How Much Does Industry Experience Matter?

When it comes to recruiting someone for a sales or marketing position, I always ask myself how much industry experience really matters. No matter how many times I ask others, I always seem to get a different answer. Obviously the answer to this question will depend on a variety of variables including company, position, industry, and so on. Either way, I decided to survey a sample of 50 sales hiring managers from several industries across the globe who manage employees from entry level all the way to upper management. Here are my findings regarding their thoughts on the topic:

Clearly, the majority believes that industry experience is preferred, but this isn’t a strict mandate. This is apparently the case because hiring managers find it beneficial to hire someone with industry experience mainly for the reason that it saves time. Time to learn about competitors, business processes, legalities in that environment, the newest products, etc. It obviously takes time to get ramped up on these things. Naturally you want your hire to hit the ground running! But at the end of the day, you’re hiring that person not for their industry knowledge alone. You’re hiring that person for their leadership, charisma, ability to think outside the box, problem-solving skills, the list goes on. Procuring someone with prior experience and knowledge of this familiar world is more commonly viewed as a bonus. If you ever come across two equally talented sales managers and one has industry experience, well then that competitive advantage settles your tie-breaker.

This isn’t common though. Finding the best candidate with strong leadership ability already is challenging. Now try to find this top quality someone with core skills in sales, marketing, or whatever it is that you need. Narrow it down further to someone looking for a new opportunity and make sure they have industry experience! Like Rob Merklinger said in my previous blog post, just about anyone can learn and be trained. You as a hiring manager must anticipate how they, given these strong characteristics, will succeed post-training.

To make the long story short, you shouldn’t pass on the best sales manager put in front of you because he/she isn’t familiar 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 gradually become a subject matter expert on technology trends, local competitors and such.

To be continued … thanks for reading!