A Brief Word About Industry Specific Experience

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General skill sets are frequently transferable within different industries. For example, a strong human resources or finance professional could likely adapt and transition well into a wide variety of industries given that they have solid core skill sets. However, there are most certainly instances where the "ideal" candidate will need to have manufacturing or financial services experience, respective to the hiring need.

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So the question becomes, which is more important, general industry experience OR a specific skill set? The answer, of course, is that it depends. This is one of the key areas that we explore in depth when we first take on a new engagement. With our technical expertise as a backdrop, we offer and share our insights about the importance and relevance of different elements of experience. Sometimes specialized industry experience is a critical must have, while other times for example, the "ideal" candidate is a professional with "general consolidations" or 10K SEC experience, regardless of industry. In other instances, intangibles or qualitative skill sets such as management experience are even more important! We make it our point to know and understand this difference with each individual search and use it to our client’s advantage in recruiting on their behalf.

Clearly, the goal of any search is to get the "best" candidate possible that fits the position criteria that are truly most important to the organization and to find a person that will excel in the role in all of the qualitative ways as well. However, the challenge is to avoid overlooking an outstanding candidate just because they have never worked with XYZ software or an accounting module which is requested by the hiring manager, but is either easily learned within a week OR only used a couple of weeks out of the year. This critical distinction is not aimed at compromising a hiring need; to the contrary, it is aimed at not overlooking an outstanding candidate just because they may not possess what may be an easily learned or rarely used skill set. A sharp and ambitious quick learning professional is much better than an average one who just "happens to have the right skill set" for one or two weeks per year.