It’s often politically unpopular and seemingly risky to hire for a key role outside of the boundaries of your firm’s industry. It also might be just the right thing to infuse your team or organization with fresh perspectives and new ideas.
I’m an unabashed fan of diversity in all forms and flavors, however, one that doesn’t get talked about or that is scoffed at is this issue of industry diversity.
Perhaps you’ve heard forms of these comments before…I certainly have:
What does she know about our business? She’s been peddling widgets and that’s not us!
Why would you hire him? It will take months for him to learn our business.
He must be crazy hiring her. She doesn’t have any experience in our business. This will be a disaster.
While there are most definitely situations where industry experience and knowing the players and landscape might be required, there are a great number of roles (marketing, customer service, some sales roles and even some technical positions) where hiring someone with a non-traditional industry background will strengthen the organizational gene pool.
Hiring industry clones facilitates recycling of like-kind competitive ideas. It helps you import your competitor’s bad habits and it breeds a bad case of industry myopia.
Given the pace of change and the fluidity of industry boundaries in today’s world, the last thing I want…or you should want is an organization staffed and led by people who understand yesterday’s industry rules and battles, when the real battle is out there, somewhere else.
5 Key Benefits from Hiring Outside the Lines of Your Industry
1. A natural defense against myopic thinking. Hiring outside the lines is a powerful aid to preventing the spread of myopic thinking. It’s a tonic for “we’ve always done it this way.”
2. Challenges to the status quo. Hiring from outside your industry introduces fresh sets of eyes who will look at a situation and your firm’s approaches and who will naturally ask annoyingly valuable questions such as, “Why are we doing it this way?”
3. Potential for creative approaches to problem solving. Introducing a fresh view tends to promote problem-solving that is more divergent than convergent, supporting innovation and change.
4. More and fresh ideas on how to win. A broader base of experience to draw upon in generating ideas to serve customers and beat competitors.
5. A broader, more diverse talent pool. Call me a fan of any approach to broadening the organizational talent pool.
4 Challenges in Hiring Outside the Lines:
1. Resistance. Expect resistance from the boss or less-than-enlightened recruiters and cynical team members. If the role you are hiring for truly doesn’t require specific industry expertise, be prepared to make the case for how the firm will benefit from a bit of industry diversity.
2. Time demands for you. Expect to spend more time helping the new hire learn the ropes in your industry. If you’ve gone out on a limb to bring in someone with a less than conventional background, you’re on the hook to help that person ramp up as quickly as possible.
3. The need to actually leverage the new resource. Don’t let the fresh perspectives languish and expire. Find as many opportunities as possible to let the new hire share ideas and perspectives on how their functional role or how key activities were handled in their prior life.
4. A need to redouble your good leadership practices to ensure that you are monitoring, coaching and providing feedback on the hire’s on-boarding process and progress. Like any hiring situation, you want to recognize a mistake early and remedy it before it turns into a big problem.
Case In Point:
A number of years ago, our senior HR executive went into an interview with a product management candidate of mine, after asking me, “What I was thinking?” Following the interview, his telling comment was, “I get it.”
Instead of seeing a traditional hire with industry experience on paper, he saw someone that seemed irrelevant for our cause. What he saw in person, was a super-intelligent, articulate professional who had context for the job. This individual would not have made it through a traditional recruiting process, which would have been a shame. She turned out to be a superstar.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Hiring outside the lines of your industry takes courage. It doesn’t always work….but neither does every “safe” hire. You’ll have to stand up to the scrutiny of those used to seeing like-kind professionals. You’ll have more work to help someone understand and learn your business and industry. And when done right, you’ll have someone your competitor doesn’t have, offering new and different ideas that might just make their life miserable and yours much more successful.
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Art,
This post hit home with me as for the last 15 years or so I have been the “industry outsider” for the teams I served. Instead of “outsider” I prefer the term “Heretic” as I discuss in my blog post: Want to add value to your bottom-line quickly?…Hire a Heretic! http://tinyurl.com/699z6d3
As heretics “we don’t know what we don’t know” and that gives us power to challenge the “way things are done around here”. We are not aware of perceived limitations to creative solutions. We apply best practices from other industries that have not made their way into your space as of yet. As you indicated we ask “why” a lot as we need to see how the current process was built, why it was developed and when.
So I guess the real question is do you hire based on a discipline expertise or an industry expertise. .If someone has a strong grasp of a discipline, in my case listening and understanding how buyers want to buy, then why can’t it be applied to any industry? If you have a strong on-boarding program and training program the heretic will hit the ground running.
If you require your new team members to learn on the fly then there is a longer training curve and a tremendous amount of frustration on the part of the Heretic as they often have skills, tools to solve common problems that have not been historically used in “your industry”. I hate to burst your bubble…but the comment of “you do not understand our industry” may make you feel like you have some kind of secret sauce, but from my experience serving internal and external customers is the same no matter what industry.
I have found the “industry” is not nearly as big a challenge and the business “culture”. Is the new employer open to new ideas? If so I can promise you your new heretic will drive improvements to your current processes and help create tools that can be used across your team. Listen closely to all those “crazy” things they say in their first 90 days as they will be the most valuable, before they are pressured to assimilate and conform.
As the hiring manager it all comes down to; are you willing to go out-of-the-box to make your box stronger, bigger, and more secure? Or do you want more group think?.
..and how’s that been working for you so far?
Mark Allen Roberts
Mark, I’ve been familiar with and have truly appreciated your “heretic” perspective for quite awhile. Your comment is filled with wisdom…I’m thrilled that you shared in such detail. Thank you! -Art
Art – as an executive search consultant trying to persuade line and hiring managers to get out of what I call ” copy-paste” recruitment mode is challenging. I have seen many excellent candidates cut because of lazy, short term and nervous thinking. The mantra is give me what I had before and quickly – even more the case if the line manager is searching for his/her own replacement. Then they generally want a clone of themselves.
Good that you shake it up a little!
Dorothy, I’ve had a version of this very conversation with recruiters before. As someone seeking to do the opposite, it was challenging (in my experience) to convince a recruiter that it was preferred to look for someone with the abilities/skills who was outside our industry lines. As the hiring manager, this worked great in almost all cases. The operative word is “almost.” Of my many, many hires using this non-traditional model, a few didn’t work out and that was on me. Nonetheless, would do it over again. Always glad to help shake things up a bit! Thanks for sharing your wisdom here. -Art