Where horses are missing, donkeys serve
When good beats ideal
"Kie mankas ĉevaloj, servas azenoj" - Rudolf-Josef Fischer
This is a saying by my father in Esperanto, meaning "Where horses are missing, donkeys serve". In a situation where an ideal candidate is not available, someone else will fill the gap, often in a good enough and reliable way and for a long time.
This phrase has turned out true in my life. Even outside volunteering work, where it was originally coined, I consider it to be relevant advice for work life. It is an especially good counter to the "lonely genius syndrome".
A large part of my previous career as a software developer was based on stabilizing, improving and expanding products built by other people. They had already left and were no longer available for questions.
This was a scenario already taught at university: Most of the "-ability" and quality aspect dealt with this: How to ensure that the software does what it is supposed to do and what the documentation says? How to make it understandable for more people and easy to change? Although this is a well-known situation, the ability to do that is still underrated.
Many times, "good work" beats "genius work" on the long run. This runs counter to the widespread hero workship at the workplace. Even more important to explain why!
The perceived or self-declared geniuses were often bright minds with great ideas that could create a first version of their vision. They only had a couple of problems: They had difficulties explaining their thoughts (or found it cumbersome to do so, especially if it had to happen more than once). They did not want to compromise, be it including or involving others in decision-making. They found it boring to improve existing software or to document it. Surprisingly enough, they found respectful interaction optional. ("Who needs to be diplomatic when you are right?") And so they left, often not in good terms.
Because their work was isolated from the rest and there was no shared understanding about it, it came down to luck whether it was actually fine-tuned to be in a usable state or abandoned and rebuilt from scratch. (You might ask how I know that the people that had left before I joined had been like this. I admit: For these cases, it is an assumption based on the cases where I witnessed the whole story from the outside. A repeating pattern...)
In the end, the question of "ideal" vs. "good" candidates comes down to:
genius vs. from good to great
big bang vs. continuous improvement
one decides alone vs. communicating an idea
you have to do as I say vs. building trust over time
Based on my experience, I have grown very skeptical about the search of "ideal" candidates. Most of the time, it is better to take a "good (enough)" fit and help them improve. For long-term sustainability (and a friendly work climate), this is the far better choice. This is why whenever someone mentions that a specific job should only be done by a person fulfilling a lot of entry conditions (that are not legally required or factually needed to get the job done), I doubt whether this is a helpful and necessary filter. Stop demanding horses when the donkeys are so close!
Esperanto Desperado: Feliĉe