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What recruiting tips can we learn from Batman and Nick Fury?

Batman and Nick Fury talent recruiting techniques

Oksana LavriFuture work expert12. July 20226 min read

Why did we pick Batman and Nick Fury as examples of recruiters?
Five qualities that make Batman and Nick Fury the best recruiters
How do Batman and Nick Fury search for talents?
1. Recruiting tips from Batman and Nick Fury
Batman and Nick Fury = HR heroes

What makes an HR manager or a recruiter a superhero? A super sense for talents? A recent Batman movie with Robert Pattinson shows a new take on this famous comic book character.

Pattinson’s film reminds us that two comic characters, known as Batman (Bruce Wayne) and Nick Fury, are pretty good talent scouts with interesting recruiting techniques. Remember the Justice League, when Batman set out to find talent to confront the Legion of Doom and other villains? And remember how Nick Fury gradually gathered the Avengers to fight the aliens and save the planet?

Let’s see why we consider Batman and Nick Fury to have excellent recruiting techniques and what HR managers can learn from them.

Why did we pick Batman and Nick Fury as examples of recruiters?

“I still believe in heroes.” ― Nick Fury

Batman and Nick Fury are collectors of epic talent that can repel sometimes invincible villains. Only Batman is from the DC Universe and Nick Fury is from Marvel.

Neither Bruce Wayne nor Nick Fury have superhuman abilities other than keen observation and experience. They don’t have super strengths, don’t run as fast as lightning, can’t fly or shoot lasers from their eyes, and don’t have a web to shoot.

However, they are both incredibly brilliant strategists and super talent hunters. How do they do it?

Five qualities that make Batman and Nick Fury the best recruiters

Of course, searching for talent isn’t like turning back time or saving the planet. But it still requires the ability to assess the qualities and characteristics of team members and use them to move the company’s goals, much like Batman does with the Justice League and Nick Fury with the Avengers. They identified various individuals who fought evil by themselves and made them a team. So what qualities make Batman and Nick Fury good recruiters, and what recruiting tips can HR managers learn from them?

“He could always see five steps ahead, which is impressive for a one-eyed man. And for better or worse, he could think like them.” ― Phil Coulson and Skye about Nick Fury

Ability to read and understand candidates. The ability to read others gives Bruce and Nick a good look at recruiting allies, as they see potential in individuals. As a skilled recruiter and tracker, Batman can travel worldwide to search for the right candidates, and Nick Fury can plan his strategy many years in advance to create a team of superheroes.

Use tactical & detective skills while recruiting. Batman is often called “the best detective in the world” because he is a master tactician. Nick Fury is a brilliant strategist who can plan much further ahead than others. Both are excellent observers and investigators. These qualities make Bruce’s and Nick’s decision-making skills excellent. The recruiting tip for HR managers? Understand what’s required of the best candidates.

Share empathy. Batman is often considered a dark, pessimistic, and suspicious hero. However, despite his cold personality, he somehow shows great love for humanity. Nick Fury has the same experience of good and bad days. Both Batman and Nick often share sympathy and compassion for others based on their experience. Empathy is an essential trait for recruiters; it helps you understand other people’s feelings, interpret body language, and make a positive impression on candidates.

Use soft skills efficiently. Understanding recruiting techniques and methods is important, but you also need to communicate appropriately and understand candidates and their needs. Batman and Nick Fury teach us to study candidates: not only their super skills but also their visions and views of life.

Use a unique approach for each candidate. There’s no universal formula for recruiting candidates. We are all different, and each of us needs our own approach. While searching for super teams, Batman and Nick Fury use different hiring approaches (more on this below).

Let’s see the main recruiting tips from Batman and Nick Fury.

How do Batman and Nick Fury search for talents?

Searching for talent is related to market intelligence. You get information about the candidates a company will need in the future, analyze the market, and look for the best candidates.

Both Batman and Nick Fury look for gifted people (A-players) or those ready for challenges. Wayne and Fury provide tasks to test a candidate’s current abilities and develop new ones. They are ready to take risks and build trust between the team and new candidates. Here are some recruiting tips we’ve gathered from Batman and Nick Fury.

Find your work superheroes with people analytics best practices

Check out the key steps and best practices for implementing people analytics that Batman and Nick Fury would use in their recruiting practice.

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Recruiting tips from Batman and Nick Fury

First, build long-term relationships. Batman used this tactic to recruit Wonder Woman, and Nick Fury used it to recruit Black Widow. Before hiring, they did a lot of research to build a trusting relationship over a long period of time before these candidates joined the Justice League and the Avengers.

Second, ask for referrals, sometimes from the person you want to hire. Do you ask candidates, “Do you know anyone good for the job?” This is exactly what happened with Aquaman: Batman asked a room full of villagers if they knew someone powerful and friendly because he wanted to get an intro. By the way, Mark Robert used these recruiting tips when he hired a billion-dollar sales team at HubSpot.

Third, build trust between yourself and the candidate. Batman has built a double life: Bruce Wayne to citizens and Batman to police and villains. Revealing his identity during his first meeting with Barry Allen (Flash), Batman signaled that he was ready to trust Flash, which caused instant loyalty in the rookie graduate. Nick Fury also tried to build trust with the world-famous genius, billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist Tony Stark (Iron Man).

“Let that be a lesson. In the future, be more careful from who you accept free lemonade.” ― Bruce Wayne/Batman

Finally, offer learning and development opportunities. For his first interaction with Victor Stone (Cyborg), Bruce Wayne sent Diana Pierce (Wonder Woman). She offered Cyborg to join the team as an opportunity for learning and development. She added that joining the team could lead to personal development, which is very important, especially for Millennial jobseekers. Here’s one more recruiting tip from Nick Fury. He offered Clint Barton (Hawkeye) a job to develop his marksmanship. It eventually made him one of the most qualified agents.

Batman and Nick Fury = HR heroes

Batman and Nick Fury don’t have superpowers; they developed their abilities and helped others become better lifesavers, which was their key recruiting technique.

It’s the same with HR. You’re not born with a knowledge of how to recruit; you develop those skills. HR has the tools managers should use, just as Batman always uses a utility belt. It’s convenient because he can quickly get the necessary tools from the belt. With HR, it’s essential to use people analytics, strategic workforce planning, and a talent marketplace to build a cohesive talent pipeline and fully develop your workforce.

“The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people.” ― Nick Fury

HR managers can take into consideration these recruiting tips from Batman and Nick Fury. They aren’t just recruiters: they are negotiators, mediators, problem-solving specialists, and analysts.

Batman and Nick stand for everything fair and ethical. HR also represents unbiased integrity.

Batman defends rights; whether someone is an authority figure or an ordinary citizen, he calls it as it is. Nick Fury works for five years to recruit talents and save the planet from an alien invasion. Likewise, HR represents law, whether someone is a line manager or an employee, and calls it as it is.

To be a superhero, you don’t need super abilities; you need to work hard to develop yourself as a specialist. Comic book authors created the characters of Batman and Nick Fury to show that developing talent is hard and requires long, hard work on yourself and your abilities. Not everything is decided by force or money. Intelligence, strategic thinking, and data analysis are significant.