Innovation in the recruitment of workers: recruiting creative, inventive and entrepreneurial workers

Innovation in general and in knowledge based companies in particular is influenced, to a large extent, by the human capital that exists in the company. Senior executives in knowledge-based companies believe that employees who exhibit skills and characteristics of entrepreneurs, creative and innovative, may contribute significantly to the success of the company. These insights enhance the degree of importance that should be ascribed to the process of recruiting workers into the company.
Innovative recruitment is a process in which new capabilities are added to the recruitment department in order to improve its ability to identify entrepreneurial, inventive and creative workers.

Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs believe their projects will assist in changing the world. Entrepreneurs are individuals with particularly strong energy. They are known to have exceptional personal abilities.
The list of skills that characterize entrepreneurs, as presented herein do not necessarily exist in each and every entrepreneur.
Described below is a partial list of skills and traits that characterize entrepreneurs:

• Highly motivated; with intense passion and creative enthusiasm propelled by a vision.
  
• Experienced and with prior success, known for their ability to develop an original idea or a new invention and turn it into a successful business.
  
• Determined and persistent until they reach their goal – they have motivation and act even in cases in which the chances of success of the initiative are uncertain and doubtful.
  
• They know how to find the balance between determination and persistence and take flexible actions according to reality.
  
• The successful entrepreneurs have a flexible personality and are able to change according to the external environment – the changing market.
  
• They are known for their ability to create something out of nothing.
  
• Highly charismatic
  
• Daring: an important trait which means having the courage to create and act. Daring comes from the heart, from intuition, from an ability to listen to their inner truths. Daring necessitates taking risks and facing uncertainty. Daring individuals have a strong passion to succeed, are influenced from a vision that incites action.
  
• Imaginative: they contemplate and see the whole picture. They think at large and let their creative imagination roam.
  
• They are driven by ambitiousness and love challenges and innovation.
  
• They are independent and will be happy to accept full autonomy over their field of responsibility.
  
• Some have the cognitive skills to perform a few tasks at a time without compromising the quality of performance of the tasks.
  
• Insightful: they have an special sense and ability to discern phenomena and events that other people might not be able to see.
  
• Intelligent: highly developed common sense and ability to reason, very intelligent.
  

Creative

Creative individuals have the ability and the skills to think in a new and different manner. Creative people think about situations differently than the norm thus theyare able to discover new and original ways to perform the task. Creativity relies upon the ability to think outside the box, i.e. to think differently or to have a habit of thinking differently in order to create something new. Creative individuals are characterized by flexible thinking that leads to new ideas or to new ways in conflict resolving.
Creativity inspires people to use their ability and imagination. Creativity is a mental process that leads people to new and original solutions. Creative people are able to think in one, two or three dimensions. It is well known that three dimensional thinking assists the mind in creating new ideas.
Identifying creative people can be done in several ways with the assistance of a number of tools. Certain tools are presented to the candidates by written questions or images. The identification can be done by conflict riddles, or false conflict riddles in order to examine how individuals are able to get out of a situation. Pictures that present two possible images can be used to identify tricks of perception, ambiguous vision and change of focus or connecting dots with straight and consistent lines, whereby the solution necessitates leaving an imaginary square that may exist. These and other exercises diagnose the candidate's ability to think and see problems from a fresh, original and uncommon perspective.
Daring is an important trait among creative individuals and it reflects the courage to act and create. Creative individuals dare to come up with unorthodox solutions. Daring individuals act intuitively and from the heart. They listen to their inner truth. Daring necessitates courage to take risks and face uncertainty. Creative, daring people create inspiring ideas. Daring includes passion and strong motivation to succeed, influenced by vision that motivates action.
Imagination is another important trait of creative individuals. It assists in thinking big and with the ability to see the complete and wide picture. Imaginative people let their imagination be creative.

Inventive

Inventive people are mostly curious ones. Inventive people have a strong motivation to explore a defined subject, to examine connections, to analyze influential factors, to analyze cause and effect. Inventive people are usually creative, curious, daring and have inventive skills. They do not take things for granted and they want to fully learn, study and understand. These are important traits that lead to inventiveness. However, inventive people are not necessarily entrepreneurs. Their function is sometimes diminished after the invention has been developed. In some cases they should work with entrepreneurs who are known in their ability to turn an invention into a successful project. Inventive people have the ability to turn their inventiveness into a final product.
Inventive people are known to be daring. This important trait enables inventive people to think outside the box and leads them to inspirational ideas. They have the courage to act and create. Inventive people dare to invent the future. Inventive people are daring from within their hearts. They act from within their heart and imagination, have a healthy intuition and the ability to listen to their inner truth.
Inventive people are also known to be imaginative, which is an important trait. An imaginative inventive individual thinks big and sees the whole picture. Imaginative people let their imagination roam freely.

• Identifying inventive people: an inventive person is usually creative. It is recommended to make use of the tools used to diagnose creativity. First begin with a diagnosis of proven past experience. In cases in which there is no past experience, examine whether they have ideas for innovative products. Whether they think about inventions from their own initiative.
  

Another or additional way is to use riddles. You can begin with a general riddle and keep in mind that the riddles and challenges that receive better results are usually related to the candidate's professional environment. The reason for this is their high motivation to invent and create professional content. (A solution to an existing problem).

• The development of content based riddles can come from the company's life itself. The workers can be asked to provide technological riddles in order to receive solutions that are not necessarily closed solutions. The workers in the company will express their professional opinion regarding the solutions proposed by the candidates and thus the recruitment department will have better knowledge regarding the candidate's potential.
  

By: Doron Hayut | doron@bpi.org.il
Copyright © 2009 by Doron Hayut
All rights reserved to Doron Hayut only 2009
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