One of our favorite commencement speeches comes from a school neither of us attended. We like it in part because it gives us an excuse to mention that one of us was a high school tennis standout (thank you for indulging us). But we’ll connect it back to hiring. Loosely, as always.
It’s 2024 at Dartmouth and Roger Federer takes the stage. Over the course of his career, Federer played 1,526 singles matches and won almost 80% of them. Then he asked the audience a question: What percentage of the individual points do you think he won?
70%? 75%?
It was 54%.
Roger Federer, 20-time Grand Slam champion, former world No. 1 and one of the greatest tennis players ever, lost almost half the points he played and won nearly 80% of his matches. Federer called the lesson “It’s only a point.” We liked this line in particular:
“When you’re playing a point, it is the most important thing in the world. But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you.”
You commit to the point completely. But once it’s over, you can’t keep thinking about the double fault, the shot you should have made, or the opportunity you missed because another ball is already coming your way.
Hiring is full of lost points. A candidate you were excited about turns down your offer. A new hire you were certain would be great doesn’t work out. The 18 people that never respond when you reach out to 20. An employee you really wanted to keep decides to leave. A hiring manager spends weeks searching for the right person only to watch that person accept another job.
And we watch our partners (and, admittedly, ourselves at times) dissect those points. What did we do wrong? Should we have offered more? Did we miss something in the interview? Is there something wrong with our process? Sometimes those are exactly the questions we should be asking. There is value in figuring out why you lost a point. There just isn’t much value in continuing to play it after it’s over.
A really good recruiter is going to hear “no” constantly and can still build an incredible desk. A really good hiring manager will make hires that don’t work out and can still build an incredible team. A really good company will lose employees it desperately wanted to keep and can still create a workplace where great people stay. We don’t think being good at hiring is about avoiding those losses as much as we’d like it to be. It’s about how quickly you get back to the baseline, racket up, ready for whatever comes next.
Because the next candidate doesn’t know what happened with the last one.
Until next time,
Your Spherion WI & Northern IL team
P.S. We’re taking next week off from Hiring Happens to enjoy Labor Day weekend. We hope you get to do the same! We’ll be back the following week.