The Best Employee I Ever Hired Had No Idea What He Was Doing

One of the best hiring decisions I ever made looked completely wrong on paper.

At the time I was managing a project coordination team for a company that designed industrial circuit boards. It wasn't exactly an environment where you'd expect to take hiring risks. We were coordinating technicians, manufacturing schedules, customer expectations, engineering changes, and projects where mistakes could become very expensive.

Then I met a young guy from Germany.

He had recently moved to Canada.

He loved the outdoors.

He worked hard.

He asked thoughtful questions.

There was just one small problem.

He knew absolutely nothing about circuit boards.

Nothing.

If we had compared résumés, he probably wouldn't have made it through the first round of interviews.

But there was something about him that simply felt right.

Sometimes, as a manager, you learn to trust that feeling.

I didn't hire his experience.

I hired his attitude.

Looking back, I don't think I was hiring technical ability at all.

I was hiring curiosity.

He wanted to understand everything.

Not because someone told him to.

Because he genuinely wanted to know.

Every day he'd ask questions.

He'd write things down.

He'd come back with better questions.

Then something unexpected started happening.

Instead of simply learning our processes...

He started improving them.

Fresh eyes see things experienced people stop noticing.

One of the strange things about working in the same industry for years is that you slowly stop questioning why things are done a certain way.

"This is just how we've always done it."

New people don't carry that baggage.

They haven't learned which questions they're "not supposed" to ask.

Sometimes they'll challenge something you've accepted for years simply because it doesn't make sense to them.

Occasionally...

They're right.

Some of the efficiencies we eventually adopted came from someone who had no idea how the industry was "supposed" to work.

He simply saw a better way.

Skills can be taught.

Curiosity is much harder.

Over the years I've become convinced that technical skills are often the easiest part of a job to teach.

Teaching someone to care...

That's much harder.

Teaching someone to take ownership.

Teaching someone to notice problems before they're asked.

Teaching someone to improve something without being told.

Those qualities rarely appear on a résumé.

But they become obvious very quickly once someone joins your team.

Hire for where someone can go.

One mistake I think many businesses make is hiring people based entirely on what they've already done.

That's understandable.

Experience reduces risk.

But it can also cause you to overlook people with tremendous upside.

The young outdoorsman I hired eventually became one of the strongest people on the team.

Not because he arrived knowing everything.

Because he never stopped learning.

There's a big difference.

"Experience teaches someone how things have been done. Curiosity asks whether there's a better way."

The Long Game

If there's one hiring lesson I've carried through every business since then, it's this.

Experience tells you where someone has been.

Character gives you a much better idea where they're capable of going.

Whenever possible, I'd rather teach a curious person a new industry than convince an experienced person to care.

That lesson has served me surprisingly well.

Key Takeaways

• Experience matters, but attitude often matters more. The best long-term employees are usually lifelong learners.

• Fresh perspectives create innovation. New team members often question processes everyone else stopped noticing years ago.

• Hire for potential, not just résumés. Great people frequently grow into great roles.

• Curiosity compounds. Employees who continually ask questions often become the ones improving your business.

Growing a Service Business?

Building a great business isn't just about finding more customers.

It's about building better systems, empowering great people, and creating processes that continue improving over time.

LJos.io was built with that same philosophy in mind—giving growing service businesses the tools to organize bookings, customer communication, recurring services, payments, and daily operations so great people can spend less time fighting software and more time serving customers.

Less software. More business.