I told my boss to stop hiring people from my alma mater.  As a start up in an emerging industry they found a successful formula and hired recent grads exclusively from there and got dozens of hard working, committed, well educated, and smart recruits. 

While I was not a recent grad and had some seasoning, this advice was not well received.  It was a tense drive through New York City as he accused me of selfishly wanting to cut off the opportunity of my alums.  He was shocked, dismayed, and disappointed all at once.

When he stopped throwing things (mostly dirty looks), I explained that these recent graduates all had the same education, from the same professors, the same degrees, with no real-life experience, and no diversity of perspectives.  They could only help the business through its initial growth phases through their individual hard work and energy.  As a homogeneous pool they lacked the breadth of experience to make long lasting contributions other than a good work ethic.  Essentially, they were academic and experiential clones of one another.

Then he got it; I was not being selfish; I was strategically looking after the health of the organization and seeking to deepen the proverbial gene pool.  As we transitioned to the next phase in our development, a broad diversity of opinions, outlooks, experience, options, and possible solutions would be far more valuable than a dedicated clone army even if they were PLUs (people like us).

As I meet with many current industry leaders and discuss the challenges of today’s businesses, certain hiring practices are a recurring theme.  It is such a prominent topic that I am perplexed as to why it is still a problem.  It is clear that it manifests itself in different symptoms in different companies and industries.  It is an extension of the situation above.  I encapsulate it as follows:

How can a company legitimately expect to outperform its competition when its hiring practices center around hiring the competition?

Many companies are limiting their scope of solutions to those of their competition and can never be better than them as a result.  They are more prone to looking for solutions within the confines of their industry and traditional experience that may expose themselves to obsolescence from influences beyond their industry; disruptions and disintermediation that they couldn’t see because those changes and technologies were outside their self-imposed box and limited thought horizon.

Paradoxically, companies seem to understand this principle when it comes to hiring top leadership - people who must have strategic vision.  A review of industry experience of many C-Suite Executives shows many did not gain all their experience in the vertical of their current industry, rather they transferred their skills from other industries into their current role.  Why isn’t this practice continued deeper into the organization?  Vision is valuable, but so is perspective at all levels.  When all you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail.

At some level, usually below all leadership ranks, hiring for industry-based experiences may be necessary.  For instance, if a company needs people with certain licenses, credentials or specific competencies, it may be essential and so hiring with X-years of industry experience is smart and necessary.

However, most leadership traits are highly transferable, as are many other aptitudes.  Industries can be taught far easier than work ethic, attention to detail, teamwork, integrity, creativity, innovation, enthusiasm, or commitment.  These attributes, not tenure, are the valuable characteristics most Leaders seek because they translate into solutions, actions, and results throughout the P&L.  These are needed at all levels, not just the C-Suite.

I believe in hiring the best person for the job, team, company environment, etc. and in many cases the application of certain industry or tenure screening creates a prejudice that eliminates the best person without the benefit of the hiring manager’s expertise.  A shortage of “viable” candidates may not be a function of the applicant funnel, but a restriction of the filters.

Though needs differ from industry to industry and organization to organization, I recommend that companies consider aggressively eliminating the standard X years of industry specific experience for all management levels above “line management” and all levels of Director and above as a way to create an influx of thought diversity, even future thought leadership. 

This should open up better options to hiring managers to see well qualified candidates who may have little specific experience in their industry and whose primary experience lies elsewhere but whose capabilities and core success attributes may align better than industry only options.  This becomes inclusive of rising stars who today are passed over because of a discriminatory requirement for experience that isn’t a true success requirement, it is an ATS mandate.  Stop helping your competition by being anchored to tradition and start building tomorrow’s vision with a broader world view.

While some might project the blame of hiring practices on HR or the recruiting apparatus, business Leaders need to be directing the hiring focus and efforts, consider their needs, the internal and external candidate pools, and the strength and energy of the organization today and in the future.

Abdicating recruiting and staffing to a qualified and competent HR department, who cannot possibly know the needs of the hiring manager or their department better than the manager, is not a recruiting failure, it is a leadership one.  Or as one of my bosses once said, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”