How Crucial Is Industry Experience In Your Recruitment Efforts?

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Once it comes to recruiting someone for a sales or marketing position , I often ask myself how much industry experience truly matters. No matter how frequently I ask others, I always seem to get a different reply. Clearly the answer to this question will depend on an assortment of variables such as company, position, industry, etc. Either way, I made the decision to look into a sample of 50 sales hiring managers from various industries throughout the globe who manage employees from entry level all the way to upper management. Listed below are my findings with regard to their thoughts on the topic:

Obviously, the vast majority are of the opinion that industry experience is ideal, but this isn’t a stringent prerequisite. This is apparently the case due to the fact that hiring managers find it beneficial to employ someone with industry experience mostly for the reason that it saves time. Time to discover about competitors, business procedures, legalities in that environment, the most recent products, and so forth. It clearly requires time to get acquainted with  these things. Normally you want your recruit to hit the ground running! However, at the end of the day, you’re recruiting that individual not for their industry knowledge alone. You are hiring that individual for their leadership, charisma, capacity to think outside the box, problem-solving abilities, the list goes on. Hiring someone with prior experience and knowledge of this familiar industry is far more frequently viewed as a bonus. If you ever come into contact with two equally gifted sales managers and one has industry experience, well then that competitive advantage makes short work of your tie-breaker.

This isn’t prevalent though. Discovering the finest candidate with strong leadership capabilities already is tough. Now try to locate this top quality someone with core skills in sales, marketing, or other skill sets that you require. Narrow it down further to somebody searching for a new opportunity and make certain they have industry experience! As Rob Merklinger mentioned in my previous blog post, just about anybody can learn and be trained. You, as a hiring manager must foresee how they, given these strong traits, will succeed post-training.

Long story short, you shouldn’t pass on the finest sales manager put in front of you because he/she isn’t acquainted with your world… yet. Just as this sales manager learns your company’s mission, vision, culture, core values, and SOP’s, (say you’re an expansion stage startup), he/she will eventually become a subject matter expert on technology trends, local competitors and such.

Victor Mahillon recruits top talent to our Portfolio.

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