Sometimes the best candidate isn’t the one with a picture-perfect resume. If you’ve been in HR for a while, then you know that some candidates can be hit or miss even with the best resumes and interviews. Sometimes you get it wrong for all the good reasons. This is why you should reconsider how you view scrappers. A scrapper is someone who may have a resume that is not so flattering. What they lack in upfront appeal is often made up with intangible, or soft, skills. This is why you need a few scrappers in your C-suite. Sometimes you need someone that’s a little rough to get the job done.

What Is a Scrapper?

A scrapper is someone who has done some job-hopping in the past. A lot of HR professionals think this means a tendency to up and quit, but that’s not entirely true. Sometimes, people want to go back to school or have an emergency pop up and this is why they may have job gaps. You can’t hold things like this against someone when they could be a benefit for your company.

How to Handle a Scrapper Interview

It’s important to ask questions about job gaps, change of jobs, and other things during the interview. This can give you a much better idea of what was actually going on to cause them. Once you have that information, their resume might make a little more sense to you.

What Skills Can a Scrapper Bring to the Table?

A lot of intangible skills like perseverance, effort, and creativity. A scrapper has most likely learned how to overcome moments of adversity that other candidates haven’t. This is particularly true with candidates that come from affluent, pedigree backgrounds.

The person that had it very easy in a great school may not know what’s it like to deal with a lot of stress at once. C-suite level positions require a lot of stress tolerance because a lot is riding on their shoulders. Executives make decisions that can make or break a company’s bottom line and this can be too much for some.

Having to hold down a job and attend school or even losing a job due to cuts make a person very stress-tolerant. This also causes them to view the world from a different point of view that your executive team might be lacking. Having a scrapper on board gives your leadership team a whole host of experiences to draw from.

How to Handle the Executive Search for a Scrapper Candidate

This a straightforward process when handled correctly. The first thing to get across to your HR team is for them to remove any bias that they may have from bad experiences. It’s understandable that certain patterns on resumes do stand out but you’re really looking for that diamond in the rough.

Sometimes, working with another company for the executive or job search might work out far better. A good staffing agency has experience in exactly what you’re looking for and can narrow the search down. Bishop & Company can find the right scrapper for your C-suite.

Why Bishop & Company

Finding great talent in the downtown Honolulu area or Hawaii can be tough. There’s a lot of great candidates out there but not a lot of time to look through them all. Bishop & Company has been pairing great talent with great companies since 1986. They have worked with people of all backgrounds and this makes them a good fit for getting that scrapper onboard.

Shorten your search for great talent by working with Bishop and Company. Click here or call (808) 839-2200 to speak to a professional about your company’s talent needs today.