Blog Post: Hiring the right person for the job - a case study in oil. (pt 1)

While there has been a lot of news coverage on this topic, I particularly enjoyed a dialogue between an "All Things Considered" anchor and Bob Miller, the president of the Crab Boat Owner's Association in San Francisco.

"How many birds have you picked up?" asked the NPR anchor.  She had been curious as to how many birds were in distress, but Mr. Miller shared that the birds in distress were likely found on the beach, the birds in the water, where his people were, were too far gone.

"Oh, our High Boat had 6 or 7 in one day."

"High Boat?"

"Yeah, we've got about 22 boats out there.  Commercial fishermen are very competitive.  They compete about who picked up the most oil, the most birds, whatever.  Nobody better than commercial fishermen to clean up oil spills."

This brought to my mind the topic of hiring the right person for the job, a familiar focus for recruiters and OD professionals working in the field of competencies.  Competencies are a group of skills, behaviors, or knowledge that are identified as performance standards for a particular job.  For example, an identified competency for my job of Performance Analyst is "Interpersonal Savvy." 

For this instance, the performers' behavior is the competency component to focus upon.  How oil spills are cleaned up may not be common knowledge to us landlubbers, but I feel it's safe to assume that of the reported 80 boats out on the water, most everyone knew how.  And while some people may have less skill than others, the competitive behavior inherent in the fishermen would likely drive a rookie to become skilled in a short period of time. 

Let's say that you are a person who wants to assemble a team that will do its level best to collect every drop of oil before it reaches the beaches, the eel grass, the grebes or cormorants.  What would you look for when hiring the right person for the job of cleaning up an oil spill?  Who better than a swarthy bunch of fisherman who love a good story of the one that didn't get away, and the bragging rights that go with it?