Managing Leadership^®

Hiring people with work or educational backgrounds outside the industry of employment is a healthy trend. Many businesses – the consulting industry is a leader in this area – have noted that there is a kind of inbreeding that occurs when marketers, for example, hire only other marketers or people with marketing degrees. The problem is that, while they may be assuring themselves that there are basic degrees of industry-specific skills, or at least general knowledge, in the hiree, they are also establishing a pretty high likelihood that this new employee is bringing nothing new – no new insight, ideas, or even other skills that no one realized could be productively brought to bear on marketing.

If you only look within your own industry, you come to find that students are hired who were taught by the same professors who taught the hiring managers. New employees hired in from other companies in the industry were also taught by those professors, and now probably also know and have been influenced by many of the same industry names as have been the managers now hiring them. By continuing this cycle, you gain no advantage in special insight or perspective over your competitors; you merely mire yourself deeper and deeper with them in the same self-absorbing bog.

But by bringing in an outsider, you at least know you are getting a person with constructive experience of some kind – a successful work or educational background shows the ability to discipline one’s self and drive all the way through goal completion, and that may be all the basic competency you really need. In the meanwhile, this person can bring a new theoretical (if a new hire from school) or practical viewpoint to the workplace, on the basis of which he or she can offer ideas from that other field, or just as likely, integrate the two into newer, better ideas.

The consulting industry, for example, has found that MBAs are not inevitably insightful or creative in a general sense, and many of these companies are turning to liberal arts majors for a good part of their new hires. They have learned that these employees are good at discovering new opportunities, identifying with clients’ needs, and communicating with both sides. They also pick up on the industry-specific skills very quickly.

It is a generally good trend. It’s always healthy to bring in some fresh blood, to keep the village from filling up with idiots.

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