Episode: 761

Episode Title: Hiring a Unicorn Employee 

Unicorn employees possess every skill and qualification you could ask for—so why might it be a bad idea to hire one? Let’s talk about it, next on The Perna Syndicate.

Ep 761 show:

Welcome to The Perna Syndicate this week! I’m your host, Mark Perna. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could find a new hire who had all the skills, education, experience, and personality traits indicated in the job description? Such a candidate—often called a ‘unicorn employee’—could actually turn out less amazing than you might expect.

A unicorn employee checks all the boxes on a job description. They have the right amount of experience, the perfect industry background, and usually a college degree. 

In fact, they’re exactly who you’re looking for! It’s easy to visualize this employee being a self starter, requiring little training and melding seamlessly with fellow team members. 

Unfortunately, this is not always how it turns out. Even if you do somehow manage to locate such a paragon, there are several pitfalls with this kind of hire that can result in negative outcomes.

There’s always the temptation to hold out for that unicorn employee. So what happens if we don’t? Is it ‘settling for less’ to hire someone who doesn’t check all the boxes? I don’t believe that it is.

Unicorn employees are hard to come by, and less perfect than they seem. At the end of the day, hiring these perfect employees could just backfire on you. 

We’ll talk more about why unicorn employees don’t always work out tomorrow on The Perna Syndicate. Thanks for tuning in and I will see you then!