Growing Your Career: Why the best hire might not have the perfect resume | Regina Hartley

0:00Hey, this is Elise Hu, host of TED Talks Daily. This episode is supported in part by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the best-selling book, How to Change, Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen.

0:50they can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built HiringPro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you, so instead of sorting through applications, you can spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit. With HiringPro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, according to LinkedIn, those hiring with LinkedIn are 24 % less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor.

1:32Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash tedbiz, spelled B-I-Z. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Parloa. Look, most businesses want their customers to feel heard, not stuck waiting around for someone who can help. Nothing makes you feel less important than sitting on hold for hours, explaining the same problem to the fifth person who picks up. But here's the thing, the bigger you get, the harder it becomes to show up the way you want to in each customer interaction. Parloa solves that problem.

2:17Their voice-first AI agents handle customer conversations in a way that feels natural, personal, and helpful. They work 24-7 across voice, chat, and email in any language with zero wait time. Plus, your team gets access to features like Lens, which flags issues in real time, and Navigator, which figures out why those issues are happening and what to do next. It's secure, scalable, and built to serve the customer. When AI works well, it shouldn't feel like AI. Unhold your customers with Parloa. Learn more at parloa.com. That's P-A-R-L-O-A dot com. Hey, listeners. We're dropping another playlist this month, and this one is for anyone who's on the job market right now.

3:10Making a career change is never easy, but I think a lot of us are finding it especially hard at this moment because it can feel so impersonal. There are more AI screenings, more trying to connect over Zoom. It's like the human part of the process is slowly getting filtered out. That's where these talks come in. I've picked out a lineup full of tricks and tips to help you stay calm, stay true to yourself, and advocate for what you want and need. The job hunt can be opaque, overwhelming, and anonymizing. So let's shed some light on it together.

3:48Your company launches a search for an open position. The applications start rolling in, and the qualified candidates are identified. Now, the choosing begins. Person A, Ivy League 4.0. Flawless resume, great recommendations. All the right stuff. Person B, state school. Fair amount of job hopping, and odd jobs like cashier and singing waitress. But remember, both are qualified. So I ask you, who are you going to pick? My colleagues and I created very official terms to describe two distinct categories of candidates. We call A, the silver spoon, the one who clearly had advantages and was destined for success.

4:46And we call B, the scrapper, the one who had to fight against tremendous odds to get to the same point. You just heard a human resources director refer to people as silver spoons and scrappers, which is not exactly politically correct and sounds a bit judgmental. But before my human resources certification gets revoked, let me explain. A resume tells a story, and over the years, I've learned something about people whose experiences read like a patchwork quilt that makes me stop and fully consider them before tossing their resumes away. A series of odd jobs may indicate inconsistency, lack of focus, unpredictability, or it may signal a committed struggle against obstacles.

5:44At the very least, the scrapper deserves an interview. To be clear, I don't hold anything against the silver spoon. Getting into and graduating from an elite university take a lot of hard work and sacrifice. But if your whole life has been engineered towards success, how will you handle the tough times? One person I hired felt that because he attended an elite university, there were certain assignments that were beneath him, like temporarily doing manual labor to better understand an operation. Eventually, he quit. But on the flip side, what happens when your whole life is destined for failure and you actually succeed?

6:33I want to urge you to interview the scrapper. I know a lot about this because I am a scrapper. Before I was born, my father was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and he couldn't hold a job in spite of his brilliance. Our lives were one part cuckoo's nest, one part awakenings, and one part a beautiful mind.

7:05I'm the fourth of five children raised by a single mother in a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. We never owned a home, a car, a washing machine, and for most of my childhood, We didn't even have a telephone. So I was highly motivated to understand the relationship between business success and scrappers because my life could easily have turned out very differently. As I met successful business people and read profiles of high-powered leaders, I noticed some commonality. Many of them had experienced early hardships, anywhere from poverty, abandonment, death of a parent while young, to learning disabilities, alcoholism, and violence.

7:55The conventional thinking has been that trauma leads to distress, and there's been a lot of focus on the resulting dysfunction. But during studies of dysfunction, data revealed an unexpected insight that even the worst circumstances can result in growth and transformation. A remarkable and counterintuitive phenomenon has been discovered, which scientists call post-traumatic growth. In one study designed to measure the effects of adversity on children at risk, among a subset of 698 children who experienced the most severe and extreme conditions, fully one-third grew up to lead healthy, successful, and productive lives.

8:44In spite of everything and against tremendous odds, they succeeded. One-third. Take this resume. This guy's parents give him up for adoption. He never finishes college. He job hops quite a bit, goes on a sojourn to India for a year, and to top it off, he has dyslexia. Would you hire this guy? His name is Steve Jobs. In a study of the world's most highly successful entrepreneurs, it turns out a disproportionate number have dyslexia. In the U.S., 35 % of the entrepreneur's study had dyslexia. What's remarkable, among those entrepreneurs who experienced post-traumatic growth, they now view their learning disability as a desirable difficulty, which provided them an advantage because they became better listeners and paid greater attention to detail.

9:49They don't think they are who they are in spite of adversity. They know they are who they are because of adversity. They embrace their trauma and hardships as key elements of who they've become and know that without those experiences, they might not have developed the muscle and grit required to become successful. One of my colleagues had his life completely upended as a result of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966. At age 13, his parents were relocated to the countryside, the schools were closed, and he was left alone in Beijing to fend for himself until 16 when he got a job in a clothing factory.

10:38But instead of accepting his fate, he made a resolution that he would continue his formal education. Eleven years later, when the political landscape changed, he heard about a highly selective university admissions test. He had three months to learn the entire curriculum of middle and high school. So every day he came home from the factory, took a nap, studied until 4 a.m., went back to work, and repeated this cycle every day for three months. He did it. He succeeded. His commitment to his education was unwavering, and he never lost hope. Today, he holds a master's degree, and his daughters each have degrees from Cornell and Harvard.

11:32Scrappers are propelled by the belief that the only person you have full control over is yourself. When things don't turn out well, scrappers ask, what can I do differently to create a better result? Scrappers have a sense of purpose that prevent them from giving up on themselves. Kind of like if you've survived poverty, a crazy father, and several muggings, you figure, business challenges? Really? Piece of cake, I got this. And that reminds me, humor. Scrappers know that humor gets you through the tough times and laughter helps you change your perspective. And finally, there are relationships.

12:19People who overcome adversity don't do it alone. somewhere along the way, they find people who bring out the best in them and who are invested in their success. Having someone you can count on, no matter what, is essential to overcoming adversity. I was lucky. In my first job after college, I didn't have a car, so I carpooled across two bridges with a woman who was the president's assistant. She watched me work and encouraged me to focus on my future and not dwell on my past. Along the way, I've met many people who've provided me brutally honest feedback, advice, and mentorship. These people don't mind that I once worked as a singing waitress to help pay for college.

13:13I'll leave you with one final valuable insight. companies that are committed to diversity and inclusive practices tend to support scrappers and outperform their peers. According to Diversity Inc., a study of their top 50 companies for diversity outperformed the S &P 500 by 25 percent. So, back to my original question. Who are you going to bet on? Silver spoon or scrapper? I say, choose the underestimated contender whose secret weapons are passion and purpose. Hire the scrapper.

14:13Regina Hartley: directed investing. Or perhaps you pick up a few farm fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. That's full service wealth management. Mix, match, and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab, you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Hey, it's Tony from Tony Told Me. On Iyanla, The Inside Fix, a podcast from OWN, Iyanla Vanzan revisits the stories, teachings, and insights that made her show Fix My Life a must-watch for millions. With fresh eyes, she re-examines those lessons with greater clarity and shares new wisdom for the challenges we face today.

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