Should Hiring Managers Prioritize a Candidate’s Potential or Prior Experience?

Krissy Manzano: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Blueprint Round Table. I am your host, Krissy Manzano, and today I have the beautiful ladies, Lizzy and Emily that are from our team. And we’re gonna be talking about a topic that is, prob is pretty popular, but honestly it’s something that I think a lot of individuals and professionals struggle to have a conversation around, and it’s about hiring for potential versus experience. And so the question is, should recruiters focus? And this could also be, should hiring managers focus, on candidate’s potential, an ability to learn or their proven industry experience during the interview?

So Emily, I’ll pass it off to you to start us off.

Emily Bell: Yeah, so [00:01:00] I would say, that it would depend on the role. So leadership experience, unless you’re promoting from within and that person has been prepared for that role, which is a typical way to kind of get your first foot in the door into a leadership. You know, moving from IC to leadership. That does matter.

Being able to understand and have the skillset to lead people is a very some people naturally have it, but you do have to learn a specific set of ropes to be able to do that. In fact, that matters when it comes to roles that are entry level, I think, no, I don’t think that really matters. I think you’re looking at skills and behaviors.

The big, the biggest gray area sits with folks that are in kind of that window of they’ve been in, they’re looking for someone that has like five to 10 years of experience and they’re wondering, do they have to have it in a specific niche industry or a [00:02:00] specific type of platform? And I think the answer in tech is no.

I think that there is something to be said at AEs that have been successful in selling various platforms across their collective tenure into different industries. I think it shows you that they have a natural propensity to pick up on complex topics quickly, which you want that in rapid growth in particular.

And they also bring a range of knowledge to the table. And so they bring a perspective to your team where maybe a problem that’s hard to find a solution to. It can be challenging when everybody has kinda lived in that one world. But when you have someone from the outside coming in, a lot of times they have a fresh outlook of, well, why not? You know, they, not that they’re not jaded, it is just that they haven’t been overwhelmed by the day-to-day yet. And so I would say that, you know, there are scenarios where it makes sense to diversify your team, but I do not [00:03:00] think that it makes sense to hold off on a good hire because you feel as though you need a specific type of profile when it relates to a specific type of industry or experience.

I think if the person can come in and do the job well, that’s the person that you need to give that offer to, and then maybe have like a second or third or fourth hire as you know, that person that rounds out that knowledge. I think the biggest thing that is important, and it’s typically common in tech sales team, is just this knowledge share that occurs and it’s like a natural phenomenon that I’ve seen happen almost every place I’ve ever worked on some level.
And so it really helps alleviate that absolute finite need to have somebody from a specific industry with a specific type of experience. But I’ve obviously, you know, lived a couple different past lives across different platforms, so probably have a, a little bit of a bias. But curious, Lizzy what your thoughts are [00:04:00]

Lizzy Castro: Yeah, I mean obviously like Emily said, like if you’re looking for a leadership role, that experience is required. But when it comes to maybe even like enterprise AEs or mid-market AE or something along those lines, yes, you want someone who’s familiar with selling at that certain sales cycle with those deal sizes, with experience with C-level executives.

But I think finding those candidates that have that natural curiosity and they show that they’re coachable and they may not have the specific tech experience, but they have experience here. I think that definitely can translate well and that’s where you can kind of make that exception. It’s really tricky because truthfully, I think it always is gonna come down to the hiring team on whether they wanna look at just experience potential, or have a mixture of both.

I always think having a mixture of both is gonna one, help really well balance your team. Like Emily said, having someone who may not have your [00:05:00] standard background coming into a team that’s used to this, they’ll be able to bring so much additional insight that you’re not seeing before. Which I think could be really helpful.

So yeah, I think you can balance it off of both, if that makes sense. I don’t think you should do one over the other. But yeah, I hope that makes sense.

Emily Bell: No, that definitely does.

Krissy Manzano: I mean, I kind of have strong thoughts on this, honestly. Look I’ve heard this song, I’ve seen this movie, I’ve done this dance, and this whole like, experience push does not work the majority of the time. It just doesn’t. And there’s fact after fact data and study. It’s done. You know, after studies and studies are done right and showing us it, you know it doesn’t work.

You see it’s not working consistently, yet people gravitate towards it and they’re gravitating towards it because they want someone to be able, [00:06:00] they think this is a way to make myself feel better about someone hitting the ground quickly. Right. That’s all it is. Even if they know that’s not right, it makes me feel better.

And so, I’m just catering to my feelings that are not in reality and looking at something from a factual view. And then again, they don’t wanna onboard them. People are like, we’re a startup. We don’t have time for that. I’m like, if you were gonna hire somebody, I don’t care if you are a one person company or a 10,000 person company, you have to onboard them.

You have to. You have to teach them this idea that you are not responsible for teaching people is BS. It is lazy. And you wanna sit there and wonder why no one’s working out, right? Or like, oh, they’ve just, I’ve gotta have these folks. ’cause they can just, and also like this idea that because they’ve been in the industry that now, they come over to your industry and they, all of a sudden all their customers are gonna buy your products. [00:07:00] It’s honestly sometimes the most asinine thing I’ve ever seen. Like I to be all, well, I sold this million dollar this other company, so now I’m at this company. I’m like, Hey, you also signed a million dollars with me ’cause I sold you before.

It doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t matter how much, like the number one thing with sales: relationships do not sell. They get you in the door. They can get make people like you, but they people do not buy from you and make a decision to sign big checks, to sign big contracts because they like you.

And that, again, has been proven over and over. That’s not a sales methodology like preference. That is just a fact. Relationships have importance, but they are not the number one driver. And so I just say all that and it’s not a black and white answer, right? It’s not like you do all this or all that.

I think if you’re a leader you need to have, you know, some type of experience when you’re getting up there or be able to kind of understand, [00:08:00] like, I wouldn’t wanna hire an outside leader that had no leadership experience because of their potential, right? I’d want to have someone that I knew internally that was coming from an IC to a first-time leader.

So, but with all of our technology and things today, are you kidding me? We can learn faster than ever with AI. It is not that hard to figure out acronyms and learn about an industry. It’s not that complicated. And I’m gonna say this, which is probably gonna be a big taboo. Even in healthcare.

I know they think, oh my gosh, if you’re not in healthcare, you’ll never get it. You’ll never be able to speak the language. Yes, you will. I get there’s a lot of things there to learn, but people are very capable of learning. And you want those folks that can come in and learn that stuff and know how to implement it.

Those are the folks you want versus the ones who have never done it before or who have always done it and they just can’t think any differently. You need all the above, but you should hire for potential. Experience does matter, but like you said, Emily or [00:09:00] Lizzy, it’s not, you know, one or the other.

When it comes to potential, there are ways that you can assess for that, right? And showing how people implement those. It’s all about like how coachable someone is and how they learn and how they implement them, right? You can just, you can see that by how people are asking you questions, how they present at the end of an interview.

That stuff is not just a, you got lucky. That is like showing true competencies that someone has. ’cause trust me, you can give someone a playbook and if they don’t have the skills, they’re not gonna be able to execute on it. Right? It’s like saying, Hey, I want you to go play this soccer game and I want you to go score two goals and do, you know, pass it to these people.

Doesn’t mean they don’t have the skills or talent to do that. They’re not gonna be able to execute, right? Or go sing this song. And it’s the same thing with interviewing, right? You actually should give someone the playbook of what you want them to do and see how they succeed. If, you know, if they can’t do it, they can’t do it.

Anyways, all that to say, I think both are [00:10:00] valuable, but this whole obsession with experience, whether it’s industry experience or a number of years, is just half the time it’s not even factual. Like the 5 to 10 years, where did that come from? Did you do anything based off of that? And it can’t, you can’t say like one or two people have been successful and have that background.

That’s just, you know, that’s not enough. So if it is, we should be opening the funnel to get better talent, not to lower our standards for talent. And that’s what a lot of people feel they’re doing when they make requirements looser. But they’re actually exposing themselves to better talent. So anyway, that is my take on it.

Good conversation. I know we’re out of time, but thanks for, you know, sharing and going through that today. And I hope that some hiring managers found this helpful. And I know it’s not easy, but it will serve you well in the long run. You will have higher candidate retention, and they will perform.

And so just ’cause it makes you feel [00:11:00] uncomfortable doesn’t mean it actually can mean the more uncomfortable you feel, the more correct you are the direction you are heading because you’re not going in something that could technically just make you feel good but not deliver results. So, until next time we’ll see you all later.