A recent Resume.org survey of 991 U.S. hiring managers found that creative skills have surpassed technical ones in perceived value, with 57% saying creative employees are harder to replace with AI than technical workers. The World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs Report 2025” found creative thinking to be a major priority for employers, ranking it almost as highly as leadership ability.
But researchers from the University of Toronto found that organizations may need to rethink how they hire for creative talent.
In an in-progress study of more than 9,000 job postings and a survey of current hiring managers in the United States and Canada, researchers found that “genius language” was significantly more prevalent when organizations recruit for creative roles—such as creative director, graphic designer, creative content specialist, and marketing coordinator.
The study found that job postings are more than twice as likely to include words like “genius,” “visionary,” and “unique” than they are to include words like “curious,” “observant,” and “experimental.”
In another study of 300 hiring managers, the researchers asked participants to create a job posting for a creative role. Most hiring managers included phrases like, “We’re seeking a creative genius to join our team,” instead of descriptions like, “We’re looking for curiosity and open-mindedness: a highly creative individual who will constantly seek to learn from diverse sources and be open to new experiences.”
Recruitment language is filled with “genius” descriptors. But in an online labor market experiment with active job seekers, researchers found that “explorer” language is more effective in drawing in creative applicants.
The researchers conducted an online labor market study of 2,000 real job seekers who applied for the same position. Half of the applicants saw versions of the job posting that used “explorer” language, while the other half saw the same postings with “genius” language. The study indicates that both males and females were more likely to apply to the versions that used “explorer” language.
Previous research has found that terms like “brilliance” and “genius” disproportionately deter women from applying for roles, because those terms are associated with a more masculine work environment. “Explorer” language also encouraged a greater demographic diversity of applicants and more submissions from people who scored higher on creative performance tests.
In trying to recruit “genius” applicants, it may be that organizations are pushing away top creative talent.
In a Harvard Business Review report, the University of Toronto researchers gave some pointers on how to create job postings to successfully recruit creative talent. “Use terms like ‘experimentation,’ ‘trial and error,’ ‘exploration,’ ‘collaboration,’ ‘curiosity,’ and ‘feedback,’ and avoid terms that cue the opposite, like ‘genius,’ ‘inner talent,’ ‘brilliant,’ or ‘gifted,’” they wrote.
“By reframing creativity as something people do rather than something they are, organizations can attract not just more applicants, but the right ones—the curious explorers who will actually drive innovation.”
