Let’s begin with a thought experiment. I’ll provide three story pitches and you think about whether you would enjoy any of them.
Ready?
Here we go:
Pitch number one: A young woman loses her job in the entertainment industry, so she leaves the city and settles in a small town where she makes friends with another young woman who is trying to save her family’s aquarium from bankruptcy.
Pitch number two: A young man is scouted for a job as a salesman because the company wants him on its badminton team. He has to navigate personal and working relationships with the other men at the company while balancing tournaments and learning his job.
Pitch number three: In the future, a government forces ethnic minorities to fight its wars in special armored cavalry units, while telling the public that these machines are unmanned. The handler of one such unit starts to become disturbed by this practice.
So, what do you think? Would you enjoy any of these stories? If you would, you will be pleased to know that each of these is the premise of a real television show.
Now, you may be wondering where these shows may be seen. They aren’t old shows - each of them aired in 2021 or 2022. Where are they streaming? You don’t recognize them from HBO Max or Disney+ or Amazon Prime.
The answer is that these shows all stream on Crunchyroll. They are anime.
Is that surprising? If you don’t know much about contemporary anime, you might not know that complex, intellectual, and sensitive shows like these are common. Maybe you haven’t seen any anime since you were a teen. Maybe you have fixed ideas about what anime is, can do, and can be, and because you didn’t know about anime, you didn’t think to consider that it could be good entertainment. Shows like these were unknown unknowns for you - you weren’t even aware of the gaps in your knowledge.
This article isn’t about anime. It’s about hiring. The blind spots in your mentality about television might not be the only blind spots you have. Consider that there may be people you don’t even consider hiring and maybe you don’t even know you’re doing it. And consider that these people may add value to your organization in ways that you haven’t considered. There are people you aren’t reaching out to because you have a fixed idea about what a worker in your industry looks, sounds, and acts like.
Consider hiring a person who didn’t go to a fancy college. A self-educated person. A person with a rural background. An older person. A career changer. A former teacher. Someone who needs a little more training for hard skills. You could be missing out on someone great.
By the way, the shows are, in order, The Aquatope on White Sand, Salaryman’s Club, and Eighty-Six. Check them out! And hire nontraditional workers.