Scrapper Or Silver Spoon - Who's Your Best Bet? When hiring you come across 2 candidates - one with all the advantages and the other who've had a lifetime with adversity. Now, whom will you choose?

Hiring is a tedious process. Out of a pool of candidates, choosing the one could be a tall task. However, what most people fail to notice about this procedure is that the interviewers mostly look not for just the best candidate but the most suitable one.

Resumes are like short stories; it traces the journey of a person's life, broadly. It marks his/her journey on paper. When this resume is handed over to an interviewer, he contemplates what that candidate could bring to the company, the talent and accomplishments. The first resume tells about a person from a well-off family who had had a comparatively easier life with certain advantages, and the other is someone who is accustomed to adversity and had faced tremendous odd to be where he is now. Now given both are equally qualified, whom would you hire?

At a recent TEd talk, Regina Hartley, Manager at Human Resources at UPS, said, "Hire the scrapper". She distinctly categorizes the candidates into two not so politically correct terms, the silver spoon and the scrapper. Silver spoon might have all that you require, the perfect background and strong recommendations but the scrapper is the one who had faced struggles to reach where he is now and had done off track jobs to pay bills. So who are you going to bet on?

Why you should choose the scrapper?

We have nothing against people who have it easy in the world. They face their own problems and one should not determine their character by how much money they have. But life seems a tad fairer to them. Where the other one finds it harder to find a job, the silver spoon get experience by working under some of the best people and when it's time to choose, the silver spoon seems the best bet. What does the scrapper have against them? Well, the will and determination to overcome difficulties in life. Regina says that the scrapper succeeds not in spite of the adversity but because of the adversity. The hardships make them stronger, build character and for them no job seems small. A silver spoon might find certain jobs beneath him, not because he is smarter or it's degrading, but because that would be the wrong utilisation of his talent. For the one who has risen from a bad past, it is another task to conquer.

The scrapper is passionate for his work. The silver spoon doesn't lack the ardour as well, but the former had fought for it. For silver spoon, the passion is for work, for scrapper it's also for survival. The scrapper will love his job, because if it meant going through all the sacrifices, it could not be for nothing. The scrapper will be dedicated as he doesn't have anything to fall back on other than his talent.

A scrapper seems the world to be against him, so the only thing he can rely on is self control. They believe that if they get in trouble, only they can get themselves out. And since, not much has worked out for them anyway, they know how to make the best out of circumstances and come up with ways to tackle it. They are their best when facing challenges.

Th world is filled with scrappers

A look around the world is enough to tell that the world of entrepreneurs is filled with scrappers. Abandonment, poverty, emotional issues, disabilities and what not, people have gone through the impossible to be successful. Given up by parents for adoption, dropped out of college, went on a yearlong sojourn to India, and on top of that, he had dyslexia, Steve Jobs is a classic scrapper. His resume would not have been the most ideal resume one could come across and the hesitation to hire that candidate goes without saying. In the US, a study shows that 35% of the most successful entrepreneurs had dyslexia. What these stories show is the power of post traumatic growth. They tend to see their disability as "desirable difficulty' and work on them better, acquiring new abilities.

Humour comes easy to them

Other than strength, the scrapper, on the face of difficulty, is likely to form a sense of humour. What looked as hardships become great stories later in life. They are perspective and know humour will help them through hard times. When times get tough, the scrapper will never lose hope but rather think about how he can do things differently. That is the motivation that goes into the work.

Now, the silver spoon seems like a safe bet, but would you risk on a scrapper? Share what you think on our official Facebook Page Entrepreneur India.