A personal reflection and an industry challenge.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a remarkable author. She is inspiring and challenging. Most times, Ms Adichie pokes holes in what you thought you knew, inviting you to rethink a perspective.

I enjoy her work.

She’s not only a storyteller; she’s also in the business of growing people. Her books, lectures, and writing workshops are all crafted to develop people.

Recently, I watched a video of her INBOUND 2018 speech. As usual, Ms Adichie’s thoughts challenged me. This time, it was about the experiences that shaped and perhaps informed her. She uttered a line that may have seemed forgettable compared to the grand ideas in her lecture but, for me, offered a language for what I was and still am seeing in the marketplace.

I worked in the corporate environment for ten years before I took off to nurture my relationship with God and start my company. Before corporate, I worked in forensic medicine and, on some weekends, as a locum doctor.

I knew early in my undergraduate that I was in the wrong field. I knew before I arrived on campus. However, as a black girl in the 90s, you could not refuse the chance to study medicine.

So, like the good girl I was, I completed the degree, worked my mandatory two years in state as a doctor, and for five years after, I worked on an exit plan.

I made every attempt to leave clinical medicine and make my way to my heart’s desire: writing, talking, trends watching, and developing people. I explored ways to get into media. It seemed like the best place to start.

At first attempt, I tried to combine my passions: all things automobile-related (F1 to off-roading) and writing. They told me, to my face, they would never hire me. The receptionist at a car magazine publisher turned me down, with my CV still in the envelope.

I tried again. This time online, at a magazine that seemed to model the same idea I had. I offered a helpful suggestion rather than my CV alone. Then again, what does a medical doctor know about creative stuff? They didn’t respond.

After several more failed attempts and being discouraged from blogging, I turned my attention to getting into corporate spaces fuelled by an unlikely, maybe even miraculous, interaction with a Wall Street lawyer. I was sure they’d hire me. Every organisation I approached offered me medical roles.

I started with the medical roles and took a massive pay cut under some false reasoning about unfamiliarity with the industry.

I changed organisations a couple of times, trying to get to the one.

Finally, a health insurance organisation hired me in their strategy unit. Heart singing! Someone wants to see something I created. I was free to be creative for the first time in my career. It was good. A similar opportunity came knocking, and I thought, finally! The tide was turning.

In my second month, I discovered it was primarily medical work, with limited access to strategic conversations. You’re medical.

The decision to leave was easy.

Why am I down this road? Because at most of those places was someone who viewed me through limited sight.

The biased receptionist, the recipient of the info@… inbox, and the HR team short-listing on qualification only.

So, when Ms Adichie said, “The gatekeepers can be wrong,” it hit home and reminded me of why I now do what I do.

I have the privilege of talking to many people trying to change industries, change functions, or re-enter the workplace. They are facing some challenges. Surprisingly, this level of resistance still exists.

Lots of highly skilled people looking.

Plenty of organisations are searching.

None of them finding.

A friend said it so well, “Until you know who you are, you will not know what you’re looking for.”

If the hiring manager doesn’t know who they are as a department, they won’t know what skills they need. HR knows the role name but not the function’s skills. Familiar with the qualification but not the missing complement of skills.

And so I agree and echo that the gatekeepers can be wrong.

The person who gave me a chance was a visionary.

It turns out the following works in the ward and the strategy unit:

See one, do one, teach one. The clinical training technique that trains you in leadership, mentorship and coaching even before you graduate applies everywhere.

I had the privilege of working with an outstanding leader a while back. When we started experimenting with what could be, what’s essential and how to redesign towards her vision, many possibilities opened up before us.

We mapped the skills to her departmental vision to complement what already existed in her department. And where the qualification wasn’t a legal requirement, she chose skill.

She has determined to do things differently. Because, as we learned, the mindset is one of the most stubborn gatekeepers.

She took a massive chance meeting with me, an ex-medic turned strategist, on a recommendation from an atypical talent acquisition person with non-traditional industry experience.

She was one of the few who took a risk. Many people would have me back in clinical roles, and I’d be okay at it, but I’m not the right person.

There are the right people for the right roles.

My dear hiring managers, and budget holders, if you ever wonder why the roles are taking longer to fill, perhaps consider this: your process may have a covert fault.

• That placing the support staff in the difficult position of gatekeeping and being experts in your function enough to recognise what is a transferrable skill in your field is perhaps not the correct starting point for implementing your organisation’s or team’s vision.

• The oven-ready approach to short-listing is robbing you of talented, readily available, re-entry-ready, coachable people. Shift the focus to exposure, coaching, and training.

• Relying on the usual referrals lines sometimes keeps out the “right people” and recycles the same-old, same-old in the industry.

• Maybe as much as you’re trying to do things differently internally, somewhere along your process, someone or something is defaulting to “we have always done it this way”. It can also sound like, “In my experience…” or “Usually what we do…” Introspection is a good place to start.

Transitions are tricky. If you want to change how it’s been going, change how it’s going.

Stay out of the hiring process at your peril.

Delay the hiring process at your own risk.

Because, say it with me, “the gatekeepers can be wrong.”