All the technology in the world won’t help you find better candidates for your open positions.

It just won’t.

Technology will help you find people for sure. But finding people isn’t the hard part of filling positions. The hard part is finding the right person for each open position. And finding the right person? Well, that requires us to think a bit about what qualities that person should have, and what we want out of the position.

So, what do you want?

Somebody with experience? Nah. Experience just means they know how to do something the way somebody else wants it done. Some experience? Fine. Not too much.

Somebody with a college degree? Why? Maybe some degrees are helpful or even required, but the land speed of change renders many degrees obsolete that are only a few years old.

Somebody who worked as a night manager at the local motel? Maybe. Why? Well, maybe she was in school full-time and used that night job to pay the bills. That says something about who she is.

Maybe when you peek closer at her application materials you see that during her time at the motel she completed intriguing draft sketches of the foyer remodel that ended up informing the final design. That also says something, especially considering the open design position you are trying to fill.

What technology still can’t do is help you find that night manager. That interesting soul with the presence of mind and willingness to get things done. Because the technology, though getting better, just cut her for not having enough “experience.” It will bludgeon you with 100 resumes, but you won’t get the night manager.

If we want to hire superstars we need to first understand our own definition of a superstar. Peel back the layers of this idea. Get at the soft center of this idea to see beyond the easy resume metrics.

Use technology, yes. Even the technology of newspaper ads still work. But make the filters such that you can still find the night managers among us.