“I see you have long arms. Would you like a job?”

This was literally the opening line from a gentleman who approached a young lady at the conclusion of the local high school play.  That young lady was my mom.  She was a junior in high school and that conversation led to her first job at the phone company. 

It’s hard for us to imagine what communication was like in the mid-‘50s given the ubiquity of smartphones and the emergence of the metaverse.  This was the age of the switchboard and wingspan mattered!

My mom earned $1 per hour (which was pretty good she says).  She worked 5-8pm, Monday through Friday, as well as during the day on Saturdays and Sundays.  She was going to school, was a cheerleader, and had all the typical activities any other teenager would have.  I asked her how she managed a job with all that she had going on.  “Well, when I had a school thing, it was OK.”, she replied, very matter-of-factly.   Over time, she ended up with $500 in the bank which she loaned her father to help him buy the local funeral home.  “It was a lucrative business and he paid me back pretty fast,” she recalls.   

There are at least a couple of lessons from this experience decades later:

First, this manager was recruiting to fit a targeted need.  If this seems a stretch (pun intended), think about it.  This is not about bias against people with short arms but imagine the actual need to reach across a switchboard as a fundamental to success in the role.  I visit with people all the time who don’t give enough thought to what a given job requires to be able to evaluate candidates on their fit to that role.  Job fit is a leading indicator to success in a role as well as employee retention.  This is one of my favorite things about my work with The Predictive Index in helping companies set Job Targets as part of their recruiting and selection processes.  It just makes sense!

The second thing is the flexible work arrangement this manager created.  This has been such a hot topic in the current #WFH and “blended-work” environments.  Prior to that, it tended to be more of the exception than the rule.  Yet, we act as if in yesteryear, it was always “show up at this hour, leave at this hour, with a fixed lunch break… end of story.”  Maybe my mom’s story is an exception but I will tell you, she was surprised that I was surprised that she had that accommodation.  One of the smartest things I ever did as a CEO was grant Christy, our graphics designer, a flexible work arrangement when she wanted to start a family.  She was able to make that a priority and we retained an absolute A-player. 

I spend the bulk of my time now in the field of talent optimization and it seems we get more wrapped up around the axle on things that at their core are pretty simple and aren’t that new.  It’s a matter of discipline, priority and the choices we make as leaders to give it the attention it deserves.