
Selling Yourself - fifilc
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/the_surprising_secret_to_selli.html
======
brink
Most of this article can be summed up in: "Focus on what you're capable of,
not what you've done.". In their test scenarios, they found that this brought
more interest and pay.

~~~
markyc
hbr more and more translates to platitudes in fancy clothing. unsubscribe

~~~
lawrence
I find platitudes backed by data pretty useful and interesting.

------
mikepmalai
Recruiting is a very interesting process. Unless you happen to be pre-IPO
Google/Facebook/Hot Start-up, you are typically constrained by the following:

1) The kind of person you want to hire is either too expensive or
unattainable. Let's assume this person's output equals 100%.

2) The person you can afford to hire probably grades out at 50% to 75% output
of the ideal hire.

3) The minimum output you need to justify paying another person is 40%.

I'm just throwing numbers out there but this is directionally the situation
you're dealing with (especially in a hot market). Some would say #1 is a '10x'
player and the actual gap between #1 (what you want) and #2 (what you can
afford)is much much greater than what I lay out above.

If that's the case, you can begin to see why hiring mangers aren't opposed to
hiring #3's (or training someone up to #3 output) who have #1 potential over
proven #2's with (perceived) limited upside. Of course the process of
identifying candidates with #1 potential is a separate matter.

Ideally you can hire #2's with #1 upside but it's hard to get people like that
since more often than not their current employer makes a big counter-offer
and/or promotion to keep them. Consequently, you end up in a situation where
you can hire someone who is 1) unproven with upside or 2) proven with limited
upside.

------
TomMasz
It's really interesting that the test subjects _said_ they preferred the guy
with the most achievement, yet actually picked the one with the most
potential. It makes you wonder how many of those "how to get a job" articles
are written with the achievement mindset even though it's not what employers
are really looking for.

~~~
justsomeguy6174
I've always thought myself a total tool when it comes to interviews. I
absolutely hate talking about myself, rather, I talk about my work or other
peoples work

The article seems to be reading into the results too much. In my experience,
people generally like to go with the underdog. It's like a game for them.
These guys know they aren't picking the people who are going to design the
mission to mars. People like the mystery in certain things. It makes for a lot
of fun, and a much better pay off when it works out for the best.

------
cookingrobot
The most interesting part to me is the effect of wording in the Facebook ad. I
wish they'd said how strong the effect is:

"they compared two versions of Facebook ads for a real stand-up comedian. In
the first version, critics said "he is the next big thing" and "everybody's
talking about him." In the second version, critics said he "could be the next
big thing," and that "in a year, everybody could be talking about him." The ad
that focused on his potential got significantly more clicks and likes."

------
kjw
Does anyone have any pointers to or comments on the implications for the
hiring/manager side based on this research? Namely, when hiring, should one
consciously avoid the bias toward high-potential candidates versus experienced
candidates? The article doesn't comment on this aspect, and I couldn't get a
sense of whether the players/candidates went on to perform equally well.
Unfortunately the full text of the actual research paper referenced in the
article is behind a paywall.

~~~
maxwell
In practice I think it comes down to whether you're trying to minimize risk or
maximize reward. The former, conservative, strategy values past experience,
since a known entity would seem to reduce the possibility of massive failure.
The liberal strategy values future potential, thus attempting to optimize on
likelihood of massive success, but simultaneously increasing the chance of
massive failure.

If you want to make X, think of it as a machine, isolate the core parts and
tools. Then hire candidates based on past deliverables and years experience
with what you think's needed to make X.

If you want to disrupt X, hire people with a) ideas you subjectively find
interesting, and b) valuable skills and knowledge which exceed your own with
those tools/topics.

In my experience, as hiring groups grow, they become more conservative. What a
company looks for in Engineer #1 is different than Engineer #1000. The more
opinions involved, the more the group seems to decide based on risk rather
than reward.

------
ary
Let me propose a better conclusion that has the potential succeed over vague
claims about the human subconscious.

One of the best ways to get hired is to, like all great American beers, have
the great taste of social proof with the less filling property of appearing to
be _inexpensive_. Business people very much want qualified, capable employees,
but they want them at the best possible price. Giving off the appearance that
you are capable but unproven makes a business person's leverage sense tingle
like no tomorrow. This, at least, has been my experience. Your mileage may
vary.

I'm not sure that, as far as the general population goes, craving the "next
big thing" is a global phenomenon. Those more concerned with getting attention
(citizens of wealthier countries) over practicality might be more inclined to
care. That would certainly help explain the hipster population plaguing the
United States.

------
tmoertel
I have doubts about the offered explanation.

From the abstract of the study behind the article [1]:

    
    
        When people seek to impress others, they often do so by
        highlighting individual achievements. Despite the intuitive
        appeal of this strategy, we demonstrate that people often
        prefer potential rather than achievement when evaluating
        others. Indeed, compared with references to achievement
        (e.g., “this person has won an award for his work”),
        references to potential (e.g., “this person could win an
        award for his work”) appear to stimulate greater interest
        and processing, which can translate into more favorable
        reactions. This tendency creates a phenomenon whereby the
        potential to be good at something can be preferred over
        actually being good at that very same thing. We document
        this preference for potential in laboratory and field
        experiments, using targets ranging from athletes to
        comedians to graduate school applicants and measures
        ranging from salary allocations to online ad clicks to
        admission decisions.
    

What causes this apparent preference for potential achievement over actual
achievement? According to the study's abstract (the study itself is behind a
pay wall), it's a mind trick: uncertainty "stimulates greater interest and
processing, which can translate into more favorable reactions." More of the
same from the HBR piece:

    
    
        When human brains come across uncertainty, they tend to pay
        attention to information more because they want to figure
        it out, which leads to longer and more in-depth
        processing. High-potential candidates make us think harder
        than proven ones do. So long as the information available
        about the high-potential candidate is favorable, all this
        extra processing can lead (unconsciously) to an overall
        more positive view of the candidate (or company). (That
        part about the information available being favorable is
        important. In another study, when the candidate was
        described as having great potential, but there was little
        evidence to back that up, people liked him far less than
        the proven achiever.)
    

That's a nice theory, but another explanation, which doesn't seem to have been
considered, is that in many cases something that has the potential to reach a
value of X is actually more valuable than something that we know, with
certainty, has a value of X. That's because a thing that has the potential to
reach X also has the potential to reach _beyond X_ , but a thing that has
already been measured to _be X_ does not.

In other words, you are given two probability distributions: one wide, one
tight. The wide one, you are told, has the potential to contain X. But the
tight one, for certain, is centered on X. Now, which do you pick?

If you're in a situation were values of X are nice but values beyond X are
gold, then you pick the wide distribution. That's because the tight
distribution is centered on "nice" and, being tight, offers almost no hope of
straying into "gold" territory.

So maybe it's not a mind trick, after all.

[1] <http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2012-18069-001/>

EDIT: fix typos.

~~~
StavrosK
So, gambling.

The something we're talking about has as much chance to go below X as above.
You don't seem to be considering that, as your theory could also explain
people picking the "sure thing" on the grounds that the other thing might not
reach its potential.

~~~
tmoertel
Yes, in effect, gambling.

The point I was trying to make is that the payoffs for X, for many real-world
situations, are dwarfed by payoffs for "beyond X." So, in those situations,
it's not a mind trick but rational to bet on the rare but high-paying "beyond
X" potential, even though a sure "X" is available.

In other words, when Payoff(X) < Sum(Probability(x) * Payoff(x) for all x >
X), it's rational to take the bet, not the sure thing.

~~~
StavrosK
The problem is that, usually, for people with experience, awards, etc, the
probability of other people surpassing the former is pretty small. "The next
big thing" is a strict subset of "Maybe the next big thing".

------
nwenzel
In all the very good discussion here, and not one mention of the menu at the
top of the HN page. The first text link in the menu bar is... "new"

There's an entire section devoted to new, or future Page 1 articles.

The inclusion of the link must mean that there was either a demand for it or a
belief that readers would want to know about the articles with future
potential to make the first page. Anecdotal at best, but it seems to support
the idea that there is some innate bias toward the next new thing.

------
drumdance
I'm suspicious of a study that uses athletes with skills that can be
quantified via statistics. Most jobs aren't nearly as quantifiable, and so the
interviewer has to evaluate on squishier things such as cultural fit. I'm
thinking of Paypal rejecting that guy who liked to shoot hoops, mainly because
he used the word "hoops."

Not that using more squishier measures is wrong. It just is. Ergo, I don't see
how this study means anything in the real world.

------
001sky
_Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist and author of the
HBR Single Nine Things Successful People Do Differently and the book Succeed:
How We Can Reach Our Goals_

To editor who OK'd the book title ("Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals")? Did
you _not_ read the "Nine Things Successful People Do Differently"? Or, do you
believe that a _total lack of originality_ is the way to reach your goals?

------
davmar
...the harvard drivel review continues it's churn

------
rscale
Interesting research, but I'm not a big fan of the 'blog article that draws on
the abstract of the research' type of article.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a sharable, non-paywalled draft of the article
anywhere.

------
ten_fingers
Let's see:

(1) See a market opportunity in yachts 55 feet long. Need to hire a yacht
designer to get the engines, hull shape, hull construction, safety, other
engineering details right and supervise the construction including selecting
the people for the interior design and finishing the interior. Want (A)
someone who has done such work with high success for two dozen yachts from
length 30 feet to 150 feet or (B) someone with the potential?

(2) Have a small but rapidly growing Web site and need to hire someone to get
the server farm going for scaling the site. They need to design the hardware
and software architecture, select the means of system real time
instrumentation, monitoring, and management, work with the software team to
make needed changes in the software, design the means of reliability,
performance, and security, get the backup and recovery going, design the
server farm bridge and the internal network operations center (NOC), write the
job descriptions for the staff, select and train the staff, etc. Now, want
someone who has recently "been there, done that, gotten the T-shirt" or
someone with the 'potential' of doing that?

(3) Need heart bypass surgery. Now, want someone who has done an average of
eight heart bypass operations a week for the past two years with no patient
deaths or repeat operations or someone with that 'potential'?

(4) Similarly for putting a new roof on a house, fixing a bad problem with the
plumbing, installing a new furnace and hot water heater, installing a high end
HVAC system, etc.?

War Story: My wife and I were in graduate school getting our Ph.D. degrees and
ran out of money. I took a part time job in applied math and computing on some
US DoD problems -- hush, hush stuff. We had two Fortran programmers using
IBM's MVS TSO, and in the past 12 months they had spent $80 K. We wanted to
save money and also do much more computing. We went shopping and bought a $120
K Prime (really, essentially a baby Multics).

Soon I inherited the system and ran it in addition to programming it, doing
applied math, etc. When I got my Ph.D., soon I was a prof in a B-school. They
had an MVS system with punched cards, a new MBA program, and wanted better
computing for the MBA program. I wanted TeX or at least something to drive a
daisy wheel printer. Bummer.

At a faculty meeting the college computing committee gave a sad report on
options for better computing. I stood and said: "Why don't we get a machine
such as can be had for about $5000 a month, put it in a room in the basement,
and do it ourselves?". Soon the operational Dean wanted more info, and I lead
a one person selection committee. I looked at DG as in "Soul of a New
Machine', DEC VAX PDP 11/780, and a Prime.

The long sitting head of the central university computer center went to the
Dean and said that my proposal would not work. I got a sudden call to come to
the Dean's office and met the critic. I happened to bring a cubic foot or so
of technical papers related to my computer shopping. I'd specified enough
ordinary, inexpensive 'comfort' A/C to handle the heat, but the critic claimed
that the hard disk drives needed tight temperature and humidity control or
would fail. I said: "These disk drives are sold by Prime but they are actually
manufactured by Control Data. I happen to have with me the official
engineering specifications for these drives directly from Control Data.". So I
read them the temperature and humidity specifications that we could easily
meet. The critic still claimed the disks would fail. Then I explained that at
my earlier site, we had no A/C at all. By summer the room got too warm for
humans, so we put an electric van in the doorway. Later we had an A/C
evaporator hung off the ceiling. Worked fine for three years. The Dean sided
with me.

In the end we got a Prime. What we got was a near exact copy of what I had run
in grad school, down to the terminals and the Belden general purpose 5
conductor signal cable used to connect the terminals at 9600 bps. The system
became the world site for TeX on Prime, lasted 15 years, and was a great
success. The system was running one year after that faculty meeting. I was
made Chair of the college computer committee.

That faculty meeting had been only two weeks after I had arrived on campus.
There was one big, huge reason my planning was accepted: I'd been there, done
that, and gotten the T-shirt. That is, in contradiction to the article, what
mattered was actual, prior accomplishment, not 'potential'.

Why the industrial psychological researchers came to their conclusions I don't
know, but I don't believe their conclusions.

~~~
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

------
Evbn
Please remove the puffery adjective and "secret" from the title. "Selling
Yourself" or "Research on Techniques for Selling Yoursf". would do fine.

~~~
espinchi
I agree. It matches the submissions guidelines too:

 _If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective,
we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How
To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is
meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."_

