I recently came across a story of a product manager who had come from an agile software startup with ten employees and they were interviewing for new positions and one of the businesses that they had spoken to was a software business with about one hundred employees.

The potential new employer was operating a waterfall delivery approach but making a concerted effort to move to agile, to the point where they had an in-house agile coach to support the business in the transition as no-one in the business had any agile experience.

Interview one went well, with the thumbs up received from the Head of Product, Head of Technical, and the Agile Coach, with the feedback being that the product manager had great product management experience, but also the experience of agile delivery would be a huge positive for the business during the transitional period.  Interview two happened quickly afterwards and also went well with the Group Technology Director and the Group Delivery Director.

Then radio silence.

After a week feedback was received that all interviewers had liked the candidate, believed them to have good product skills and great agile experience, however, they weren’t going to offer the candidate the role because they didn’t think that they as a business could keep the candidate engaged enough.  Coming from a startup environment they believed the candidate would feel restricted by their way of working and not be able to utilise all the skills and experience that the candidate brought with them.

Is this the right decision?

No business wants to invest in an employee who might become frustrated, because it costs time and money, and might have an impact upon the wider team. Having an employee who’s frustrated because they’re unable to make change happen because of layers of line management and because they’re removed from other members of the team isn’t ideal.

However, when your stated aim is to change the way the whole business operates shouldn't the solution be to take onboard those whose experience can support a quicker transition to the new reality, rather than hire more people who can’t support the transition?

As a business should you not look to hire the best people you can afford and utilise as many of their skills as you can so they can pull you in the direction you want to go, rather than hiring more limited individuals who you have to push towards the destination? 

If you only ever hire square pegs then it makes the job of operating in a world of round pegs much more difficult!