Four Reasons Why Your Next Hire Should Not Have Industry Experience

Dear employers: if you were confronted with two resumes - one, an industry stalwart, the other a novice postgrad - who would you be more likely to hire?

Now consider this - has COVID-19 changed your business? Are you faced with a changing audience? A new consumer? A different consumer base? Are the pressures on your supply chains the same as they were in 2019? Has your entire culture of work changed in the wake of the pandemic?

If any of the above resonates, it more than likely stands that the people you bring into your company now need to be acutely aware of those changes and that perhaps stalwart traditionalists in your industry are not the right people to hire and take your business into 2022 and beyond. 

It comes down to one question: does experience guarantee a quality hire for the needs of today?

It’s a nuanced question, and no one hiring manager will necessarily know how to answer it: there are a million different variables to consider when it comes to hiring talent. So, rather than focus on a multitude of variables, we want to focus on a few, key, raw skills needed to take your business into 2022 and beyond on a sure footing, and whether those skills are more apparent, or indeed more usable, by an experienced hire or a newcomer. 

This then leads to a further question - what are those skills? 

We want to qualify the experience vs newcomer debate by focusing on the three “soft” skills employers across multiple industries have stated as being the most important characteristics of any new hire: adaptability, resilience, and passion. How does the experience vs newcomer conversation unfold when considering these vital employee metrics?

Stuck in a Rut

Long service to a role or company should be rightly commended. But the threat of “presenteeism” is always a possibility with those who are stuck in a career rut. 

A career rut can be a sticky place to attempt to maneuver a new candidate, especially when they have all the requisite skills needed to do a job. But hiring managers beware: trust your gut. When the passion and drive to progress, succeed and grow isn’t there, think of this candidate through the lens of “adaptability” and “passion” - have they got the drive, care, and initiative to help your company adapt to our post-COVID present? And frankly, do they share the passion for your industry and company?

Linear processes

This is something you can get to grips within an interview - how your candidate deals with logic, problem-solving, lateral thinking, and outside the box thinking. 

Whether you do this through skills testing, or by allowing your candidate to discuss how they would react to certain situations in an interview setting, you will understand their working process: the literal thought patterns and methods of working through problems and workflows. If they show a formulaic dedication to linear processes, based on experience, there is value there... but if they show initiative and creative thought; if they value team advocacy and iterative learning; if they show they are adaptable, capable of learning, and have a passion for the role...why wouldn’t you hire them, even without experience?

A passion for L&D

Leaning and Development is highly regarded as a genuine first-rate employer benefit. Many workers, especially Gen Z employees, see it as an essential prerequisite in any job offer. However, for those long in the tooth professionally, L&D is sometimes seen as under them, not necessary, or worse yet, boring. 

This sort of regressive thinking can be a morale drainer and can desaturate the positive learning environment every manager and industry leaders should be curating in their companies. Again, we ask the question: who would you rather hire? Someone mentally “stuck” in a mode of un-development who feels they know enough? Or someone eager to learn and eager to develop?

Diversity of Ideas

Following traditional lines of talent resourcing, without mindful shifts in expectation, outreach, and strategy, will only give you a “cloning” system of recruitment. By that, we mean you’ll end up only hiring the same sort of people from the same talent pools, and lose any diversity of creativity, opinion, or representation. 

As many, many, many reports have shown, diversity within your teams generates better productivity, higher levels of sustained morale, higher retention rates, and higher revenue. You cannot afford not to hire with diversity in mind. That means opening your doors to more ideas and a wider variety of talent. It also means you’re being more representative of your community and industry. 

Diversity of ideas also breeds resilient ideas - with a plethora of creative inputs into any project, you will build support plurality: networks within networks of different people working together, all working towards the same ends, all with one goal in mind - making your company, product, service, better!