The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

by Todd Rose

Before switching to a career in recruiting, Adler designed missiles and guidance systems for an aerospace manufacturer. As a result, he approached the practice of finding and selecting employees with the mindset of an engineer. “One day it just hit me: Once you see how performance depends on context, and how recruiting should be focused on matching individuals to optimal contexts, it just seems like common sense,” Adler explained to me. “But it turned out to be really hard to get companies to implement common sense.”44 Inspired by his context-focused vision for the workplace, Adler developed a new way to recruit and hire employees that he calls “performance-based hiring.” Instead of describing the person they want, Alder tells employers to first describe the job they want done.