinda liked windows stuff back then :-)

Here we are, at the height of the dot-com boom. I saw so many people graduate that I felt had average (at best) software engineering skills getting high paying jobs. I, on the other hand, was still attending classes, living in a two bedroom apartment with my three small kids, and riding my bicycle to campus. I was really, really tired of living on student loans and not being able to afford ANYTHING. So, I decided to see what I could find, even though I didn't have my Master's degree yet. I was a much better programmer and engineer than most people that I knew that graduated after all...this should be EASY!

My resume displayed about one and a half years of "real" work...which was actually a bit exaggerated...but dangit...I KNEW I could take on any programming job!

To my surprise, I couldn't even get my foot in the door. If I did get an interview, it always ended up with "yeah, you just don't have enough experience". ARGHH. I didn't have the tenure, but I knew I had the talent!!

Months went by, and I finally landed a cold fusion programming gig...my first introduction to Dilbert-land. It was a great experience.

Now, fast forward another year. The dot-com bust. I was laid off with about 50 others.

Back to the job hunt. Well, evidently that one additional year of "experience", i.e. "tenure" didn't mean anything. Again, I got the "yeah, you just don't have enough experience".

Finally, I interviewed with someone that for some reason, trusted me. He was looking for talent, and didn't care so much about tenure.

That was an amazing experience. He gave me a chance. It proved to be mutually beneficial for me personally and professionally, and for the company. We were eventually acquired by Intuit, which was another great experience. The funny thing is that Intuit would have NEVER hired me directly since I didn't have the tenure!

Fast forward to present day. I'm currently a manager, responsible for a project management group. One thing that I've found out is that hiring for talent is HARD. Hiring for tenure is EASY. I find myself looking over resumes thinking "wow, they have a bagillion years of experience, they must have talent!".

So, I understand now why those hiring appear to prefer tenure over talent. It's because it's so hard to determine if someone HAS talent before you hire them.

I'm not saying that tenure means "nothing". It does. With NO tenure, success is unlikely. However, focus on talent. A truly talented person will of course have some tenure.

Hiring for talent is hard. Take your time, be creative. Don't assume that just because someone has years and years of "experience" that they are automatically talented...you will regret it if you do.