Remember those Tupperware Shape-O® Balls – the ones where kids try to fit various shapes through the various openings.

Did you (or your child) ever succeed when you / they were trying to push the star through the square-shaped opening? We learned from a young age that squares only fit into square openings and stars only fit into star-shaped openings.

On a seemingly unrelated matter, have you noticed that organisational diagrams always use the same shape – rectangles – to represent roles? Every one of them has a pre-determined job title, pay grade and job description before the individual colleague is even identified.

So, the message from the hiring manager to the talent acquisition team or external recruiter is “go and find me a rectangular person to fit in this rectangular box”. The criteria for selection will be previous experience in a role with the same job title, ideally in the same industry and even better if the candidates have qualifications that show that they match the rectangle. If we go and find someone who exactly matches the rectangle, we minimise risk and everyone is happy.

And in a market where there are plenty of people looking for a new role, finding one or more rectangular candidates is not a difficult task.

Hang on – I think I might just found a link between the two seemingly unrelated matters!

How do you attract stars to your organisation if you only have rectangular openings?

There are so many people in the market who don’t fit the rectangle. They are stars in every sense of the word.

Sure, looking for a rectangle is easy and accommodating a star in an organisation might be more challenging for the hiring manager or the recruiter.

But here’s the thing – the stars are multi-skilled, generally highly experienced and very likely to be able to perform so much more than your rectangular expectations. There are many, many stars in the market right now who are being overlooked because, I believe, someone in the process is being lazy.

So, here’s your challenge. Don’t ask your recruiters to find you a . Expect more. Encourage them to find a star who can do what your rectangular role expects AND a whole lot more.

But you’ll need to do more than ask your recruiter to find you a star – as we learnt as young children, stars only fit into star-shaped openings. Create openings in your organisation that only stars fit into.

What are you doing to attract and accommodate stars in your business?

The Shape-O Ball is a register trade mark of Party IP Holdings, LLC and a Tupperware-branded product.