“All they had wanted was the answer to a question: Will she be that same person that she appears to be now when she is traveling at 17,500 miles per hour 140 miles above the Earth and something goes bang?”Įven if most recruiting tasks are not as daunting as finding the first men and women to send to the moon, employers can learn something important from the example of the space agency’s approach. Namely, there is only so much that can be learned about a person by looking at past accomplishments, especially when it comes to assessing fit for jobs of the future. While Sullivan initially struggled to decipher what her interviewers were looking for, “later she decided that they weren’t even really trying to figure out who she was,” Lewis writes. In his book, The Fifth Risk, author Michael Lewis describes the exhaustive process that eventually led her to be the first woman to walk in space. By the time geologist Kathy Sullivan interviewed in 1977, it was even clearer that NASA was looking for personal characteristics that were not found in work history. Within a few years though, astronaut candidates were selected for their excellence as scientists and mental stamina first, with the task of training them to operate a spacecraft being somewhat secondary. The initial criteria, which were used to choose the likes of John Glenn and Scott Carpenter in 1958, prioritized previous experience as a military pilot and physical fitness. When these changes occur, a dynamic talent strategy is crucial for both employers and candidates to navigate new terrain.įew recruiting challenges capture the need for flexibility better than NASA’s task of selecting the first rounds of American astronauts. As recent times have demonstrated, technological innovation, geopolitical disruption, economic volatility, and demographic transformation are all forces that can fundamentally shift the needs of society. What does flexibility look like from a talent perspective? It looks like the ability to make effective hiring decisions in unprecedented circumstances. Given this environment of heightened uncertainty, it seems that few things are more important than organizational flexibility. Companies that might have resisted the trend toward remote work of the last decade have suddenly been faced with the task of transforming their culture overnight. Over the last several weeks, employers around the world have come to realize that “business as usual” is no longer a fixed concept.