Roundtable Video
Do Hiring Managers Focus Too Much on Industry Experience When Interviewing? (Part 1)
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Transcript
Krissy Manzano: Hello and welcome to the Blueprint Round Table. I’m your host, Krissy Manzano, and today I have Emily and Lizzy with me to talk about something that has been talked about for a while, but I think even it’s even more relevant now, which is do hiring managers focus too much on previous experience when interviewing?
Krissy Manzano: So Emily, what do you think?
Emily Bell: So it’s a tricky one, right? I mean, I think that from an outsider looking in sometimes. Yes. My answer would be yes, I understand why there is a focus on experience. And I think to a certain degree it is very relevant when I disagree, is when it starts to get into conflict with assessing for the right skills and behaviors that you want for that role, right?
Emily Bell: So especially when you’re looking at DEI candidates, so, their backgrounds might look different than your traditional profile. And if you focus too much on specific experience or industry related experience given your product, you run the risk of inadvertently, you know, disqualifying candidates that have the right skills and behaviors have the potential to come into the role.
Emily Bell: So I would say yes. There are times where that does compete with, you know, really assessing for skills and behaviors that are necessary for the role where those are present. But because they don’t have, you know, a specific set or number of years within a specific industry or product type, it’s a no or a hesitation, which is typically a no in an interview process.
Emily Bell: So, curious, Lizzy, kind of what your thoughts are on it.
Lizzy Castro:: Yeah. I think it’s a tricky one as well. Completely agree with everything you said, Emily. I think there’s different ways you could look at it. So like when I’m sourcing, I use those guidelines of years of experience, especially let’s just say for enterprise roles as a reference. But sometimes I’ll have candidates that I’ll see, okay, maybe they’re a year short on that experience they’re looking for, but they have been with the same company for six years and they’ve had career progression from commercial to mid-market to now enterprise. That’s someone I would definitely want to still speak to because they’ve been able to progress their career and develop new skill sets.
Lizzy Castro:: But yeah, I mean, it’s a tricky situation. But Krissy, what are your thoughts?
Krissy Manzano: So I’m a little biased with my answer only because I’ve been doing a lot of research on this lately. Maybe not bias, but so I understand why people look at experience, right? Because it’s easier to assess, right? I, you can look at a resume and go, does someone have experience in, you know, the logistics industry or the cybersecurity industry?
Krissy Manzano: It’s a yes or no. And then you can assess them on that experience. It’s just easier to have those things kind of flow out of you, of questions around that. Like, you know that you feel that and it’s a easy that you know how to do and the hard stuff that’s there of trying to figure out that candidate’s the right person.
Krissy Manzano: It’s a hard that you know. Right. But there’s tons of data. Tons of data that shows that experience often has minimal impact on if someone actually does a good job. It doesn’t mean that it’s not a factor, but skills and behaviors have like a n it’s like an 85% overall impact on how well somebody does work.
Krissy Manzano: Experience by itself has an 18% effect. So,
Emily Bell: Oh wow.
Krissy Manzano: but even if, right? So even if, and if at the IC level, this is really important. Now, when it comes to management experience, depending on what level, obviously if you’ve never had management experience, going into a senior VP role is not appropriate nine times out of 10 because you’re setting someone up to fail.
Krissy Manzano: There is like that leadership, EQ and experience they need and how to deal with employees and drive that through, right? And so, but I think about things like health, right? We all know that if we eat a good diet, we exercise, it’s gonna make us feel better. It’s gonna make us, you know, fit in our clothes better, it’s gonna give us more energy.
Krissy Manzano: All these things, we all know that, like no one argues that. Right. But, or maybe they argue how you do those things, but no one argues that conceptually. But we still don’t do it. Like a lot of us still don’t do it consistently. And you have to go, why do we not do that when we know the effects, the greatness that it brings?
Krissy Manzano: It’s because like, we’re so used to the hard that we know Right. Versus the hard that we don’t know. It’s like, oh man. But, I’m not used to feeling that after working out or holding myself there. It’s like, it’s a habit I’m not used to, and I am correlating this with interviewing because we’re so conditioned to look at things in a way of like, okay, I’ll look at that experience.
Krissy Manzano: I’ll ask those questions when I’m in that interview around this, this, or this, and make my assumptions. And it’s more like I’m checking that box off versus really taking the time and work to understand if they have the skills and behaviors. And those are very specific questions at very specific times during the interview.
Krissy Manzano: And that’s work upfront, that does, it is time consuming and a lot of people don’t wanna do that. Right. But then you could argue the time consuming part on the other end as you get it wrong or they don’t stay. And so, candidates, you know, and those stats like were for the 85% success wasn’t just for their outcomes, but it was also for them staying over 18 months, right. At an organization. And so I think that we over-index on experience because it’s the easiest thing to do without planning. You don’t have to plan to review that. And so, but all that to say, if we really want to get better results, ’cause at the end of the day you go, do you want this person to stay and do you want them to make an impact?
Krissy Manzano: And if the answer is yes, then you need to go, well, how do I make sure that this hiring process is set up for them to be successful? But I’m not saying experience doesn’t matter, but I think the over, you know, the intensity of reviewing the experience, we just have enough examples where it doesn’t work.
Krissy Manzano: Right. And the people that do have the industry experience that work, I would say go look at their skills and behaviors and see if they’re similar to people that don’t have that industry experience. I can, bet you anything that they’re similar, right? And so I, all that to say, that’s kind of my view on it.
Krissy Manzano: Don’t know if you all have any other thoughts, but.
Emily Bell: No, I would agree. I mean, I would like looking back on just the various SaaS platforms that I’ve sold as in an IC capacity. Not one of them is the same. So they’re not to the same industry, they’re not to the same stakeholder. They’re not even remotely the same product. But one of the things that I always do is I know the product, I know the competitor, and I know they market.
Emily Bell: And when, and if you know those three things, it doesn’t really matter what tech you’re selling during onboarding. A company on some level should support you with that knowledge, or you can go out and find it and you’ll have success. It, I don’t, I think that, like, it’s the skills and behaviors that, that you’re talking about and if I look back at just incredible IC peers that I’ve had the opportunity to work with, and those that have been consistently successful, they have that same approach, right?
Emily Bell: It’s not, whether they came from an industry specific focus or not. It’s the skills and papers. It’s so interesting. I mean, I assumed it was low, but I had no idea that stats show that it’s like seven, what’d you say? 17, 18% is attributed to experience that’s insanely low. Like that is insane. Yeah.
Krissy Manzano: Harvard Business Review did a study in 2019. I wanna say they probably have done a recent one too, and I didn’t pull the stats from there. But their whole thing was like, it might have even been lower, and they did like thousands of people. And so it’s just, you know, I think as we look to hire, we just have to decide like, where do we want our heart to be?
Krissy Manzano: Right. I would argue the heart should be putting the hiring process together, because that’s a lot easier than trying to fix a mistake because you didn’t put that work in upfront and now your revenue is suffering, you’re behind and you’ve gotta start that hiring process again, or you drag it out, right?
Krissy Manzano: So, it’s choosing where you want your heart to be. You’re never gonna escape the heart. And I think people forget that like. Going the seat of your pants is not going to escape. Where that heart piece is, but
Krissy Manzano: um,
Emily Bell: You know what’s interesting? One thought that just like pinged into my head, Krissy is like just thinking about like the scenarios where like, why did that person not work out? Like they checked every box and we all, you know what I mean? And in my mind I’m thinking it was probably a miss on, you know, skills and behavior.
Emily Bell: It had to have been, but thinking about it. Usually those individuals are super strong in industry experience and they can talk the talk and it’s a little bit of a
Krissy Manzano: distraction.
Krissy Manzano: And you get fascinated getting distracted by the talk. Oh, they know our buyers. They know. Yes, they know the acronyms and you get distracted. Yeah, no, you’re totally right. It’s a great, it’s a great point. And which you don’t always, we’re like, oh, and they crush their quota at this company. We know that company.
Krissy Manzano: It’s a competitor. It’s associated, you know, with our industry and we all know that like not every company’s created equal. Like there are companies where they come into a territory that has worked and they’re closing things on day one that they didn’t ever have, they never would’ve done without someone else having, you know, put that legwork in.
Krissy Manzano: Right? And so there’s a lot of things that you can do to see like what someone really capable of. And there’s universal skills and behaviors and sales in particular, but even for customer success and marketing that are critical to assess. So, but I totally agree. It’s like you can get so infatuated with that industry talk and speak that you miss like the skills and behaviors that you really wanna assess for and review during the interview process.
Krissy Manzano: Yeah. We’re out of time today, but great conversation as always. Until next time, we’ll see you later. Bye.
Emily Bell: Bye.
Show Summary
Hiring the right candidate can be a daunting task. What qualities and qualifications will position them for success in your organization and in the role itself? In the pursuit of finding the perfect candidate, many hiring processes heavily emphasize industry experience. But is this limited focus keeping truly exceptional talent from being identified?
In this episode, we explore the question of whether industry experience should be the ultimate determining factor in hiring decisions.
Through compelling data, real-life examples, and actionable insights, this episode encourages listeners to question the status quo and reevaluate their hiring criteria.
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Transcript
Krissy Manzano: So Emily, what do you think?
Emily Bell: So it’s a tricky one, right? I mean, I think that from an outsider looking in sometimes. Yes. My answer would be yes, I understand why there is a focus on experience. And I think to a certain degree it is very relevant when I disagree, is when it starts to get into conflict with assessing for the right skills and behaviors that you want for that role, right?
Emily Bell: So especially when you’re looking at DEI candidates, so, their backgrounds might look different than your traditional profile. And if you focus too much on specific experience or industry related experience given your product, you run the risk of inadvertently, you know, disqualifying candidates that have the right skills and behaviors have the potential to come into the role.
Emily Bell: So I would say yes. There are times where that does compete with, you know, really assessing for skills and behaviors that are necessary for the role where those are present. But because they don’t have, you know, a specific set or number of years within a specific industry or product type, it’s a no or a hesitation, which is typically a no in an interview process.
Emily Bell: So, curious, Lizzy, kind of what your thoughts are on it.
Lizzy Castro:: Yeah. I think it’s a tricky one as well. Completely agree with everything you said, Emily. I think there’s different ways you could look at it. So like when I’m sourcing, I use those guidelines of years of experience, especially let’s just say for enterprise roles as a reference. But sometimes I’ll have candidates that I’ll see, okay, maybe they’re a year short on that experience they’re looking for, but they have been with the same company for six years and they’ve had career progression from commercial to mid-market to now enterprise. That’s someone I would definitely want to still speak to because they’ve been able to progress their career and develop new skill sets.
Lizzy Castro:: But yeah, I mean, it’s a tricky situation. But Krissy, what are your thoughts?
Krissy Manzano: So I’m a little biased with my answer only because I’ve been doing a lot of research on this lately. Maybe not bias, but so I understand why people look at experience, right? Because it’s easier to assess, right? I, you can look at a resume and go, does someone have experience in, you know, the logistics industry or the cybersecurity industry?
Krissy Manzano: It’s a yes or no. And then you can assess them on that experience. It’s just easier to have those things kind of flow out of you, of questions around that. Like, you know that you feel that and it’s a easy that you know how to do and the hard stuff that’s there of trying to figure out that candidate’s the right person.
Krissy Manzano: It’s a hard that you know. Right. But there’s tons of data. Tons of data that shows that experience often has minimal impact on if someone actually does a good job. It doesn’t mean that it’s not a factor, but skills and behaviors have like a n it’s like an 85% overall impact on how well somebody does work.
Krissy Manzano: Experience by itself has an 18% effect. So,
Emily Bell: Oh wow.
Krissy Manzano: but even if, right? So even if, and if at the IC level, this is really important. Now, when it comes to management experience, depending on what level, obviously if you’ve never had management experience, going into a senior VP role is not appropriate nine times out of 10 because you’re setting someone up to fail.
Krissy Manzano: There is like that leadership, EQ and experience they need and how to deal with employees and drive that through, right? And so, but I think about things like health, right? We all know that if we eat a good diet, we exercise, it’s gonna make us feel better. It’s gonna make us, you know, fit in our clothes better, it’s gonna give us more energy.
Krissy Manzano: All these things, we all know that, like no one argues that. Right. But, or maybe they argue how you do those things, but no one argues that conceptually. But we still don’t do it. Like a lot of us still don’t do it consistently. And you have to go, why do we not do that when we know the effects, the greatness that it brings?
Krissy Manzano: It’s because like, we’re so used to the hard that we know Right. Versus the hard that we don’t know. It’s like, oh man. But, I’m not used to feeling that after working out or holding myself there. It’s like, it’s a habit I’m not used to, and I am correlating this with interviewing because we’re so conditioned to look at things in a way of like, okay, I’ll look at that experience.
Krissy Manzano: I’ll ask those questions when I’m in that interview around this, this, or this, and make my assumptions. And it’s more like I’m checking that box off versus really taking the time and work to understand if they have the skills and behaviors. And those are very specific questions at very specific times during the interview.
Krissy Manzano: And that’s work upfront, that does, it is time consuming and a lot of people don’t wanna do that. Right. But then you could argue the time consuming part on the other end as you get it wrong or they don’t stay. And so, candidates, you know, and those stats like were for the 85% success wasn’t just for their outcomes, but it was also for them staying over 18 months, right. At an organization. And so I think that we over-index on experience because it’s the easiest thing to do without planning. You don’t have to plan to review that. And so, but all that to say, if we really want to get better results, ’cause at the end of the day you go, do you want this person to stay and do you want them to make an impact?
Krissy Manzano: And if the answer is yes, then you need to go, well, how do I make sure that this hiring process is set up for them to be successful? But I’m not saying experience doesn’t matter, but I think the over, you know, the intensity of reviewing the experience, we just have enough examples where it doesn’t work.
Krissy Manzano: Right. And the people that do have the industry experience that work, I would say go look at their skills and behaviors and see if they’re similar to people that don’t have that industry experience. I can, bet you anything that they’re similar, right? And so I, all that to say, that’s kind of my view on it.
Krissy Manzano: Don’t know if you all have any other thoughts, but.
Emily Bell: No, I would agree. I mean, I would like looking back on just the various SaaS platforms that I’ve sold as in an IC capacity. Not one of them is the same. So they’re not to the same industry, they’re not to the same stakeholder. They’re not even remotely the same product. But one of the things that I always do is I know the product, I know the competitor, and I know they market.
Emily Bell: And when, and if you know those three things, it doesn’t really matter what tech you’re selling during onboarding. A company on some level should support you with that knowledge, or you can go out and find it and you’ll have success. It, I don’t, I think that, like, it’s the skills and behaviors that, that you’re talking about and if I look back at just incredible IC peers that I’ve had the opportunity to work with, and those that have been consistently successful, they have that same approach, right?
Emily Bell: It’s not, whether they came from an industry specific focus or not. It’s the skills and papers. It’s so interesting. I mean, I assumed it was low, but I had no idea that stats show that it’s like seven, what’d you say? 17, 18% is attributed to experience that’s insanely low. Like that is insane. Yeah.
Krissy Manzano: Harvard Business Review did a study in 2019. I wanna say they probably have done a recent one too, and I didn’t pull the stats from there. But their whole thing was like, it might have even been lower, and they did like thousands of people. And so it’s just, you know, I think as we look to hire, we just have to decide like, where do we want our heart to be?
Krissy Manzano: Right. I would argue the heart should be putting the hiring process together, because that’s a lot easier than trying to fix a mistake because you didn’t put that work in upfront and now your revenue is suffering, you’re behind and you’ve gotta start that hiring process again, or you drag it out, right?
Krissy Manzano: So, it’s choosing where you want your heart to be. You’re never gonna escape the heart. And I think people forget that like. Going the seat of your pants is not going to escape. Where that heart piece is, but
Krissy Manzano: um,
Emily Bell: You know what’s interesting? One thought that just like pinged into my head, Krissy is like just thinking about like the scenarios where like, why did that person not work out? Like they checked every box and we all, you know what I mean? And in my mind I’m thinking it was probably a miss on, you know, skills and behavior.
Emily Bell: It had to have been, but thinking about it. Usually those individuals are super strong in industry experience and they can talk the talk and it’s a little bit of a
Krissy Manzano: distraction.
Krissy Manzano: And you get fascinated getting distracted by the talk. Oh, they know our buyers. They know. Yes, they know the acronyms and you get distracted. Yeah, no, you’re totally right. It’s a great, it’s a great point. And which you don’t always, we’re like, oh, and they crush their quota at this company. We know that company.
Krissy Manzano: It’s a competitor. It’s associated, you know, with our industry and we all know that like not every company’s created equal. Like there are companies where they come into a territory that has worked and they’re closing things on day one that they didn’t ever have, they never would’ve done without someone else having, you know, put that legwork in.
Krissy Manzano: Right? And so there’s a lot of things that you can do to see like what someone really capable of. And there’s universal skills and behaviors and sales in particular, but even for customer success and marketing that are critical to assess. So, but I totally agree. It’s like you can get so infatuated with that industry talk and speak that you miss like the skills and behaviors that you really wanna assess for and review during the interview process.
Krissy Manzano: Yeah. We’re out of time today, but great conversation as always. Until next time, we’ll see you later. Bye.
Emily Bell: Bye.
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Is SaaS experience important when hiring?
Hmm, what does this mean anyhow?! We recommend defining the skills and behaviors sought before running a search rather than using buzzwords or phrases from other people’s job descriptions. We help employees go beyond acronyms to ensure they develop robust job descriptions that tie to specific candidate profiles for targeting in the market. Need help? Let us know!
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Do you recruit outside of the US and Canada?
What roles do you recruit?
- Customer Success: Standard, Senior, and Principal Customer Success Managers, Onboarding Specialists, Implementation Managers, Community, Customer Support, & Solutions Architects
- Marketing: Growth & Demand Generation Marketing, ABM, Events, and Content / SEO Marketing
- Sales: Sales Development, SMB, Commercial, Mid-Market, Enterprise, and Strategic Account Executives
- Account Management
- Revenue Operations and Enablement: Marketing, CS, and Sales Operations
- Solutions Engineering and Post-Sales Solutions Architects
- GTM Leadership: Front-line, second-line, VP, and SVP / C Level placements (CRO, CMO, COO)
I've worked with so many headhunters and recruiting firms. What makes you different?
Put simply, we aspire to be as proficient in articulating your business value prop as your internal employees. Exceptional talent does not want to speak with “head-hunters;” instead, they want to connect with educated ambassadors of your business and your brand about meaningful career opportunities.
We go deep on your business and into talent markets to foster connections that other recruiting firms tend to miss. And we work with our hiring clients to ensure excellence in their hiring process. Please reach out to us for more information!
Is SaaS experience important when hiring?
Hmm, what does this mean anyhow?! We recommend defining the skills and behaviors sought before running a search rather than using buzzwords or phrases from other people’s job descriptions. We help employees go beyond acronyms to ensure they develop robust job descriptions that tie to specific candidate profiles for targeting in the market. Need help? Let us know!