Having Trouble Finding the Right Employee? Look Outside of Your Industry
There are many reasons that your business might need to find a different type of employee. Perhaps you need more innovation, or most applicants are lacking certain skill sets. The trick to finding the right employee could lie in searching outside of your industry. This method can be a lot of fun, and here’s why it is a huge boon to many companies.
Why Hire Outside Your Industry?
There are numerous reasons why you should consider hiring outside your industry. Here are three of the biggest reasons:
1. It Helps You Find Applicants You May Not Have Considered
Hiring managers can sometimes suffer from tunnel vision when it comes to their applicant search – they think that only someone with years of experience in their field will have the skillset to succeed. This is not always the case, however. There are many potential hires that have skills that can translate over well for the position that you are trying to fill. For example, someone with a strong customer service background in retail may do well as an account manager in a business to business organization.
2. It Pays Attention to the Big Picture
Many businesses today participate in a global economy. This is true even for the smallest businesses; for instance, if they sell goods online, some of their customers may be located overseas. Hiring outside of your industry gives you the opportunity to find a candidate who has excellent soft skills such as global communication (and most likely a helpful hard skill or two such as speaking a foreign language).
3. It Helps Your Business Innovate
Tried and true methods are great, but it is also good to shake things up once in a while and balance these proven approaches with outside perspectives. Looking outside of your industry for finding the right employee means bringing in new ideas, a different talent pool and folks with different professional contacts and unique skill sets.
Tips for Finding the Right Employee
As you go outside your industry, a few guidelines can help you find ideal candidates. First, emphasize that your company embraces folks from outside the industry. You could/should also:
- Award referral bonuses from both inside and outside your company.
- Engage prospective employees on the platforms they use.
- Target your messages to new audiences.
- Explain how your company expects these new folks to contribute.
Plan for Possible Disadvantages
To make the process as smooth as possible, be aware of potential disadvantages and plan for them. Luckily, they are easy to work around.
- Choose the right personnel to handle these out-of-industry searches. The “usual” people may not be best.
- Build in more training time. Out-of-industry people may lack some hard skills, so anticipate that.
By expanding your search beyond your own industry, you open your business up to a wealth of new talent – it just requires a little more effort to ensure that the process goes smoothly.