How to recruit the best talent from outside your industry

Good talent is hard to find, but by assessing potential employees’ transferrable skills, managers help ensure that they hire the best candidate for their organization.

When making a new hire, it is tempting to select applicants who have previous experience, but this does not guarantee you’ll choose the best candidate. Experience does not make someone a hard worker.

By considering a candidate’s transferrable skills, managers give themselves a broader range of potential applicants from which they can select the best match.

As an added bonus, transferable skills often include the difficult-to-come-by soft skills such as the ability to work as part of a team. You can teach a new employee your system, but it can be much harder to teach someone how to behave in a polished manner. Hiring someone who has a professional demeanor gives you a more valuable team member.

When considering which transferable skills are most important to the position you’re hiring for, think about the staff you’ve had over the years who’ve performed best in the role. What made them good?

• Did members respond well to them? You want a people person.
• Did they write and speak well? You want a good communicator.
• Did their team projects excel? You want a good delegator.

Consider the applicant’s experience, certainly, but also consider the transferable skills of those with less experience to round out your applicant list and increase your chances of hiring the right fit for you.