[m_myers]

You're talking more about one-time jobs; the article focuses on hiring people for long term employment or in places where a bad experience is only mildly annoying (restaurants, comedians). In both cases, the risk of a bad decision isn't as high as the (perceived) possible reward from a good one.

When you're hiring a plumber, the best possible outcome is not very different from an average outcome with an average plumber, and the worst is significantly worse.

[lifeisstillgood]

That is the key - with low downside, you can afford to take a risk on the untried "potential" - payoff could be huge.

With high downside, you want to minimise that risk.

So, no brain tricks, just risk/reward behaviour

[jman1]

Nicely condensed

[ten_fingers]

The claim in the article is tough to swallow and seems to have been written to get attention.

I can't believe the claim as stated, but there might be a way to restate their claim and get something believable in some narrow cases.

First, however, for your "One-time jobs"? I was appointed Chair of the college computing committee and held that position until I left the college after five years. I was also appointed to other computing committees in the university. And I gave a graduate course on computer system selection and management. So my role was 'long-term' and not just "one time".

Indeed, my next job was at Yorktown Heights in using artificial intelligence for monitoring and management of server farms and networks, and likely that position was based partly on my success in computer system management. So, I pursued that work long-term and not just "one-time", and at each step that I was given the responsibility was heavily from my accomplishments and not just my potential.

If you are a yacht company, you may want to build yachts in several sizes, and then you will likely want to hire a yacht designer for the long term and will, again, want someone with accomplishments and not just potential. Believe me, you don't want to build a yacht and discover that the performance is poor because the engineering was wrong. Once I saw that happen; it was a sad story.

If you are running a hospital and want a heart surgeon, no doubt for the long term, again you want to hire based on accomplishments and not just potential.

If you are running an HVAC company and need a technical leader for the long-term, then again you want someone with a lot of relevant accomplishments and not just someone with potential.

I don't see the issue as short versus long term, but I do see an issue, so let's move on to that:

E.g., in my computer selection, there was an accusation that I was just selecting again what I had done before and, thus, was possibly not getting the best selection for the time and for the college. Interesting claim. Actually my first recommendation had been for the Data General system as in the book 'The Soul of a New Machine'. When that system was just too expensive, I fell back to the Prime system. The main competitor was the DEC VAX already quite popular on campus and with some good advantages in applications software for the physical science departments. But for the B-school, those application software advantages didn't apply, and the Prime was easier to manage and use and provided much more computing per dollar. So, the Prime was a good choice.

So, here was the fear of going with a person with accomplishments: Such a person may just redo what they did before and not really make the best decision for the new time and place. I'm not saying that people should or usually do have this fear, just that they may have this fear in some cases anyway.

So, more generally suppose the need is for a lot of creativity and originality but where past accomplishments, knowledge, and experience are not very important. E.g., maybe are hiring a graphic artist for, say, the box for a new consumer product to be sold from shelves in retail stores. So, if hire someone with "accomplishments", say, who had just designed a successful box, then may fear that the box they design for you will be too much like the last box they designed and not original enough. But that explanation is not the claim of the article.

The claim of the article is stark: For doing essentially any task X, people prefer to hire a person with the potential of doing X instead of someone who has actually done X. This claim is doesn't pass the giggle test.

It looks like we are entering the campaign season of the US presidential election!