4 Key Reasons to Invest In Unconventional Talent

Leanne Lazarus • October 27, 2021

Diversity in organisations is linked to greater performance and innovation. Research has proven that more diverse companies tend to make higher profits than those with a more homogeneous task force.

Boost Your Profits

Absolutely, a diverse task force renders a greater performance, is more innovative and brings larger revenue to its company. By becoming flexible in your hiring principles and criteria, you can eliminate biases around gender, disability, and age: you are equipped to build a diverse team.

Lack of diversity often leads to convergent thinking. A task force that shares similar experiences and training tends to agree and reach a consensus faster since they similarly perceive problems. The long-term impact is narrow thinking and products that haven't met their full potential.

For example, eliminating emphasis on the candidates from Ivy League Schools. Through this, you're able to recruit candidates from varied social classes and ethnicities with the proper skill set, only that they did not afford or do not historically attend such schools.

Expand Your Talent Pool

If your hiring criteria seeks a highly specific candidate profile, then your hiring procedure could suffer both cost and time-wise. Every company seeks to hire a candidate that appears great on paper by meeting all the criteria. However, the same means that you are in competition with a host of other companies for the said 'perfect candidate.'

Thus, you might need to offer the 'ideal' candidate the highest salary offer to win them. Alternatively, you might need to begin the hiring procedure repeatedly, should they opt to go with another company's offer.

On the other hand, by crossing off unnecessary requirements such as a four-year college degree, you give room for more unconventional talents to apply: people that may lack these typical qualifications but have impeccable skills and drive needed to perform successfully.

Connect With Customers of Equally Diverse Backgrounds

Your customers are diverse: so should you. For instance, a chain restaurant can hire a marketer without a degree in marketing but with former industry experience in the same or different positions. Such a person is better positioned to relate to your customer base's pain points since they have the first-hand experience.

They are also more equipped to recommend an effective advertising campaign that is more likely to connect with your target market since they have been in the trenches.

Get Fresh Business Ideas

The more diverse a team is, the more unexpected and unique ideas they will bring. Their key attribute is 'unexpected.' Employees with unconventional talents and backgrounds contribute to areas beyond their position's scope and can adopt multilateral approaches to situations. Unconventional talents offer solutions to problems that companies don't know existed, which essentially makes your business stand out in a market flooded with similar solutions. 

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