Hiring outside your comfort zone
Posted Wednesday September 28th, 2011

This week I was speaking to the leadership team of a smallish-but-growing organization.  With 40 employees and revenues of $25 million, they're doing well and are operating in an industry that hasn't been hit too hard by the current global economic situation, but sales have plateaued in the past year and they couldn't figure out why.

"We just can't seem to drive incremental sales increases," they told me.  "We think we've got a great team, but somehow we're not making inroads into some of the new markets we'd hoped for."

Maybe you love the team because they're all like you

They had a great product, a strong brand in their marketplace, and their sales and delivery team was quite good.  

But having worked with this organization for some time, I had a good idea of what the problem was: The people on their sales team are all too much alike.  They all have similar education and experience backgrounds, they're all within a limited age range, have similar working styles, and don't really reflect the diversity of their potential target market.  Sure, they were doing fine - but without some diversity among the team, they were limiting themselves without really realizing it.

"We've thought about taking on different people," they said.  "But...we're worried that we'll end up with personality or style clashes.  And what if our brand suffers?"

You can't grow without taking some risks

Smaller organizations tend to be most nervous about hiring outside their comfort zone - after all, in a smaller working environment, a close-knit team atmosphere not only prevails but can be crucial to long-term success, so it can be scary to think about disrupting it with someone who may not 'fit in'.

But long-term growth depends on maximizing your appeal to as large a target market as possible, and that means building an organization that not only reflects that target market, but which contains people who will push the organization out of their comfort zone and into new horizons.

Here are some things to consider:

• Does your team reflect the cultural diversity of your current/potential target market?
• Do you have a wide variety of selling styles within your sales team?
• Do you have a couple of 'oddballs' that you count on to keep you ahead of the curve in specific areas?
• When you ask your management team for 'innovative' ideas, do you get some really out-there suggestions?
• When you look around the office, do you see a lot of different personalities, ages, and working styles?
• In meetings, do you get healthy debate about new policies and procedures?

If the answers to most of these questions are 'no', it's probably time to start casting your recruiting net a little further, and start rethinking your ideas about your Ideal Employee.

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Comments

Anonymous - September 29th 2011

Noah Berkowitz - December 7th 2011
Very nice I appreciate your idea. thanks for sharing it.