She Didn't Own a Computer. She Quadrupled Our Conversion.

She'd never bought anything online and didn't own a computer. I hired her anyway for one of the most important digital roles at Dell.

I was surrounded by MBAs from top-10 schools when I was hiring a Web Producer to manage the page that mattered most on a multi-billion dollar ecommerce site. I could have hired the pedigree. Instead, on a recommendation from my team, I interviewed a candidate going to night school at a local university, with no online shopping experience at all.

Nothing on paper said "hire this person." But she was hungry, curious, and understood metrics. Every answer showed she'd go find the data instead of guessing. So I hired her.

She turned out to be the best Web Producer Dell ever had. She dug into the site, found new merchandising ideas by analyzing data herself, ran her own tests unasked, and coordinated across five teams to get more done than almost anyone I've worked with since.

Under her, we quadrupled online conversion in four years.

The lesson I keep relearning: credentials tell you what someone has already been given the chance to prove. They don't tell you what someone will do with the next chance. In my experience, hunger and curiosity are worth hiring for... the rest can be taught.

When's the last time you hired for hunger over a resume?