#MondayMusing When Rules Don’t Matter

I was out with a friend for coffee last week. She’s an experienced resume writer, and pretty amazing all-around person. We were chatting about business, of course. Specifically, we were talking about rule breakers. 


I relayed to her a story about how I found a job ad a while back, where the person advertising wanted someone “out of the box.” So, I gave the business owner out of the box. 

I prepped by listening to a couple of his podcasts. I read his website. Saw he had a public Facebook page, and knew he was at a specific conference. Found his business license through the appropriate Secretary of State, pulled his personal cell phone number and called him. From there his voicemail said that he only checked text messages. So, I sent a very appropriate text message that said I was interested in the position. We had a few friendly exchanges, he was curious how I found his info, I explained. I concluded the conversation by giving him a book recommendation that lined up with his sales theory in his podcast. 

And then he told me to follow the rules and apply by contacting his HR person. 

My friend said, “He wasn’t looking for out of the box, he just created a bigger box.”

Yep, never heard from them. 

Looking back over my career, I had three significant hires with one advertisement. Why? Because the people all walked in and sold themselves. One guy was trying to tell me he could be a purchasing manager, but really the sales job he was doing on me, I saw that he was a natural salesperson. I put him through some paces, he broke a sweat. I relented after a few minutes, showed him the manufacturing plant, and he was hired a couple weeks later. He made more money his first year in sales, than he had ever seen on his W2. He totally knocked it out of the park. Another was hired as a sales manager, and 15 years later, is still there. The final was was actually hired into the position that was advertised.

Why did it work? Because each of those positions required guts and critical thinking. And they showed me they had “it” by showing up, and challenging me.

Rule breaking is important to many positions, like Project Management, Sales, and many leadership types positions - there are other positions as well. I would challenge you to identify and honor and respect the rule breakers. Find out why they are breaking the rules, and then if the reasons line up, explore the opportunity with them. It just takes a little of your time, and you never know what you’ll find. 

People keep saying to put the human back in human resources. That’s oversimplified to me. I say, bring the conversation back. Explore, ask, don’t assume, have fun with it all. When you job calls for a person to make decisions outside the box, respect their process, you may learn a new way of doing things.