The document discusses how top organizations identify talent and the key traits they look for. It describes 7 traits that successful organizations seek out: desire to learn, efficiency, judgment, resilience, compatibility, self-reliance, and acumen. Through examples from the military, teaching, and business, it explores how resilience, overcoming challenges, and nontraditional backgrounds and experiences are highly valued. The document advocates looking beyond traditional measures like resumes and degrees, and considering character over specific skills when identifying exceptional talent.

1. Talent, Resilience & The Rare Find
George Anders
U Mass Family Business Center
Nov. 2, 2012
Holyoke MA

2. Books Begin With a Big Question

3. The Rare Find’s central question
• How do world-class
organizations get
talent right?
• (And what can the rest of us
learn from them?)

4. Across a Vast Range of Disciplines,
The Same Principles Keep Appearing

5. Experts Look Beyond Competency:
What Personal Strengths Stand Out?

6. 7 Traits Redefine the Talent Hunt
Desire to
Learn
Efficiency Judgment
Resilience
Compati- Self-
bility Reliance
Acumen

7. Part 1: Soldiering
and Sgt. Dan Fagan

8. How do you
IdentIfy
a great soldier?

9. In the field, you must ImproVISE

10. Adversity & ambiguity rule

11. RESILIENCE
defines the winners

12. What’s
Needed on
Missions?
“Mettle: Being
able to deal
confidently
with the
unknown.”
t

13. Part 2: Teaching and
Emily Lewis-Lamonica

14. TFA’s Start: Passionate & Naive
Great
teacher?
Eloquent
Enthusiastic

15. The dream . . .

16. Reality: Teach for America Focuses
On Public Schools’ Crisis Zones

17. Reality: Learning isn’t guaranteed

18. Wh a t T F A Wa n t s
Toda y
1. H a v e y o u o v e r c o m e
t o u g h t i me s ?
2. I s y o u r G P A
s t r o n g e r n o w t h a n
a s a f r e s h ma n ?
3. D i d y o u b l a z e a
t r a i l i n t o

19. For TFA, Resilience Pays Off
Teacher Students’ Principals’
retention pass rates support
95% 86% 94%

20. What Are Some More Hiring Lessons?
The Military The Executive The Educator

21. First: A New Role for the Jagged Resume
• Rare Virtues
• Some Career
Ups and Downs
• Limited Direct
Experience
• A Maverick
Approach to Life

22. “Good-to-great
companies place
more weight on
character than on
specific skills or
experience.”
Jim Collins
Good to Great

23. Second: Seek Out Talent That Whispers
(The Long Tail of Talent)

24. Is Hunting for Long Shots Too Slow?

25. Facebook’s Ingenious Shortcut
70,000 puzzle Top 1% earn an 118 solvers win jobs
solutions/year interview

26. How to Pursue Talent That Whispers
Search in places others overlook:
 Cities Under 200,000 People
 Bright People Without College Degrees
 Classic Gender & Ethnicity Diversity
 Nontraditional career paths
 The outer edges of your referral networks

27. Daring to Ask: ‘What Can Go Right?’
Athletes Actors Authors Singers

28. The Rise of the Public Portfolio

29. There’s an Explosion of Websites
Catering to Dozens of Specialties

30. Four Takeaways From ‘The Rare Find’
• Competence Screens Will Yield the Top
Quartile; Character Clinches the Top 5%
• If You Can Decode Jagged Resumes, You Can
Spot Talent That Others Overlook
• Talent That Whispers Is Far More Abundant
Than We First Realize
• Many Talent-Hunting Rules Are Universal;
Enjoy the Lessons and Lore of Faraway Fields

31. Follow Ups? Of Course!
Twitter: @GeorgeAnders
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Facebook: TheRareFind
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http://blogs.forbes.com/georgeanders/
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Email: George.Anders@gmail.com