When Making Your Next Hire, Think About M&Ms (Seriously)

Think of an M&M — great candy filling on the inside, colorful candy coating on the outside. That is today’s worker — talents and passions on the inside, diversity on the outside. We choose M&M’s based on their filling — the candy coating is a bonus. We hire employees based on their talents and passions (inside) — their diversity (outside) is a bonus.

In our intellectual-age workplace, great employee contribution comes from “inside” our employees — their intellectual capital — evidenced by their talents, strengths and passions. How employees think their way through their day, observing, assessing and responding in high value ways, is what drives company success. Employees who are hired into roles that use their talents and strengths and are passionate about what they do contribute more significantly.

The right person for the job is the person who has the right aptitude to do the job; it has nothing to do with the person’s age, gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, religion or other distinction. Science supports that our aptitudes (talents, strengths and passions) are built into our brain’s hardwiring, not into our age, gender, ethnicity, etc. That means that the right employee, the person who has the right combination of talents and passions to do the job, may come in the “form” of a Boomer or an X’er, a Greek or an Italian, a man or a woman, a Muslim or a Christian. The outside has no direct correlation to the performance power of the inside — we hire for the filling and get an extra benefit from the candy coating.

Dr. Richard Rodriguez, professor at Kaplan University, presents the term "homosocial reproduction," which he defines as our propensity to regularly hire/promote/connect with people who look and act like us. When we hire, we naturally imagine the right candidate will be a close representation of us. We actually use the outside (candy coating) as an assessment of performance fit. This is contrary to both performance effectiveness and legal compliance.

When you hire based on the inside (talent and aptitude), not on the outside (appearance and differences):

1. You greatly augment the population of potentially successful candidates.
2. You focus on the attributes that drive performance instead of being distracted by non-productive biases.
3. You bring into the organization a fair representation of the backgrounds of your customer and vendors – older, younger, women, Latinos, African-Americans, etc.
4. You increase the creative power of the organization by expanding the perspectives and responses from a workplace that does not naturally see the world in the same way.
5. You increase cultural awareness and amplify the quality of workplace life by the diverse attributes and attitudes that are core to your employees.

Diversity is a performance bonus. For instance, hiring the “right” employee who is also:

• A woman may bring in a high value perspective about family, community, consumer, whole brain thinking, or product safety.
• A Greek, Hispanic, etc. may bring in strong cultural traditions, new perspectives and expanded view of the world.
• Christian, Muslim, or other religion may bring in a strong sense of morality, ethics and compliance.
• An older employee may bring in a sense of maturity, loyalty and wisdom.
• A younger employee may bring in a sense of optimism, energy, technical proficiency and global perspectives.

Diversity is the bonus that comes with hiring the "right" employee. It is today’s manager’s role to find, hire and encourage the best thinking employees, and unite their diversity into a performance powerhouse.

See my full article, “A Sweet Diversity Lesson,” published in the online Diversity Executive News and Views (Feb 16, 2010, volume 3, issue 6) newsletter.