People Persons vs. MBA
So I just had a discussion with a friend of mine who runs an ATM company. What’s an ATM company? He owns and manages several hundred bodega ATM machines. They earn a fortune but he hasn’t had any luck recruiting people to outsource some of his work. Now the person he’s looking for doesn’t need to have a college degree, doesn’t need to be all that intelligent and could easily earn $75k a year, which is great for not having a college degree. What does the job require? Being diligent, work nights and weekends and be a people person. For one thing he was looking in the wrong place, he was looking for a college grad and the average college grad will think this job is below him. So i crunched it down and this is who i determined would be the ideal candidate:
- someone who is naturally likable and a good talker
- someone who wants a degree some day
- someone who isn’t earning more than 40k a year currently
- a few college credits but dropped out for personal reasons (had a kid, take care of family, out of money etc…)
- offer to pay for college for the person (city college is cheap anyway)
of course, you can’t legally write that in an employment post but thats the candidate your looking for because thats the kind of person who will appreciate the job and take it seriously.
Now the second issue is that i think it is MUCH harder to find a skilled People Person than an MBA. You can find thousands of MBA’s for every truly good people person. I know very few people that are great people people but plenty of MBAs. Its just a lot harder i think to find people that understand the human psyche then it is people with a fancy degree. That’s also why i would take a psych major over any other major for most business positions any day of the week. You can learn to be a quant a lot easier than you can learn to be a people person.
Email This
