THE REVENGE OF ATYPICAL PROFILES
Atypical candidates seem increasingly popular in today’s corporate market. Hard skills, the relevance of past experiences, soft skills and personality are now preferred to the traditional requirements of academic qualifications, experience and age.
How strange to view as atypical people who show their true colours or openly display their personal opinions, their uniqueness and their disagreement with corporate dogmas!
The value of the atypical profile
The HR culture is constantly evolving and adjusting along with societal changes. In this field, upheavals often arise from start-ups, which dynamically break new ground by challenging the status quo.
Today’s atypical profiles’ increased attention is no exception to this trend. As a matter of fact, recruiters viewed such profiles as hazardous due to companies’ management culture, reluctant to bring on board individuals allegedly unfit for the organisation’s hierarchical and structural rigidity.
As start-ups and their non-traditional modus operandi have sprung up, so has a global awareness of the tremendous potential of these formerly dismissed personalities. These atypical profiles successfully established themselves as innovators, with unconventional backgrounds and diverse characters, bringing fresh perspectives to the company’s management, objectives and problem-solving style.
While the clone syndrome remains a reality for both practical and historical reasons, organisations are now learning the full benefit of a bold recruitment approach. While creating teams with similar backgrounds, personalities, views and operating methods used to seem obvious, building high-performing and pioneering teams involves diverse perspectives and atypical profiles.
Following this pattern, the old age-diploma-experience triptych is now evolving towards soft skills lens and mad skills. Companies rely on these newcomers to think outside the box, take a fresh look at global strategy and tackle challenges with innovative solutions. This new impulse creates emulation and even constructive in-house competition, overcoming habits, fatigue and standardised processes established for years in various organisations.
Ideas and debates, when not stretched to barren ends, fuel innovation within the organisations. With seamless and efficient communication, this plurality inspires all to speak freely, challenge and express their uniqueness leading to innovation.
Embracing the atypical manager
Standing out, daring… these new modern management mottos enable companies to entrust atypical people with management roles. Companies’ willingness to involve atypical managers in their teams becomes a reality, paving the way for many towards leadership roles previously unavailable to them. Once too young or not young enough, under-qualified or under-experienced, too eccentric or too shy, they are now acknowledged and attractive for what they are: genuine.
They all share the common struggle of finding their way in a labour market that discriminates against them on principle. But actually, their strength likely lies in their own awareness of this reality: empathy, attentiveness and connection. Daring the atypical manager also means asserting skills such as boldness, initiative, autonomy and creativity as noble and driving qualities.
Entrusting such personalities with this role also involves breaking away from old habits, patterns and standards for business leaders. Expecting to deal with atypical profiles within a “traditional” management framework is antagonistic.
This is not an easy path; it demands letting go and trust, autonomy and a radical break with traditional work patterns.
By Cedric Lefebvre
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