You hired for skills not sectoral experience, ensuring success for a new senior hire?

Your new hire has significant experience and you’ve hired them because you know that they’ll do a great job …coming from a different sectoral /industry background doesn’t matter… one company is the same as the next… more or less….?

In order to advance any career and broaden experience, all the received wisdom is to moved into different sectoral environments. This makes perfect sense and is indeed good advice. However, it also works exceptionally well for the company. Bringing in new talent with a different sectoral experience can bring in a wealth of new experience that competitors may not have, as they continue to exercise their sectoral bias in their hiring strategy. Having a candidate or new hire present themselves from different sectoral environments also suggests a possible dynamism and flexibility so often sought when looking for senior management hires.

If a person chooses to gain experience in more than one sector, they are obviously more ‘employable’, particularly if the sectoral experiences are quite diverse – it shows this person can adapt to different business paces or cultures. It also means that they are not ‘stuck’ in the business practices of any one sector which can vary from a steady, long term business planning cycle (e.g. pharmaceuticals) to a very fast paced dynamic environment (e.g. technology). It shows a level of planning and awareness of the world that is critical in successful management.