Hiring an outsider from your industry can sometimes sound like a tricky business. How can someone who has never been close to your specific business build effective campaigns for it? And even if they can, will they actually be a good fit for your team, aka, people who have been working on this subject for a while, whose personalities probably have a lot in common? Well, these are all good questions that you can be wondering about.
And the thing is most human beings tend to fear (or hesitate about) what’s different. You probably have a usual type of candidate, and you probably were expecting your PPC to look something like it: this or that skill, this or that interest, and probably some experience in your field. But what if there’s a very cool someone that happens to be looking for a PPC job, but has a background in a very different industry?
Well, I believe that being flexible is a huge value. My mom always says that if something’s too rigid, it will break instead of bending. So today, we’ll dive into the pros of a very controversial subject: being flexible enough to hire a PPC that has not spent time working in your niche.
Transferable skills
Most of the skills a PPC can have are unrelated to the industry they’ve worked in. If someone’s hard-working and attentive to detail, they’ll be like that whether they work in politics or packaged goods. So the first thing to do is identify what are the soft, transferable skills that you need your PPC to have, and find out if your candidate has them. Remember a job is kind of like a role in a play, if the actor is good, they’ll probably do a great job regardless of the role you give them.
Slightly related industries
There are some types of jobs and companies that require a lot of similar skills. For example, there are a lot of engineering companies that search for ex-military employees because they tend to have great leadership skills. Another great example is how people who have experience teaching are very likely to be good TV anchors or reporters because of their communication skills. So, if your company is looking for someone who has a certain type of skills that other industries also value, then a great first way of widening the variety is searching for PPCs that have worked there.
A fresh and clean look
Someone who has not spent the last couple of years in your industry will probably be much more likely to come up with a bunch of new and innovative ideas. Since they won’t be polluted with industry fatigue, they’ll find most things rather exciting, and definitely will be happy to bring some new projects, goals, and approaches. So, if you’ve been feeling a little stuck lately, then hiring a PPC that comes from a different niche might be a great solution.
Hiring an outsider means having a much broader diversity of ideas and possibilities, that can really change the course of how things are going in your business. These days, innovation is not something to just pass by.
Opening the gates to new possibilities
If you are determined to find a perfect PPC within your own industry, then you might also find that this is a very hard thing to do. There is no such thing as a perfect PPC (and if there were, you probably couldn’t afford it), but moreover, the wider your possibilities of candidates are, then the more likely you’ll be to find a PPC close to perfection. It’s not something that really requires that much thought or explanation, it’s a mere fact. So do you want to keep searching for perfection among the same faces as always, or are you interested in broadening your alternatives?
Other industries’ learnings
It has happened that industries develop their greatest masterpieces by taking knowledge from other industries, so why wouldn’t this be your case? A PPC that has never worked in your industry will probably not know nor care about how things have always been done, and will also tend to bring some of the ways they used to do things in their past industry. And of course, this can lead to chaos, but it can also lead to unbelievable, breath-taking results. If you are willing to take the chance, I believe it’s definitely worth a shot
A real management challenge
Hiring and “training” someone who knows everything there’s to know about your industry is something rather easy. If your PPC has worked in a company that’s similar to yours, at least for a couple of months, then all you’ll have to do is teach them how to replicate that same job, but on your terms. However, training someone who has never worked in your industry is much more of a challenge, and it will likely result in turning you into a better manager. Think about it this way: you’ll be their companion in their first steps into your industry’s world, and you’ll be the one shaping that unpolluted mind. Of course, this is a great responsibility, but they say that only comes with great power, don’t they?
So basically, there are a bunch of great reasons to hire someone who doesn’t come from your same niche. It’s innovative, it’s clever, and it’s challenging. So I guess the bottom line here is: how willing are you to take the chance and have under your wing someone who comes from a different world? Remember, taking the same path will always lead to the same destination, and that’s enough with the cheesy phrases today.
