Anyone who\u2019s ever had to hire knows that you need to cast a wide net to attract the best talent. But there\u2019s something else you should know: a single-minded focus on skills and industry experience alone can lead employers to ignore the ripe pickings available just over the fence \u2013 professionals from other industries with the qualities and potential to be star performers.<\/p>\n
You can increase your talent pool by considering ambitious professionals from outside your industry who are looking for new opportunities to broaden their skills, increase their options, take the next step in their career and join a growing organisation \u2013 especially when opportunities in their current industry are limited.<\/p>\n
For professionals with transferable skills, your organisation can benefit from a new perspective and new solutions to business challenges. In banking, I\u2019ve seen credit managers move from banks to property construction firms, where they were able to carry their skills over and help those firms gain the finance approvals they needed.<\/p>\n
There are also plenty of opportunities for professionals with experience in hiring and retention in organisations that have grown really quickly, to help other organisations scale fast.<\/p>\n
Government departments, for example, often intentionally take people from different sectors to introduce a more commercial, private-sector mindset.<\/p>\n
If you always hire the same people, you risk ending up with the same ideas and same results. When you inject some diversity into your team, you are able to engage with old problems with new solutions. In other words, it leads to different outcomes.<\/p>\n
It may seem disruptive, but that\u2019s how innovation happens.<\/p>\n
Forward-thinking employers know they need to look beyond experience to find people with high potential, because with the right aptitude and the right motivators, technical skills can be learned.<\/p>\n
They might even become high performers faster than others because they have the willingness and drive to learn.<\/p>\n
The key to mitigating the risk of hiring someone without industry knowledge is to conduct robust assessment on their potential, capabilities and motivations. Behavioural interview questions<\/a> combined with psychometric assessments<\/a>\u00a0can screen for this.<\/p>\n One of the main worries for hiring managers when considering candidates from other industries is whether they will stay. Will they go straight back to their old industry once the market picks up? I\u2019ve seen these concerns firsthand in Perth as the resources industry goes through peaks and troughs.<\/p>\n