When you’re looking people to add to your team, pick the learners.

In my short time as a working professional, one thing has become very clear to me. There appear to be two types of professionals – those who have a passion for what they do, and those who don’t.

We’re beginning to dig our heels into what represents a pretty massive project – one which has the potential to help our company tremendously in the future. The success of the project hinges on our ability to work efficiently to hit monster deadlines, creating most of the project details as we go.

This is a situation and environment that I’m very used to, with the majority of my time with my past venture spent in a whirlwind of thinking through problems, balancing the line between producing results quickly and turning out a great end-result.

When interviewing for potential team members on the project, I found that these characteristics are rare in folks brought up in corporate environments. You would think that anyone would jump at the chance to have a ton of responsibility, helping determine the fate of the project as you go along and potentially helping your company cement itself as the best in their industry for years to come.

Not so. Almost everyone I spoke with was concerned with working just hard enough to do the job, contributing no more to the project than is required, content with turning out a result that may meet spec but is less than “wow.”

The few I’ve met who don’t fit in this mold come in all different shapes and sizes, but they have one common bond – they are all learners.

They spend their free time reading about their craft, picking up new competencies, chasing down what’s new and interesting and cutting-edge. They don’t expect the company to send them to some conference or class to learn new skills. they simply go pick them up.

I’ve found that these people are the same people who take on projects because they feel the projects are worth doing, not because it will give them a larger paycheck. They are the people comfortable bouncing ideas off each other, constantly thinking and re-thinking the way they’re doing things, even willing to scrap the project and start over in the interest of doing something amazing.

These are the people I want on my team. I’ve found two, and they’ve been an absolute joy to work with. They are fast becoming the litmus test by which my future collaborators will be judged.

If you want your professional life to be more exciting, your work to be more fun, and your results to be more spectacular, find the learners. Hire the learners. Promote the learners. Keep the learners happy. They represent the engine on which your company – and perhaps the entire world of business – runs.