Dummies for Hire

I was only sixteen...

There are many in positions within companies who have an interesting take on hiring staff for their businesses. One good friend talks about it being  a case of 'hiring for the person, training for the skill.' To him, it was always a case of looking at the person, not the credentials. Because he ran a high level company and needed top notch sales staff, he considered that any staff member on his shop floor would have to be a person first, and a certificate second, if at all. In this respect then, his hiring criteria had little to do with what they knew how to do. It had little to do with education or certification. Those things can be often taught. But you can't teach a person how to be the person you need. The person is a culmination of things that can't be taught so quickly - aptitude, social graces, patience, work ethics, attitude and many other things. A skill is usually an academic process of learning that can be inculcated. But the canvas upon which you paint, or the marble in which you carve must be the right quality first.

So, we are all wise to ask ourselves what kind of canvas we present to others, especially when we are in the company of those whose influence or position can positively affect our lives. Do we present an academic skill set with little personality or individuality? Are we presenting a robot, or are we offering a malleable, amicable, hard working human being with grace, ethics and intelligence? I know which one I would prefer to hire and offer to the rest of any team as an equal and individually valuable member.

Me? I am a high school dropout. I left before my final year to begin working in the photographic industry. I was sixteen, but I was confident, friendly and willing. I had that much going for me. What I knew about photography could have been written on a Post-It note. But I was young, malleable, passionate and enthusiastic. 

I arrived at the photo retailer. I walked into the manager's office, well dressed and willing, my hand outstretched for an assertive, yet friendly, handshake. I was polite, respectful and relatively eloquent. I was willing to take what they had on offer. I was hired on the spot. I was to start tomorrow. 

I arrived the next day to meet the rest of the staff. I was surprised when I learned that so many of the sales staff of this photographic retail outlet were photographers with university degrees. Years of learning had brought them to the same place I was working. They were older than me, better educated in the ways of photography and had forgotten more about photography than I had even learned. As you can imagine, I was somewhat intimidated. I was made to feel very welcome, but who was I that I could work among such elite members of the photographic fraternity?

These young men had shared the same dream that I came to live. They all wanted to be professional photographers, and they had the pieces of paper that proved their initial desires. However, in the years to come, I would realise that not one of them ever came to that realization. Not one of them ever became a working photographer. Almost all of them remained in retail - certainly not something that they had spent years of their life training for. That's not a criticism. Only an observation. Me? I didn't even had a high school certificate. However, in the years to come, I would forge a difficult and yet rewarding career as a photographer, editor, journalist, tutor and public speaker - none of which I had any training for.

So, yes, there are dummies for hire. I was one of them. Untrained, yet malleable and passionate. Whatever happens to you that featured somewhere in your initial plans, it happens because you were the kind of person who could make it happen and not necessarily because you had a brain full of cool stuff.