“Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” — in the context of recruitment
I have recently come across several job posts in the areas of Growth and Digital Transformation from corporates looking to innovate and transform themselves (this encompasses everything from corporate-backed digital banks to in-house innovation units) which usually go along these lines:
Job Description
- Drive business growth by creating and pulling levers on acquisition, activation, retention….
- Craft and execute on growth strategies in the (insert country) market
- Identify industry trends and insights causing digital disruption…Required Qualifications
- At least x years of experience in (aforementioned industry getting disrupted)
- Passion for (insert cool industry term + tech - e.g. fintech / insurtech / edutech / foodtech / healthtech / constructiontech…)
- In-depth market and industry knowledge
This raises the question of why do recruiters and hiring managers always look for people with ‘x years of experience in a particular industry’ and hope that they would be able to think and do differently to then “disrupt” that very same industry?
From speaking to recruiters, both in a personal and professional basis, my own experience has been that the best ones are able to assess transferable skills of candidates with remarkable accuracy while those who strictly follow “by-the-book” rules or are attempting to tick off a checklist in their job descriptions often prioritize the ‘safer’ options which fit the bill.
Understandably, this brings to mind the old saying of “One does not get fired for buying IBM” which harks back to the days when IBM was THE technology company everyone looked up to. As a recruiter, it is much safer to place a candidate who has ‘x years of experience in a particular industry’ (the IBM in this context) and collect my placement fee instead of rooting for two other candidates who might actually have immense potential but not quite the right background or industry expertise for such roles (some other potential upstarts challenging IBM which might be cheaper but are more adaptable).
My humble recommendation to recruiters is to give candidates who have displayed signals of ‘x years of experience solving problems / growing businesses / actually understanding how shifts across the competitive landscape have led to the creation of new business opportunities’ across multiple industries a chance, and perhaps ask them if they would be interested in the industry their client is in. Hiring managers, more often that not, might be interested to hear how different candidates would be able to play a starring role in their teams.
In this new world where companies can be launched and achieve global scale in less than a decade, skillsets around identifying, structuring and validating new opportunities and business models are invaluable. What matters most to the company is that by bringing in the right team (regardless of gender, ethnic background and industry experience), they can rapidly prototype and test solutions with various customer segments and execute on them at speed.
In fact, I would argue that diversity of backgrounds actually helps, instead of hinders the process of exploring new areas of business growth since a shared pool of diverse experiences and knowledge would increase customer empathy and enable the voices of various customer groups to be heard more clearly.
So if you are a hiring manager or a recruiter reading this, why not take a chance on someone who might not fit the traditional requirements of a job description and let’s see how we can build the future together.
